Monday, March 21, 2011

There Are No Bad Dogs

I always laugh when I hear this and say “You haven’t met the Hound* properly.”

She is, in no uncertain terms, probably the worst dog ever.

We worked hard to train and motivate her to be a good dog. She was at one point even a competition dog for sport. I trained her to perform assistance tasks. She is also very skilled at groundwork. She is smart, learned (for a dog), and *CAN* be extremely obedient. When it suits her. Which means I’m standing right there telling her what I want from her and nothing more exciting is happening.

She refuses to listen to anyone but me, much to the consternation of both my husband and son.And if I’m not right there telling her what I want from her she’s left to her own devices.

Her devices, by the way, are pure EVIL.

This is the dog who pulled the hand-carved trim my husband made off the walls and ate it. This is the dog who pulled up our brand new wall-to-wall carpeting, shredded the pad to smithereens, and then ate holes in the carpet. This is the dog who has figured out the latching system or weak point of every dog crate made as well as many door latching systems to the point she is almost uncontainable (double-keyed deadbolts do stop her). She kills anything that she doesn’t recognize as either human or canine with speed and efficiency (within reason. She did try to kill a deer, but she’s only 22 lbs). This is the dog who marks the house up any time it looks like a new resident has entered (yes, she’s female. No it doesn’t seem to impede the leg-lifting). She can open the fridge and pantry and create ladders to reach every shelf. She could work the DVD player/stereo until we added a door with a magnetic lock to the cabinet (we were awoken several nights to see her, alone, sitting on the couch and watching a werewolf movie). She has dug up several utility lines and destroyed the cable a few times. She has destroyed my attempts at a small orchard until just last year. She continues to pull my clothing (and only mine) out of the hamper and shred it. We found our mattress is sinking because she has destroyed the box spring from underneath the bed. She screams and ear-piercing shriek for an assortment of reasons—mostly because she likes to. She eats dirty diapers. She tries to nurse people. She escapes frequently.

And…I constantly wonder why we love her. She’s awful. She is destructive. And she’s not even very snuggly (her coarse wire coat and pointy, skinny, underweight body make it not so comfy). By all rights, I can’t think of a good reason we didn’t return her to the rescue.

*I do use her name

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