Bad Dogs. Bad, Bad, Dogs.

As most of you know, Chris and I have shared our home with a number of animals over the years, including our two dogs, Jack and Lily. Jack and Lily are both very sweet, very bad dogs. On the one hand, they are great family pets. Lily in particular has endless patience with Sam, and will tolerate all sorts of stuff, including being covered in pillows, getting stepped on, sat on, bounced on, etc. Case in point:

Jack is a little less tolerant of Sam's hijinks, and will have minor hissyfits if Sam gets carried away, but he is pretty good with Sam too. He enjoys having Sam throw a ball for him, and has dealt calmly with Sam when the kid decides to start "grooming" Jack with a hair brush and squirt bottle:

All of that said, our dogs are REALLY bad sometimes. Lily is crazy smart, very stubborn, and very determined. She has been known to tunnel out of the yard, even moving cinder blocks equal to her in weight to do so. She is also the queen of the fridge. She learned some time ago that the refridgerator not only held all sorts of tasty delights to soothe her gluttonous appetite, but also that it is quite easy to open. The first time she managed to open the refridgerator, I had just gone grocery shopping and stocked up on meat (buy one get one free sale!). I hadn't yet figured out which meat to freeze, so it was all in the fridge.

Anyhow, Chris and I walked into the house after work and found that the dogs had gotten into the kitchen trash. There was garbage strewn all over the living room, lovely. But wait, what was this? A raw, gnawed on chuck roast? I didn't throw away a chuck roast?! And why was there a package of chicken breasts lying on the floor by the bathroom!? OMG!!!!

In total, the dogs had eaten 2 pounds of ground beef, a package of pork chops, butter, and some leftovers. They had also ruined a great deal more food that day.

At first, Chris and I would wrap a bungee cord around the fridge to dog-proof it. However, we soon discovered the wonderful world of child safety locks, a much easier, more attractive solution to our bad dog problems. Unfortunately, our fridge lock recently broke and had to be replaced. And even more unfortunately, the new lock promptly fell right off the fridge and was useless. Chris and I kept meaning to pick up a new lock, but with 2 kids to manage, we kept delaying. In the meantime, Lily quickly figured out that the formerly impenetrable fridge was now... penetrable.

And so it began. Lily soon took every opportunity to peruse the contents of the refridgerator, having absolutely no shame about doing so. It got so that I had to lock the dogs in the bedroom with me if I wanted to take a nap, otherwise I was sure to hear the sound of a casserole dish hitting the ground over the baby monitor. Putting a chair in front of the fridge did nothing, slowed her down by maybe five seconds. Heck, being in the room with her didn't make a difference! She'd open the door right up if I was five feet away with my back turned! Heck, sometimes I think she did it to intentionally piss me off. While I've been on leave, Lily has taken to asking for her dinner starting at 1pm. After yelling at her to knock it off, she'll frequently stalk off in a huff and head straight to the fridge and open it up, as if to say "Fine, I'll show you!"

Things came to a head over the past few days. On Thursday, Lily opened the fridge while Chris was in the next room, 10 feet away, and managed to eat a strip of cornmeal topping off the tamale casserole* we were going to have for dinner that night. Thankfully, it hadn't been cooked yet, so we decided to bake the dog germs off and eat it anyhow. It was just too much food to throw away, and had been too much work to abandon. Then, the next night, Chris put together a tuna noodle casserole and popped it in the fridge to bake later. A 30-second trip to the bathroom proved to be his downfall, however, and he found Lily halfway through the casserole when he came back into the kitchen.** Then, on Saturday, Lily committed the worst sin yet: She ate my chocolate pudding. It wasn't even instant pudding! Cook'n Serve, which I'd been hording for my bedtime snack!

Meanwhile, Jack was also up to no good. Jack is less crafty than Lily, but still a pill at times. He loves to snack on all manner of inedible objects, including binkies, CD cases, candles, and various wood and plastic objects. One time, Jack ate a rubber lizard and we found it completely intact but quite a bit nastier, out in the yard, having traversed Jack's digestive system. He's also fond of paper products, and has been known to come trotting out of the bathroom with a roll of toilet paper streaming from his mouth. Jack is the type of dog that gave rise to the "the dog ate my homework" excuse. In our case though, it's "the dog ate my bills".

Anyhow, on Saturday night, just a few hours after the pudding incident, I was upstairs and kept hearing suspicious noises drifting up the stairs. I was in the middle of feeding the baby, so I couldn't head down immediately. When I did get a chance to investigate, I didn't find anything, shrugged, and headed to the bathroom to brush my teeth. When I emerged, Chris was waiting for me, holding a few bits of mangled plastic. "Are these things you'll have to special order to replace?," he asked with a grimace. I looked at what he was holding and found that Jack had somehow gotten into my breast pump bag and pulled out some of the attachments. Several items were completely destroyed. Argh!! With my return to work date scheduled for Tuesday, I had to have these items! Rotten dog!

So, yesterday, Sam and I headed off to Babies 'R Us. Our mission? Replacement parts for the pump and a new lock for the fridge. In total, the dogs cost me $30 yesterday, not counting all of the food that Lily has eaten over the past week.

I swear, there are times I could murder the pair of them. It's a good thing that they have their endearing moments!

Meanwhile, Chris and I totally think that we should start a line of products for people with bad dogs: Dog-proof garbage cans, couches that repel pet hair, etc.

* Tamale casserole=yummy! It's a Weight Watchers recipe consisting of a mixture of ground turkey, tomato sauce, corn, black beans, onions, jalapenos, cumin, chili powder and garlic that gets topped with a corn meal mash and cheese, then baked. Very tasty!

**Adding insult to injury, the room-clearing stench that emanated from Lily once the tuna casserole started moving through her system.