Puppy dog tales

Well, here goes. I have a puppy that will be four months old tomorrow. I love the little booger but she is really hard to live with most evenings.

Her favorite games are trashcan diving, toilet paper running, and potty paws. Every time me or DH leave the house the person remaining has to deal with a puppy tantrum.

I started putting the trash can behind the dog food canister and that dealt with the first game, but nothing seems to keep her out of the bathroom.

We shut the door and she learned to open it. We closed the toilet lid and she noses it up, dives in and digs the water out of the bowl like mad. I am cleaning that toilet bowl a minimum of twice a day. If you can stop her from that then she grabs the toilet paper end and runs like mad through the house with it. I am reminded of when my sons were little guys. I wonder how I lived through them? I am too old for this stuff!

Is potty arm the universal language of toddling mammals? These are the questions that go through my mind as I deal with the demon doggy pup from hades. What was I thinking when I said, "okay honey, let's just keep one puppy." Some one shoot me and put me out of my misery. And I won't even go into puppy poo patrol, and housebreaking.

Her momma dog is a really laid back, scaredy cat rottweiler. I mean she is so scared of everyone and everything that she hid under my skirts all the time before this pup came along. She is older so she sleeps a lot. However, the other night we had a prowler. I don't know exactly what you would classify this guy as, but for the purposes of this blog I will call him a prowler.

He came into our yard and tried to get into our garage with the police in hot pursuit. Seems he botched a robbery just down the road from us and was running on foot away from the police, and instead of running into the 300 acres of orange trees surrounding our house, where he had a chance of escaping, he runs into my yard and tries to break into my garage.

The dogs want out and are not barking or warning me anyone is out there so I open the door. The old rottie girl clears the front porch in a superman type single bound, crosses the electric radio controlled fence that delivers a shock to her neck if she crosses it and knocks this poor dude on his keester. Then she sits on him and growls. She did not bite him. Thank goodness for that, because living in California if she had bitten him I would be in for a lawsuit. Never mind that he was on land that he had no business being on.

So she is just sitting there, growling and not doing anything else, he has his arms over his head in a defensive position, and the police car pulls into my driveway. I think to myself, O no, my dog is a dead dog, because she is sitting on this dude.

Mind you he found her fairly intimidating because he urinated on himself. I don't think it added any aroma to him that was not already present though, because he was a very rank individual. I would think that he was either homeless or a methamphetamine addict or both. They do seem to go hand in hand around here, along with home invasion robberies.

Anyway, the lady cop says can you leave the dog there for a minute while I get a tarp out to cover the seat in my squad car. I don't want that on my upholstery. So I did not pull the dog off for a little longer. This poor guy was whimpering, and I felt sort of sorry for him, until she frisked him and found the knife. Thank goodness he didn't stab my poor old dog.

I still have no clue how she got the nerve up to go after someone like that, she has always been so frightened of everyone. Claude says it is because she loves me and was protecting me, but I am more of the opinion that she was protective of her puppy. (the aforementioned demon puppy from hades)

Well that is all the stupid dog tricks for this week. I am off to bed and hope they let me sleep all night, instead of waking me up at 2 am because some critter is moving around in the orchard. Goodness knows that the pup doesn't go outside to use the facilities, housebreaking is a trial of fire with demon puppies.