I guess it just wasn't enough for me that I was a single mother working hard to put food on the table. It wasn't enough that I already had a cat that I wasn't all that fond of and it just wasn't enough that I had to pay extra in rent for pets. I just had to have a dog. You might think in a small house with a small child and a young cat, I might get a small little dog. Nope! Not me! I just had to have a German Shepherd puppy.
You see, I have always loved German Shepherds, ever since I was a little kid. They were always my favorite dog and I could never wait to have one of my own. When I went to pick him out I fell in love instantly. He was beautiful and so full of spunk. All the other puppies seemed so sleepy and uninterested, I just knew I needed to get the little bastard that was harassing everyone. I brought him home and dreamed about how wonderful life would be with him! I pictured us running in slow motion through fields at sunset. I imagined him standing tall to protect my son and licking his face and sleeping in his bed. A boy needs a dog like this I thought. It was going to be great.
[insert sound of record scratching here]
I could not have been more wrong about this dog. Yes he was protective and yes he was beautiful and yes he was LARGE, but most of all he was a raging jerk. Just the same I loved him and vowed to stick it out until he outgrew his puppy phase and then he would be great. (which never happened by the way)
Of course I had to pick the puppy with the problems. His first issues were of the digestive nature. I will leave that to the imagination but let me just tell you this much, you never want to have to deal with that. Additionally, he would not gain weight. He always looked like he was starving so after the Vet cleared him medically, he suggested a different food - but of course this food is more expensive. The new food only worsened the first problem, so after a few tweaks to the diet we finally got him to keep it down, but it still didn't make him look any less bony. I thought maybe after he finishes growing so quickly, he can carry more weight. Then I would have to pay tons more money because he had an ....eh hem...undesc- well, let's just say only one of the twins wanted to hang out. Through all of the expensive medical problems, I also came to discover that this dog was not playing with a full deck.
I read up as much as I could about raising and training a Shepherd. They are not your average dog, and if you don't know what you are doing it can be a real disaster. Good thing for me, I knew what I was doing. Crate training was a necessity. They say they won't "mess" where they sleep. Well let me tell you folks right here and right now that THAT is a big fat lie. He had no issue whatsoever leaving a nice steamer and then trampling through and later napping in it. I had to keep removing the tray in the bottom to clean it and since he couldn't be trusted roaming free in the house while I was doing this, I had to leave him in his crate with no tray on the bottom. Not a good idea. I came back to find that he has dug through the linoleum floor clear down to the sub-floor - and this place is a rental.
I decided enough was enough so I signed him up for this Puppy Kindergarten Class ...which he flunked out of. Well, I guess WE flunked out. First off, he would get car sick every time we went and cleaning up puke out of the car once a week was not fun. Secondly, he was already huge but I was still my same small self. It was downright embarrassing the way he acted. He flipped around on his leash the way a balloon flips around in a windstorm - complete with smashing me in the face and head repeatedly. He was a distraction to the other dogs and wasn't attentive enough to even know I was talking, let alone hear the commands! The trainers' scathing looks told me to never bring this beast back to their store and so I didn't. On the drive home I cried as he puked, and then I cried some more.
After the digging through the floor incident, and him partially eating the tray to his crate I was forced to leave him out of the crate while I was at work - just this once until I bought a new crate. I blocked him into the kitchen and figured he couldn't do THAT much damage in just one room. Since he was big, strong and smart, a baby gate would not do the trick. I pushed the sofa up against the doorway and above it I put the baby gate so the entire doorway from floor to top was blocked. That ought to hold him until lunchtime at least, and then I'll stop home to check on him.
As I pull into the driveway on my lunch break, I get my first glance at my house and you could just about hear the sound of a gong. "Oh now THAT"S not good" I thought as I noticed the curtain rod is now running diagonally across the front window. As I approach, I see that the curtains are not only down on one side, but they are also ripped. Obviously, my door blockage didn't work. Hopefully that's the worst of it.
Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when I opened that front door. Nothing. I turned the key and slowly pushed the door open. There was a bit of a resistance to the door and I realized it was because I was spreading a nice big pile of poop across the entry way. In fact, there was poop everywhere...and puke too. And partially digested bits of the things that used to adorn my home.
There is no real way to fully understand what happened, but my investigation suggests the following:
He got bored and panicked before I even got out of the driveway. He then jumped up and took down the coffee pot from the coffee maker and proceeded to eat much of the glass that he broke on the floor. All that was left of the coffee pot was the handle and the metal ring around the top. After this time, he relieved himself of 80 gallons of urine. At some point during his time spent in the kitchen, he disemboweled his favorite toy and left stuffing marinating in the urine on the kitchen floor. When he exhausted his resources in the kitchen, he took a running leap and crashed right through the wooden baby gate suspended over the couch. All that was left of it was some plastic netting and some mangled, splintered wood. At some point he used it's remnants as a snack as made evident by the poop.
After he broke free, he went to the living room and decided he would really enjoy munching on some candles so he jumped up to get them out of the window sill and ripped down the curtain rod and tore the curtains in the process. He ate almost all of the candle sticks and most of a pillar candle. Now this next part is the part that I can't quite explain. He also ate the mop and left it in the living room. I can't decide if he brought it with him on his initial escape or if he went back for it later, perhaps in an effort to quickly clean up before I got home? Whatever the case, the mop was irresistible - soaked with Mr. Clean and all - because he ate that too. As you might imagine, this would give someone quite a tummy ache so everything came back out on both ends. Not sure if it was simultaneous, but I would like to think it was, just to have taught him a lesson.
When I finally got back to work, I must have looked a mess. I was stressed, had been crying and after that clean up job, I probably stunk something fierce. When my boss looked at me, acknowledging my lateness I now know I should have just lied and said I was robbed at gunpoint. It was probably way more believable than the real truth.
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