Our Boxer dawg, Gracie, likes to be outside. We have a tie-out for her right outside the back door, and when she's outside I leave the door open so I can see (for the most part) what she's up to.
When she asked to go outside this morning, I let her out and then went to start some candy mix on the stove and make myself a cup of coffee. I figured that she'd been going outside by herself for weeks and hadn't gotten into a trouble so it'd be okay for me to leave her unattended for a couple of minutes.
I was wrong.
In the time that it took me to make a cup of instant coffee and start the sugar and corn syrup in a pan on the stove, she'd managed to dig a sizeable hole (about a foot wide and long and a good 8" deep) in my flower bed, right next to my roses. She'd also eaten part of the bush (there wasn't much because I'd cropped them back for the winter), thorns and all.
Dave had looked at her paws last night and had said that he thought she might have been digging, and I said that there was no way; that I hadn't seen either her digging or a hole in the yard and that her claws were dirty because it had been wet outside and the landscape contractors hadn't been by for weeks, leaving leaves and debris in the yard. That was what she'd got into, I said. She's a digger, he said. No, she's not, I said.
He was right. She's a digger. She's got mud caked between the pads on her paws, mud in her claws, mud up her legs and mud on her velvety snout. She's even got mud up her nose - she must've dug, sniffed, and then dug some more.
I'm going to get a bucket of warm soapy water and make her stand with her front feet in it. She's been chastised; I've wagged my finger at her and called her a NAUGHTY DAWG!!! - don't laugh, it actually works. Both our dogs have a sense of shame; if we wag our finger at them and frown and say NO NO NO! NAUGHTY DAWG!!!! they both hang their heads and look very sheepish and guilt-wracked.
Then I'm going to have to go outside and see if I can salvage the rose.
Oh the joy of dawg ownership!
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