some cord for breakfast?

For Christmas I was going to buy the dogs one of those gaudy plastic stockings you find at the end of the grocery store aisle. With all the cheap toys and bones inside. Yeah, once a year I let them consume fabric and cotton and little chunks of red and green rubber. Christmas dinner, hello.

Unfortunately I saved that shopping errand for the week before Christmas. The week I ate nothing but toast and grits and watched every disney movie on netflix. So the dogs didn’t get a stocking. In fact, by unspoken agreement we kept them kenneled on Christmas morning because Piper had chewed the very last nubbin of rawhide in the house over the weekend and she was on an absolute rampage. 

During those four days she chewed a lego sword, a lego wheel, a random blue lego brick, a house slipper, the corner of the bathroom rug, the decorative tree stump in the living room, a piece of construction paper, the leather strap to my camera bag, a stuffed animal’s tail, two dog towels, one orange crayon, and a partridge in a PEAR TREEEE!

Did I miss anything?

It got so bad that the boys took to chanting “Piper no swiping. Piper no swiping.” every time she’d get near their toys. (Dora the Explorer, anyone?). She started hiding behind the dining room table during her exploits and one particularly cold morning I turned on the space heater and unthinkingly plugged in the cord back there. And I didn’t give it another thought until Piper let out a screech and took off running down the hall. It took us a few minutes to figure out what had happened but the first clue came when she slunk back into the room, giving the heater a ten foot berth and murderous glances. She’d taken a bite and received a few volts.

I can now put the space heater in the middle of a doorway and effectively block her off from that room. Also, she hasn’t offered to destroy any more household items since. I’m in no way suggesting we figure out how to market this.