A Dog is a Dog is a Dog

Ruanita was teetering on the edge. I could see smoke coming from her ears. Steam from her nostrils. Her face was red and she was barely containing her rage. Earlier in the day, I had assured Ruanita that the dog would do perfectly fine left free in the house while we went out for a movie and dinner with the kids. Ruanita was skeptical, but I was convincing. Wearing the cone of shame, she barely fit in her kennel and most certainly did not have the room to stand up and turn around. I felt sorry for her. I couldn't stand the thought of her being stuck in one uncomfortable position for hours on end. Besides, I had left her free in the house while the kids and I ran to Target the day before. And she did perfectly fine. No issues whatsoever. As a matter of fact, Stella has not had a single issue since we brought her home two weeks ago. No accidents in the house. No chewing up the kids' toys. No problems at all.

That is, until last night.

We got home at ten o'clock last night with the intention of putting the kids right to bed. Ruanita wasn't feel well and wanted to take some NyQuil, head straight to bed, and sleep the sleep of the highly medicated. None of that happened.

Instead, we walked into our house to utter chaos. Stella had shredded all four wooden blinds in our living room. She had also shredded one of our cheaper mini-blinds in the kitchen. She knocked over the trash can. Watermelon rinds all over the kitchen floor. She pulled all of the papers off our kitchen cabinet, including the paperwork for our mortgage refinance. She knocked over our living room lamp. She knocked over a basket of laundry we had sitting in the living room. Shorts, t-shirts, and unmentionables of various sizes all over the room. She scraped huge amounts of paint off of our front door in an obvious attempt to scratch her way out.

All of that destruction was horrible. But it got worse. As we were cleaning up the mess, Ruanita noticed that the runner on our kitchen table was wet. As was a stack of Lucas' beloved Pokemon cards. Why was the table wet? It only took one sniff to answer that question. Stella had somehow climbed up on top of the table and peed. Perhaps by doing it on the table—off of the floor—she rationalized that she wasn't actually peeing in the house. She was peeing in the air. Can dogs rationalize like that? That's the only explanation I can come up with for why in the world she would put forth the effort (while wearing a cone, which makes everything more difficult) to climb up on top of our kitchen table to pee.

Needless to say, Stella did not sleep in our bed last night. As a matter of fact, I got up four times during the night to move her to the floor for her own safety. Ruanita was feeling no affection for Stella during the night. As a matter of fact, she said on numerous occasions during the clean-up that Stella was, in no uncertain terms, no longer welcome in our house.

This morning, after sleeping on it, there was a little less canine-directed hostility in our house. We both came to the conclusion that dogs are dogs. Stella is only a year old. Though she's already been a momma, she is still a puppy. We can't leave her alone for hours on end and expect her to be anything other than a puppy. It was later that a friend reminded us that yesterday was both the Highland Fest and the Minneapolis Aquatennial. The evening culminated in fireworks at both events. We were far up north and did not hear any fireworks, but Stella very well could have heard either set of fireworks in our south Minneapolis home. Had we remembered there would be fireworks, we never would have left her alone, free to roam around our house.

This morning, I spent $166 at Home Depot to replace some of our blinds and repair some of the damage Stella inflicted on our poor house. Yes, it was my fault. Yes, Ruanita was right. Let the record reflect that I am taking full responsibility. I was wrong.

I suck.

$166 worth of prime suckage.