When I first came to live with this family, I made a classic rookie mistake. I started chewing on things right away the first week.
Mom’s slipper. A paper plate left on a coffee table. Mom’s work shoe. A plastic container near the edge of the counter. A cardboard box from Amazon. I knew they probably wouldn’t like this since I had been yelled at for chewing up things in my past, but I just couldn’t help myself.
“Hmm, so the new rescue dog likes to chew things, does she?”
My mom gave me a bit of a stare down, and suddenly I was in the kennel every time they left the house or went to bed. It wasn’t horrible because I always got a treat when they kenneled me, but I felt my creative outlets had all been stifled. Lucky for me, the older dog, Ellie, was not in a kennel and would occasionally find things to chew up, so a bit of doubt was cast. Maybe the new dog wasn’t always to blame for the mess on the living room floor?
“Okay, we’ll try this again,” Mom said a few weeks later. “All of my shoes are now safely in the closet, and everything else is picked up.”
She gave me a firm stare, and I gave her my best doe-eyed innocent look. “I’ll be back in an hour,” she said and away she went.
And away I went, as well. I checked out the counter – nothing within reach. All of the shoes were put away. No boxes were left on the floor. I made another sweep through the kitchen. The dish rag was hanging to dry on the stove handle, and it smelled amazing. I carried it to the living room floor, but it was too soft and didn’t satisfy me.
I went through the living room. There was a carved wooden duck on a low shelf, and it looked dangerous. Defiant, perhaps. I carried it to the living room, and gnawed a bit on its ducky little head until it showed the proper submission. But it was too hard, so I moved on.
There were dog toys that had been strategically placed all over the floor, on the dog beds, by the couch. I sniffed them, and they were a little bit interesting, but I was in the mood for something more exotic. Forbidden. The door was open to the room with the television, and there I found the perfect thing. Shiny and black, with little buttons that were nubby and satisfying. The plastic cracked in such an enticing way, and the whole thing smelled like a mixture of Cheez-its and popcorn.
It was just right.
When mom came home, she barely said ‘boo’ to us but walked around looking for property damage. When she got to the living room and saw the dishrag and the duck, her words came out like brittle icicles falling off the roof. “Okay, what have we here?”
Ellie and I slunk out of the room. When there is poop or debris on the floor, every dog everywhere knows that they will be held to blame. At least my mom is aware that dogs live in the moment and don’t make any intellectual connection like, ‘if I just didn’t chew up things then I wouldn’t get yelled at.’ In fact, sometimes us dogs are just as surprised by a chewed-up shoe as our owners are.
“Whoa, how did THAT happen?”
My mom calls it “Chews-heimers”, and I concur that it is a real thing. Dogs forget we ever did it, because that was then, and this is now. We live in the NOW, and people live in the THEN.
“Well, it could be worse,” Mom said. “I was debating giving that odd duck to Goodwill.” She picked up the creepy fowl and the dishrag, patted me on the head, and all was well.
Or, all WAS well, until the son stopped over that evening, and went out to the TV room.
“Mom, what happened to the remote?” he called, and Mom hollered back, “What do you mean?” but then she glanced at me. I flopped my tail a few times and did the doe-eyed thing, but she lifted her eyebrows at me in that way that moms do and walked into the next room.
“Omigosh! LOOK at this REMOTE! It’s destroyed!” This time her voice wasn’t just little brittle icicles. This time it was an avalanche of anger, crashing off the eaves and powerful enough to bury a dog deep inside a kennel for the next three months.
“Three YEARS!” my mom walked by, brandishing the remote in the air with a righteous waggle. “Three years before I trust you again!”
I looked at Ellie, and she looked a little worried, too, so I went over and laid down on my bed. The son came out and laid with me and rubbed my ears. “She doesn’t mean it,” he said in a kind voice. “She told me the same thing when I dented the garage door by throwing my lacrosse ball against it.”
He rubbed my belly until I felt all warm and cozy and no trace of icicle voices remained. That had been then, this was now, and everything was just right.
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