Gracie’s mess
We’ve had Gracie since mid-June, when we drove to a Weekie-Wachee dog rescue in search of a border collie. It turned out that the only thing Gracie’s rat terrier self had in common with a border collie was her black and white coloring. But she was cute and energetic and charming and we brought her home. She’s been a very good dog, staying in the house during the day, not having any accidents, only chewing on the occasional should-not-have-been-in-her-reach plastic object and generally being a very good dog.
Gracie behaving at Thanksgiving
Then we got Sophie, and Gracie began acting out and tearing things up. First, she got into the bag I had taken to work with Sophie, chewing through and totally destroying a Rubbermaid bowl that had held some dog food, and just tearing up the other stuff in the bag in general. A few days later, she got into another bag that had plastic water bottles in various levels of emptiness and all kinds of papers and random stuff and tore it all up all over the living room, biting through the plastic bottles so they dripped out and got all the papers wet.
We thought most of her acting out was because she was being left home alone while Sophie was going with me, but yesterday morning, I left them both home while taking Mother to a doctor’s appointment. I placed the wire kennel across the end of the hallway so they’d have access to the doggie door to go outside, but be confined to the back of the house. This was an experiment that failed miserably. Not only did they both meet me at the front door when we got home, having gotten past the wire kennel with it still in place, but before getting out of the den, Gracie managed to tear up one of the new doggie beds, a multi-CD case, one of Steve’s crocs, plastic sleeves out of a 3-ring binder and some of the papers that had been in the sleeves, a box containing a silver-polishing cloth, and a cloth book bag, and also to knock the door of the wire kennel off its hinges so it fell fully inside onto its floor. Oh, and one of the dog toys was outside, having been drug through the dirt several times, along with pieces of a large plastic cup from Cuban Breezes we had been using to fill their water bowls.
Unfortunately for Sophie, who is just getting used to living here and really getting the whole idea of the doggie door, Gracie has sentenced them both to several hours locked in their kennels on the days Mom goes to the Senior Center.
Soapbox By Kay 
Leave a Reply