Dog Stories

I just found out this morning that next week I get to sit in on one of the animal surgeries here at work! Woohoo! I'm totally looking forward to it. Okay, on to the dog stories. :)

Dog Stories

This is all old news, but I forgot to share it before. This past Saturday, we took Bandit to what was supposed to be his first sheep-herding lesson. We got to the farm, only to find that the gate was locked. So we called Jan (the trainer) and left her a message letting her know we were there. Turns out she had cancelled lessons for the day and had forgotten to contact us. We waited out there for probably a half hour or so. At one point, Bandit started getting antsy, so I took him out to walk him a bit. A few minutes later, Marc points towards the farm (the fence was about 50 feet from where we were standing, and we see that ALL the sheep in the farm had congregated by the part of the fence closest to us, and they were all watching the dog. They hadn't been there a couple minutes ago.

Figuring it was just coincidence, we put the dog back in the car. A couple minutes later, the sheep started to disperse to other parts of the farm. As an experiment, we took the dog out of the car again. The sheep immediately flocked together and came over and bunched up near the fence, watching the dog. It was weird! You'd think sheep would flock away from the dog, but they actually seemed drawn to him. It was kinda cool. Anyways, we didn't get our lesson in, but hopefully this Saturday or next we'll get to start.

Marc and I also learned the difficult lesson that once a dog gets a taste for wallet, he never goes back. Bandit got ahold of Marc's wallet one night and completely tore it to pieces, credit cards and all. The next day, Marc went to Macy's and bought a new one. He left it on top of the kitchen counter thinking it would be safe up there. Later that evening, we were talking, and the dog walks up and lies down at our feet, chewing on something. I say, "tell me that isn't your new wallet." Long story short, Marc needs yet another new wallet. The next day (this past Monday), I was home with the dog, and left him unsupervised for about a half-hour. I come downstairs to check on him, only to find that he had taken my purse off the kitchen counter. I've put my purse in the same spot every day for months, and he'd never touched it until now. Amazingly, he did nothing to the purse, but he had completely destroyed the wallet (and associated credit cards) that was inside. He also managed to chew a corner out of the $20 bill I had.

The next day, when I left him unsupervised again (one of these days I will learn) he completely destroyed the cushions on two of our dining chairs. Apparently having a bajillion toys around the house isn't enough to keep him from trying to find new things to destroy. Such a good dog!