80% Perfect, 10% Jekyll, 10% Hyde

Bender sleeps like 80% of the day. The other 20% is split into two states. He is either a half drowsy, wonderful, cuddly puppy who just sits and observes the world going on around him, or a bitey intolerable monster that cannot sit still and wants to eat every rug, foot, sandal, pant cuff and lint ball that comes within five feet of him. He even finds and eats those horrifying balls of my hair that I gag about when I find them under the couch or stuck to my recently cleaned t-shirts.

Before Bender finally arrived at our house and stole our hearts I spent a weekend digging a bunch of weeds and plants out of a tiny polygon of a garden. The deck behind it was about 8 inches off the ground there, plenty of room for a curious puppy to crawl through and get stuck under. So I shoved some logs in the space and dumped like 5 bags of mulch on top for good measure. It looked really nice when I was done! After a year of looking at a gnarly rose bush and a mass of snap peas surrounded by dirt and dead leaves, it was great to see a few irises poking out of a nice clean bed of mulch. Sigh.

bender chomps down on some irises; 9 week old puppy eats flowers and destroys garden

It didn’t take long for Bender to decide the irises were a formidable and dangerous enemy that must be vanquished.

After his successful iris conquest he must have decided that they were guarding some kind of secret gateway, because now he’s made it his mission to dig through as much mulch sand and dirt as it takes to see what lies beneath the irises.

Bender digs a hole in the garden

He’s persistent, we’ll give him that….

12 week old puppy sleeping on top of the hole he's been digging, with a grumpy look on his face

When he’s not digging to China he guards his progress ferociously.

Today during a break from his tireless efforts to really destroy the only garden in our yard I’ve ever worked on, he bolted, feet a delicious mixture of mud and sand, into the house and down into the basement living room.

Lazily I stood up to retrieve him and take out of his mouth whatever possession of ours he decided to destroy. I got down to the basement to find a liter of water spilling out of a Nalgene all over the coffee table, tv remotes, and rug (narrowly missing one of our computers), and a muddy Bender, standing with all four feet proudly on the couch. What. A. Jerk.

muddy pawprints on our couch

Thanks buddy, great job redecorating the couch.

He jumped down about as soon as I found him there. I cleaned up the muddy paw prints and the spilled water, and then marched upstairs and took my revenge: I dumped an entire bottle of Tapatio in the polygon of kicked up mulch and dug out dirt. That’ll show him…

hot sauce sprinkled on the garden to stop the dog from digging

Tapatio on mulch looks suspiciously murdery

His Mr. Hyde self is not very pleased about this latest obstacle between him and garden destruction, but I’m sure he’ll find a way to overcome it. At least for now his Dr. Jekyll half is just snoozing happily at my feet. Dreaming of couches and irises yet to be ruined.

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