The Last Temptation of Maggie

Bah. It’s been a mediocre week. Week and a half.

My dog has nearly pushed me over an edge. We are working through a phase. I don’t want to jinx anything, but I think I see the other side.

As you know, the Maggot is no longer in a crate when we leave for the day. And she did okay for about a day. Then D made us a wonderful dinner of lamb chops(!) and I was stupid and left the bones in the trash can. She ate the bones and god knows what else and spread trash all over our kitchen and living room. In all of her rooting in the trash she cut her nose. Then took a piece of stale bread and her bloody nose up to our room and got blood and breadcrumbs all over our bed. Sigh. Fine, whatever. It cleaned up fairly easily.

The next day, as you might expect after a dog eats her weight in rotting food and wrappers, we woke up to a big, foul, pile of diarrhea in our room. Great way to start the day. She didn’t get into anything that day, but she did have some further digestive issues. But we had talked before I left and I told her that I knew she was sick and might not be able to hold it, but to please keep it to the linoleum. And she totally did.

The next time she was alone all day was this past Monday. Out of practice after the weekend, D and I left the trash can out in the kitchen again and our bedroom door open again. She went into the bedroom and ate the pump off of my body lotion. This is the lotion (just Eucerin ... nothing fancy smelling) that Maggie thinks is frosting. When it's on my hands, she can't stop licking it. So she ate the pump part, and the tube that goes into the bottle. She grabbed a huge ball of yarn I had up there and ran it around the room, down the stairs, and around the living room. It looked like we'd gotten TP'd with cheap blue yarn. Then she went into the kitchen. The trash was mostly empty this time, but she still knocked it over and dragged the bag through the house. She also knocked my little one cup coffee thing onto the floor and ate the grounds and broke the bowl it was in. We had had a few people over for a cookout last Saturday and all of the glasses we used were on the counter drying. When I got home there was a pile of broken glass-five margarita glasses and two white wine glasses. And she peed in the hall. Oh, and! AND! What with all the broken glass all over the fucking house, she cut her foot … AND GOT BLOOD ALL OVER OUR BED AGAIN!!

Tuesday she didn’t break much but pulled three bottles of wine out of our wine rack and dragged them to various places in the house. She knocked a bowl of mixed nuts off an end table (which, embarrasingly, had been there since before Christmas), snacked on them, and spread nuts and broken shells all over the living room. And she peed on the living room floor, twice. Wait. This is kind of a funny part. So, I could smell that she had done some business beyond pee, but there were nuts all over the floor, including brazil nuts, which look like turds. I knew it was there, but I could. not. find it. Because I was mistakenly looking on the floor, and Miss Maggie had … wait for it … taken a shit on my cocktail table! On MY TABLE!!. But nothing was broken and pee and poop are easy to clean up. As are nuts.

I hesitate to tell you about Wednesday because this time it was not so easy to clean up. Again she pooped, but on the floor this time. Again she peed on the floor. However, she also peed on my freaking expensive chair!! AHHH. This cannot be cleaned up! For those who may someday be at my house, let me clarify so you are not afraid of our furniture. I have been propping the couch and chair cushions in a variety of configurations to discourage the dog from getting on them. Which totally doesn’t work since she just flips them onto the floor. So she had flipped the cushion onto the floor and peed on the seat where the cushion goes. I cleaned it up as best I could with a wet rag and Febreeze.

But today! Today! Nothing! The cushions? Still on the couch! The wine? Still in the rack! There was no broken glass anywhere! I didn’t have to clean up urine OR feces! Sure, sure. The food processor was on the floor, but it’s on a shelf about two inches off the floor, so no big deal. And she chewed the plastic wrap around my new Martha Stewart Living magazine, but not much. And that’s it!

Yay! And sigh. I’m really counting on this just being a period of adjustment to her newfound freedom. Because I don’t want to think about what we’ll have to do if she keeps this up.