This is my puppy Gizmo, done, tired, pooped on the front porch after a day at the beach. He was not yet 6 months old in this picture. He is now about 2 1/2, 120 pounds, and the love of my life. He's my very first dog ever in my whole life...So how was I to know I was adopting a criminal?
Gizmo is a thief. And a tough one. First about the tough part: His electronic fence was a joke. He'd just blast right through it to get across the way, through a little patch of woods and over to the neighbor's house where there are two dogs, successfully fenced in. I even told the electronic fence people, literally, "I don't care if you turn this dog into a french fry, TURN UP THE POWER." No good. So Gizmo, in order to visit his pals, is literally zapped coming & going, as the neighbor dogs fence is on the same frequency as ours...
Now about his life of crime: It was bad enough that he would run around the yard with my bras in his mouth - no other laundry - just my bras - but we were faced with a true dilemma one day when we found a pair of underwear - NOT OURS - in our garden.
It seems Gizmo had "been visiting" (as we call it when he goes to the neighbor's dogs to play) and come to find out, that they have a habit of grabbing their owners laundry and bringing it out to their yard. Gizmo, in turn, has a habit of "appropriating" whatever he deems interesting and bringing home to our yard, where these successfully fenced dogs can't follow. I've even taken to collecting his treasures about once a week and returning them... anyway... back to the foreign underwear.
There it was in the garden. The cliche, beige, over the hip, full coverage, middle-aged lady underwear, covered in dirt. What to do? Return it? Do we launder it first? Do I just toss it in the yard under the cover of darkness with the other toys I normally return during the daylight? We have a nice relationship with these neighbors. They are GLAD Gizmo comes to visit because it keeps their dogs from barking which has been annoying the people right next door to them, so I don't want to have Gizmo's visiting privileges revoked - so I did the right thing. I took the chicken's way out. I kept my mouth shut. Swore my kids to secrecy, "Don't say anything to Jane about her underwear being in the garden!" and off we went.... That was last year and so far, other than the very public posting of this story here, I don't believe they ever knew...
Oh! And that brings to mind the FIRST story of his criminal behavior:
The Case of the Houseguest's Shoe
One Sunday morning the phone rings. It's our neighbors who own Gizmo's dog friends. He says, "Do you, by any chance, have a shoe in your backyard that doesn't belong to you?"
Mortified, instantly, we look.
"Yup."
"It belongs to our houseguest who was just getting ready to leave, couldn't find it, so we put two and two together. Our dogs frequently take our shoes out to our backyard. And knowing Gizmo's proclivities..."
"Oh... We're SO sorry. It's not damaged. It just took a little walk...Oh my...Yeah... We'll send one of the kids right over with it..."
Oh, and my husband reminds me that it was an expensive Italian loafer...
Click. Blush.
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