Bad dog!

Dahlia is, normally, a good dog.  No, wait, normally she's a very good dog.  She doesn't destroy things.  She doesn't get into things while we're gone.  She's friendly and calm and sweet.  We can leave her alone in the house for a few hours with no problems.

But, like all creatures, she has her downfall.  That downfall is, of course, butter.

Yes that's right...butter.  That lovely, creamy, slightly salty substance that one would never imagine a dog could go ga-ga for.  But Dahlia does.  Which is why we try so very hard to put it away.

Last week, however, things didn't quite go as planned.  My partner cooked his breakfast and in his rush to leave the apartment to go to work, forgot to put it away.  This was, of course, exactly what the Butter Bandit was waiting for!

At some point during the 5 hours she was left home alone, she stole the butter.  Now, could she simply take it to the living room and eat it?  No.  That would be too easy for the Butter Bandit!

Instead, she took it into our bedroom and got on our (unmade) bed.  Somehow during all of this, she managed to cut her nose.  She cuts it every single time she steals the butter (which, according to photographic evidence, is about once every 6 months).  She then proceeds to track bloody paw prints all over the bed.  We found blood on both the top and bottom sheet and on all four pillows.  I have no idea what she did.  It's like she had a big butter-stealing party all by herself and raced all over the bed with her prize.

Our guess is that she cuts her nose in the attempt to remove the butter from the wrapper, which she is never successful at.  She ultimately ends up chewing some out of the side of it and then hiding it deep beneath my pillow.  When we arrive home, the cut on the nose is the first indication that something bad happened while we were out.

She is never punished.  It's our fault, after all, that the butter-stealing happened.  Instead, the butter is thrown out, the sheets changed, and Dahlia is given something more appropriate to chew on as she has to wait until the clean-up occurs before going on a walk.

So is my dog a bad dog?  No, not exactly.  But she certainly has her moments!

The butterball returns!

Tonight Dahlia wandered into David's study.  David turned to me and said "She keeps going in there looking for something."  And then Dahlia came out of the room with something in her mouth. 

David said, "Oh she hid one of her things in there."

I said, "Uh oh."

As she headed away from us, I noticed that the thing in her mouth was a sort of yellowish-white colour.

And misshapen. 

She came around into the dining room and laid, right there in front of me, the same freaking thing of butter that she had yesterday.

David said, "How did she get that? I put it on the kitchen counter."

Yes.  He put it on the kitchen counter.  Then went out for a couple hours.  And while she had the house to herself, she somehow got the butter down off the kitchen counter and hid it in David's study.

Clearly she was better at hiding it last night than she was yesterday's afternoon as we never found it until she brought it out to us.

The butter is now in the trash...where it belongs.



Dahlia says "Awww, Mom...I thought you left it out just for me!!"  Really, how can one be angry at that face?  It's just simply not possible, especially when her buttery ways are all our own fault.