Pardon the Interruption

We interrupt this program for a word about one of the "other" dogs...

For those of you wondering what happens to a dog when you combine:

a. Intelligence

b. Problem-solving abilities

c. Boredom

...the answer is "nothing good".

After enjoying over a month of crateless freedom, Mr. Alcatraz finds himself once again behind bars. And so our story begins on the morning of Monday, February 9th...

An ordinary morning by our standards, all of the dogs were fed, released into the yard, then brought back into the house as I left for work. Sometime during the few minutes they came back in the house and Cindy came downstairs, Traz managed to remove the jar of peanut butter from the countertop. From there, he managed to unscrew the lid of said peanut butter jar. Alas, the fruits of his labors went unrealized, as Tank stole the open jar from Traz. When Cindy arrived in the kitchen, Tank was nestled in the dog bed, his snout shoved as far as it could go into the jar. Inside the jar was a large, perfectly uniform swirl, the result of Tank's tongue-aided churning. There is barely a mark on the outside of the jar.

Traz has always liked "soft things" (towels, oven mitts, dish rags, washcloths, etc.) and has a penchant for bringing them to us...or walking idly past so we know he has them. Yesterday, Cindy came home at lunch to find all of the throw rugs piled in the dog bed. She picked up the rugs, put them on the counter in the laundry room, then went back to work. By the time I got home, all of the throw rugs were once again piled on the dog bed. Along with the rugs, however, were two dress shirts. Somehow, Traz managed to stand on his hind legs, balance himself on the side of the tall laundry basket, then reach down into the basket and pull out the shirts...not once, but twice. Mind you, he never damages the items, but rather drags them back to his dog bed burrow.

That same evening, while I was upstairs for no longer than two minutes, Traz again managed to reach onto the kitchen counter. This time, with no peanut butter jar in residence, he stretched even further and grabbed the plastic container full of Embry's food. When I came back downstairs, Tank was once again settled in the dog bed, wrapped protectively around the (thankfully, still-sealed) Tupperware.

And I'm not even going to mention the unraveling of the Labrador pillow or the countless times he has wandered off with my shoes.

Luckily, he is not destructive. We are quick enough and dog-savvy enough to catch him before he crushes anything with his giant canines. But for now, after enjoying a few weeks of unrestricted liberation, Mr. Traz finds himself incarcerated in Dog Jail when he can not be supervised.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled blogging, already in progess.