The Dog ate their Homework!!

Good grief people!!! I swear, I write three serious blogs in a row and people get twelve ways to CRAZY......sigh.......

This is another in a series of TRUE stories about things my much beloved, and sadly departed, Dalmations ate/desroyed....

Othello was a Mama's Boy to the core! He also had seperation anxiety. I never knew what destruction would await when I came home.
Fortuneatly, I never had the money to buy nice stuff....so USUALLY what he demolished was not of value....USUALLY.
And NO I didn't crate him because he would hurt himself trying to get OUT of the crate because he was SO upset Mommmy was going bye-bye. So, I decided to take my chances with the destruction.

Plus, I found out he could READ! One time I came home to find three specific CD'S chewed to bits (yeah...indestructable my ass...).
And ALL three CD'S were by the SAME group....The Squirrel Nut Zippers...(cool band, google them, they rock!)
Apparently, he thought the band title was an ingredient list...not sure.

ANYWAY......
My hubby is an English Teacher, and ALWAYS has tons of papers waiting to be graded. Reaserch Papers took oodles of time because he has to make sure the little darlings didn't steal it off the internet.
He had a huge pile of said papers stuffed into his briefcase, along with a bag of Malted Milk Balls. Ya GOTTA have some chocolate when you grade.

For reason's unknown, he LEFT the briefcase on the floor....WELL within Othello's grasp. We left to run to the store.
Now, I love my husband, but he has a slow learning curve for some things.By this point, Othello had already destroyed/eaten: Two TV Remotes, a pair of slick, black dress shoes and MANY books....ALL left by my husband within the "Othello Zone", as we called it.
WHY he didn't think to move that dang briefcase, I'll never know.

When we arrive, I was the first in the door.
Paper bits were EVERYWHERE!!!! Along with shreds of black leather from the briefcase....and a tiny bit of plastic from the Malted Milk Balls.

And Othello was smiling his gorgeous smile, as always....with a bit of chocolate on his nose.
Now MY first concern is that my dog just ate an ENTIRE bag of chocolate, which is VERY toxic to dogs!!!
Blessedly, he was a giant sized Dalmation, and the chocolate didn't effect him one BIT!! Over the years, we discovered that my Baby Boy had a cast iron stomache. The things he ate that NEVER hurt him or made him sick is STAGGERING!!!
Including: batteries, a rock, and ANOTHER bag of Halloween candy. Wrappers and all. Only thing THAT did was cause him to poop out Reese Cup wrappers for a few days.
SIGH...............

However....the breifcase was a TOTAL loss.....as were ALL OF THOSE RESEACH PAPERS!!!!!
Yes, it's true.....the Dog Ate the Homework.....ALL of it......

I didn't know if my husband was going to CRY or have a coronary. Or both.

The HARDEST part, for him, was to go back to School and tell his students that the Teachers Dog had indeed eaten their Homework.

And yes, he he made them do it all AGAIN....meanie....

The Spagetti Incident....

When our Dalmations, Molly and Othello, were still alive, they were an ENDLESS source of entertainment!!
And it seemed that a LOT of their antics revolved around food.
So here is the first in a series of TRUE Dalmation stories:

THE SPAGETTI INCIDENT (Also known as the Case of the Traveling Trubador)

We had Othello since he was just a little puppy. He was born deaf, a common trait in Dalmations. There were challenges with that, but benefits too. One being that a dog that can't HEAR tends to not BARK very much.
We adopted Molly from a family was moving across the country (for a job) and were being put up in a NO PETS apartment by their employer. They loved her greatly, and they wanted her in a loving home, PREFERABLY with people who had experience with Dalmations already as they can be......unique!
We were happy to take her in, and she was the same age as our Othello!

But Molly could hear just fine......and OH BABY.....could she BARK!

Being in a NEW home surrounded by NEW sounds, she barked a LOT those first few weeks!!!

Sometime shortly after we adopted her, a musician from the college on our corner came to our house just as we were getting ready for our Spagetti dinner.
He had his acustic guitar with him, and some of his self produced CD's, and he asked if he could play a few songs for us.
It was a beautiful June night, and we both love music, so we sat on our porch, on the swing and listened to him play.

Naturally, when he FIRST came to the door, Molly (our new "doorbell") barked like CRAZY, as if to say "WARNING! WARNING! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!!!!!!!!"

I was initially worried that she would bark through the young man's ENTIRE performance!
Othello, calm big boy that he was, sat quietly on the porch with us and watched. (Always making sure this strange dude did NOT get too close to his mommy!)
I remember feeling relieved when Molly quieted down.
I remember thinking that maybe she was FINALLY getting used to things around here!
I also remeber being somewhat surprised that she was NOT on the porch.
In fact, she wasn't even at the screen door.....odd.....

The traveling trubador fished his set list, we thanked him, bought one of his CD'S, and went back in to eat our Spagetti dinner.

Except. SOMEONE had already done that for us!
Oh yes, there before us was the dining room table, tablecloth puuled almost completely off....and two EMPTY plates that minutes ago held Spagetti. Not to mention a totally EMPTY bread basket.

And there was our Molly. Sitting beside the table. Red marinara sauce all OVER her mostly white face.
And she kinda looked at us like "OH! Back already? Ummmm.....how was the music?"

And for YEARS after that, almost until her death in April of last year, EVERY TIME we had Spagetti, she RUN to the door and bark WILDLY...hoping to get us to abandon our dinner in search of a non-existant Trubador on our porch.

At least she left us the wine.