Dog Sins - Pride and Gluttony

Our two dogs, Maggie and Alice, have spent the better part of the week engaging in sin.

Maggie is a proud dog. Especially proud of her ability to outsmart and outthink the best of human locksmiths, something in which she excels.

Firstly, in her original home, she was notorious for getting out of the fenced in back yard and roving around the neighbourhood and rummaging through garbage.

When given up to the Humane Society at aged 11 months, she made Orangeville humane society history by becoming the only dog who managed to get out of her locked cage and run amok to visit workers at the local construction site.

Before we were allowed to adopt her, an agent came to do a thorough inspection of our yard and consented noting our 6 - 8 foot solid wooden fence with pad lock on the gate.

However Maggie soon baffled us by finding a way out of the yard despite the height of the fence and the lock. We would only find out she was gone when she would show up at the street side door nochalantly asking to be let in.

It was finally after a rainy day when I noticed paw prints on the barbeque, and realized that Maggie would roll the barbeque over to the fence and use it as a ladder to in order to vault over the wall.

At our new place she hasn't managed to escape the yard, but has found a better passtime: she opens the fridge and eats the entire contents.

A happy dog she became so used to thwarting our attempts to lock the fridge by means of infant locks, rope and tape that she came to regard the fridge as her private larder becoming quite discriminating about what she would eat.

One evening as I sat watching the Y and R, she sauntered past me, tail wagging happily, towards her bed with a whole steak in her mouth. When I yelled and took the steak from her she looked at me with pure astonishment, unable to comprehend why I took offense.

The only means to end her reign of buffet terror was to purchase the world's strongest tape, Gorilla tape, and tape the fridge door shut by means of two long pieces.

However, not to be stopped in her quest for food, she has begun opening every other drawer, cupboard and door in the house. I came home Monday to find the all the drawers in the kitchen pulled out including the bottom of the stove, and finally the spice cupboard ravished.

Alice, her partner in crime, had joined in and between the two of them, they had consumed a clamshell of raw almonds and entire bag of sugar.

The results were not pretty and the next few days resembled a hospital ward for Ebola patients.

I thought they had learned their lesson only to come home on Friday for lunch and find that Maggie had again conquered the five foot high spice drawer cupboard and Alice and she had removed a full bag of Za'atar, a Palestinian spice mixture, made of thyme, toasted sesame seeds, sumac and seasalt and had devoured the entire bag.

As one of my co-workers asked: "Why the hell would anyone eat an entire bag of thyme? It doesn't even taste good!"

Thus back to the plague hospital ward, a half hour on the phone with the vet and a dog who became a tad paranoid for a few hours after consuming the bitter spice.

Now if only I could train Maggie in safe cracking we might be on to something.