The Terrible Fours?? Fudge Gone Wild!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Strange things are happening in our household with Fudge. Fudge has always been a bit of a rebel outside, but inside she is a dream…that is, until this week.  Most of the time if Vern gets up in the middle of the night, Fudge will opt not to go out with him, unless she is absolutely sure some critter might be outside. Lately, she will walk to the door with him and then turn and grab a stuffed Octopus and walk in a loop around our living area.  Often she will end up in our dark foyer and there she sits with this green toy and all eight legs hanging from her mouth. 

Fudge's Toy is Green!

This is the last image I have been seeing as I head off to bed. I have no idea how long she sits out there like that, and some mornings I fully expect to come around the corner and see her still sitting there just holding that octopus. Fudge has always been an interesting dog. Where Vern is more of a “what you see is what you get” kind of dog, Fudge is an enigma to me and I have no doubt in my mind, she would smoke me on an IQ test and probably finish long before the time is up and then just sit and stare at me with a look of disbelief on her face. 

Disbelief that in a world gone mad she is expected to listen and obey someone of such lesser intelligence. 

In this case, that person is on the right!

I always get the impression when she is outside and I call her to come, she is weighing all of her options and thinking to herself how maddening it is that some mere mortal cannot see she is doing something important. For all I know, she is teaching calculus to the chipmunks as she has them cornered in our stone wall.

 

Well, several things have happened this week that have me thinking I don’t know Fudge at all.  The other day I came around the corner to find both dogs in the foyer focused on something and in a way that made the menopausal hair on my chin stand up.  It is never a good sign when they have their backs to you, tails wagging, and seem to be surrounding something that you can’t see.  With much trepidation, I inched forward, fully expecting to have to call John at work with an emergency request for help needed at home, only to see they had massacred my bubble wand that comes in my large jar of bubbles. 

Normally, I would think Vern was the enforcer in this case and Fudge had just authorized the kill, but Fudge had parts of the bubble wand hanging from her face and seemed to be chewing on another part. Vern was wagging his tail in time with her chews and neither dog seemed too contrite when I made them hand over what was left of a valuable tool in my photography repertoire.  I have been using that wand to get their attention when I photograph them and I guess they wanted me to know that they had to draw the line somewhere.  As it turns out, while I thought they were napping, they were in fact, leaving me bits and pieces of a bubble wand all around the house and making sure I got the message that there would be no more tapping them with the long wand and telling them to look in my direction.

 

Sure, I knew Fudge had her own way of protesting when I got my camera out, but I never thought she would resort to destroying my property and making mincemeat out of an innocent bubble wand. Up until now, she has been content to turn her head at the exact moment I click my camera or give Vern a non-verbal cue that means, “let’s blow off this photo shoot and wrestle instead.”  

Vern likes to display his red crayon when he sees the camera, but since my Photoshop skills have gotten better, his attempt at rebellion is just a couple of clicks away from making an unwanted uprising disappear. Fudge practices much more finesse than Vern in getting her point across.   Yesterday, she managed to thwart my “dog running at me on the pier,” shot simply by complying with the come command, but at a speed slower than a snail on his way to an escargot convention.

Somehow, she knew I was on my knees at the other end of the pier and I only had so long before my knees crying out in protest made me decide this was not one of my best ideas and I put the camera down to get myself up.  I also wasn’t interested in a “dog baby stepping her way down the pier at a speed almost needing a beeper to warn of a back up,” shot, so I used the time on my knees to pray that the Lord gave me the strength to deal with a dog too smart for her own britches. Meanwhile, we were trying to find Vern’s off switch as he happily ran back and forth between John and me.

My precious bubble wand wasn’t the only casualty this week at the hands, or should I say mouth, of Fudge.  She also counter surfed, for the first time ever, and snatched a piece of Barbecue Chicken pizza off of John’s plate.  First of all, this irritates me because I made that pizza from scratch, not counting the Boboli pizza crust, and she knows I hate to cook.  Most of the time I am trying to figure out how to get out of cooking and I have even gone so far as to call John at work and thank him for asking me out to dinner that night in a shrewd attempt to catch John off guard and unable to decide if he said something he can’t remember saying. He may or may not be on to me, because last time I did it and told him how much it meant to me that he asked me out on a date, he said his girlfriend told him to do it to be nice.  I told him I liked that girlfriend and don’t’ screw it up with her. Anyways, the least Fudge could have done was steal something on a night when I refer to my fine cuisine as “crap on a platter,” (in another thinly veiled attempt to make dining out sound better), or at least steal it during the preparation stage so there is nothing left to cook.  No, Fudge waited to steal it on a night when I actually cooked something edible and left me crying out, “I still get credit for this meal!”  It seems John had left his plate unattended for a moment and came back to find Fudge licking her licks and no pizza on his plate.

Found Guilty of all Charges!

So there you have it, octopuses, bubble wands, and counter surfing.  All in a day’s work, according to Fudge. I can’t wait to see what the fives have in store for us with Fudge.

[BG and Gavin]

This reminds me of a story from my teen years. My friend's family had two shelties. One was a super smart female and the other was a happy go lucky male that was easily outwitted and always in trouble. if anything was amiss in the house you could bet your bottom dollar it was the male who was responsible (bless his gorgeous little heart). So one day as a surprise her sister and I made her a birthday cake painstakingly decorated with gobs of pink icing. We led the birthday girl into the dining room to present our masterpiece only to find the two dogs sitting casually in the room and a plate full of sticky crumbs still in the middle of the table. I swear if the female was capable she would has coolly pointed an index finger at "the bad one." The thing was the male was clean as a whistle and the female beautiful sheltie coat was covered in pink icing.

[F, Calla & Luca]

Tell Fudge to stop instigating. She must have told Calla to pull some plastic containers, that were awaiting recycling, off the counter. I love finding things like that in the living room. Thankfully they were empty. Usually the containers go in a bin but that was missing last night and a search outside was planned for today. I must have left it out when I emptied it into the big can.

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Charlotte, Our old Lab waited a long time, too, but then she made up for it in the end. She once ate an entire Peach Praline Pie...that was not a good thing :) Thank you!!

[Charlotte and Bo]

As usual a very funny blog.   My brother's doodle Holly just started to counter surf and she must be 7 or 8 years old.  It's hard to figure how those canine brains work. 

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Joanne, I really loved that wand :)

[Bonnie and Kona]

"underthinker" hahahaha

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Bonnie, I have long said Fudge is the brains and Vern is the brawn. I know she gets him to do her bidding and then sits back and smiles when he gets caught. Fudge is the canine version of my Megan :) LOL The smart ones are always trouble. Truly, sometimes when people are talking about which dog to get based on hair color, coat type, etc....I just want to say, "go for the underthinker!" Your story made me smile.

[Bonnie and Kona]

Truly, Laurie, we had two Goldens and one always looked guilty and the other serene when something went awry. Then the serene one died and so did all the naughtiness! It turned out our guilty looking Golden was not the culprit... it was the regal, "I'd never do anything wrong" guy that was to blame. Keep your eye on your little instigator. ;o)

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Joanne, LOL....the grass is always greener.......Hey, I went through all that stuff and now I want that perfect Doodle everyone keeps talking about. LOL I am lucky, because my dogs are ornery, but I wouldn't change MUCH about them :)

Ricki, You are a genius :) I know I got smarter when I got my wisdom teeth and I want to chew on Pizza :)

Pat, Keep an eye on that Trav :) This could be a bad year.....LOL!! I thought of you last night. I almost stepped on a HUGE frog/toad and screamed. I am pretty sure I woke the neighbors.

Gail, LOL...I have a big bottle of bubbles :) I have all kinds of secrets up my sleeve.

Bonnie, Thank you on all counts. I am telling John you said I get full credit for the pizza :) Maybe I have been blaming too much on Vern :) LOL

[Joanne ~ Spud*]

I cant help but read this, go to the Puppy Madness Group, come back and read this, go back to the Puppy Madness Group.... What the Doodle?  I wonder what new puppy owners think when they read this? I can only imagine they must think you have an Angel for a dog.  Truth.  Fudge knew what she was doing. You really need a better wand. 

Last I looked these where the going discussions in Puppy Madness:

HELP! My puppy aggressively growls/ attacks/ bites

Free to good (or even mediocre) home: one a**hole adolescent puppy

Comprehensive Mouthing/Biting/Nipping Discussion

So Laurie posts a blog about a dog, a perfect  dog, that chewed a bubble wand and stole ONE piece of pizza-once