Tasmanian Devils

Boden's little digging-through-the-bathroom-garbage incident the other night did not hold a candle to what I came home to yesterday. I can't prove it was Boden, but I'm fairly confident he was the ringleader. The entire house (all three floors) were such a disaster, I didn't even have time to document it all with photographs. The funniest part is that the dogs were home alone for one hour total the entire day. J left for work at 3pm, and I was home by 4pm. It makes me laugh, thinking of how fast the dogs must have worked to cause that much damage in just one hour. It's actually impressive. Here's how my night went.

I arrived home and immediately switched to snow boots to take the dogs for a walk while it was still light out. We tromped, through drizzling rain, to the park up the street and I let the dogs run in the fields for a while. We got back home, and as I began taking off my boots I noticed Thatcher was acting kind of strange. He sat unmoving in the kitchen and seemed frozen in place. I walk into the living room to find torn apart books littering the carpet. I scolded the dogs and told them they were naughty, then cleaned up the mess. But even once the mess was cleaned up, Thatcher still looked worried, which was unusual. I headed upstairs and immediately found out why Thatcher was being so weird. 

The entire hallway, bedroom, guest bedroom and bathroom floors were covered in shredded remnants of tissues, leftover Christmas gift bags, magazines and bathroom trash. I immediately called the dogs upstairs, and at first they wouldn't even come. I could see them waiting at the bottom of the stairway, hiding in the shadows. I called them again, and they slowly tiptoed up the stairs, trying to avoid my angry glare. I had to pull out my camera and snap a few shots before I scolded them. They are pretty easy to punish, and are much harder on themselves than I am on them. All I usually do is say, "Thatcher, what is this? That is so naughty," in a stern voice (trying to keep from smiling), and both of the dogs drop to the ground apologetically, wagging their tails meekly. They acted sad until the mess was completely cleaned up, then it was out of sight, out of mind. They're good at pretending to be sorry at least, what more could I ask of them.

Pre-scolding

During scolding

Pre-scolding

During scolding

During scolding

After scolding. No remorse :)