Intruder Alert!

Normally, I write about things that have happened to me. Although I was not directly involved with this event, apparently it is entirely my fault. According to my husband, if I hadn't moved the dogs to PEI and had instead left them with him in Guelph, this situation could have been prevented.

Although I moved to PEI in February of 2013, my husband remains living and working in Guelph while we wait as patiently as possible for a job opportunity to open up for him on PEI (it's only been 264 days, but who's counting?!). As he works rotating shift work with frequent last-minute shift, we decided that the dogs would be better off with me in PEI because I work regular 8 hour days. Not to mention that we knew the dogs would love living at the beach!

The huz was trying to get some sleep after a long night shift. Sometimes, it can be difficult to sleep during the day due to noise coming from the street, the school next door or from our neighbours. So when he tries to sleep during the day, there can be a lot of background noise which he has learned to tune out. On this day however, after being asleep for about 4 hours, he was disturbed by a noise which sounded different from the usual background noise. This sound appeared to be coming form INSIDE the house. (Sounds like the beginning of a horror movie, doesn't it!)    

He woke, waited and listened .... and heard nothing. He thought perhaps he had just been in a very realistic dream. Just as he rolled over and was about to go back to sleep, he heard the noise again. Perplexed, he sat up in bed, straining his ears to try and figure out where the noise was coming from. He heard the noise again, followed by the jingle of something brushing against his keys which had been left on the kitchen counter. This could mean only one thing, the noise was indeed coming from inside the house! So he jumped out of bed and strode quickly to the kitchen, expecting to find some cracker attempting a B&E (you can blame this rash conclusion on the day job).

Much to his surprise, rather than finding a person in the kitchen, he found a large grey squirrel! The presumptuous squirrel had invited himself into our kitchen by chewing a rather large hole in the screen on the kitchen window. Then, he helped himself to a loaf of bread on the kitchen counter. Rather than ripping the bread bag open as he did to the window screen, the resourceful squirrel managed to take the twist tie off of the opening of the bag and crawl his way inside. He managed to consume 3 slices of bread and was working on his forth before he woke up the occupant of the house!

This stealthy squirrel wan't the least bit pleased by the fact that he now had an audience and therefore, proceeded to have a tantrum. Not only was he vocalizing loudly, but the squirrel began running laps around the kitchen in panic, knocking over dishes in the drying rack, boxes of cereal that were perched on top of the fridge, and scattering apples from a bowl on the counter top. The huz tried to escort the squirrel to the side door, failing miserably. The squirrel opted instead for running back into the house, into the living room and began climbing the walls. Finally, after multiple attempts at herding the squirrel, the huz trapped him in the front porch where the secret squirrel was able to escape to the outside world without further incident.

The huz however, was not impressed as he now had to throw out the bread, clean up all the items which had been knocked over, and fix the hole in the window screen. How is this my fault? I was wondering the same thing. Apparently, if the dogs had remained in Guelph, the squirrel would not have ventured into the house. (Because our Labrador Retrievers are such good guard dogs!) Since I have the dogs with me in PEI, it's my fault that the squirrel got in and caused such a mess! I certainly had a good chuckle upon hearing the story, but I feel that blaming my present geographic location for this mess is very much "Man Logic". As I see it, even if the dogs had been in the house, the squirrel may still have thought that the loaf of bread was too appetizing to pass up. And if the secret squirrel had gained access to the house, the dogs may have caused an even bigger mess trying to chase it around. I guess we will never know.    

My Accident Prone Chocolate Lab

As someone who studies genetics, I can tell you that the different colors of Labrador retrievers (black, chocolate and yellow) are primarily caused by a handful of genes. Everyone jokes that chocolate labs are the "crazy" ones. As if one of those few genes which influence color also codes for "craziness" or "hyperactivity". I refused to believe that statement, opting for the idea that dogs themselves are not inherently bad, that there are only bad owners. Now that we have both a black and a chocolate lab, I am not as certain about my view.

Riker has been "Special" since the moment we brought him home. He's a happy boy, but sometimes he gets hyper-focused on a particular person or object. The result of this behaviour has been hilarity and injury (those two things normally go together, right?). We are at the point now where I want to keep a post on a whiteboard stating: "Number of days Riker has been injury free: _____". At the time of writing, the answer to this fill-in-the-blank statement is only one.

Riker is the kind of dog who gets so focused on getting in the car that he can't wait for the tailgate to open fully and smashes his head off it as he jumps in the back of the car. This pup has ulcerated his eye by running full speed into a stick, ripped a nail off at the base while chasing a tennis ball, hyper-extended his left forelimb, jumped out of a car window while driving, launched himself off a flight of 7 stairs without touching any on the way down .... and the list goes on. This week however, there was a new injury.

I am not exactly sure how he managed to knock out a premolar, but it happened. We went to the beach at lunch for our regular walk. As usual, I was throwing a stick so hyper Riker would burn off some energy in the water. This retriever is very "stick-focused". At one point, he returned with the stick and when he dropped it at my feet, I noticed that it was covered in blood. I took a look in his mouth and found a gaping hole where a tooth should have been. To make matters that much more exciting, I could see that some of the tooth was still there and had been broken off just below the gum line. Obviously, this required a visit to the veterinarian to have the remainder of the tooth extracted before it caused an infection.

And this guy just doesn't slow down. He never stops. Even after knocking his own tooth out, he kept pestering me to throw the stick again and again. There will be no more sticks for this dog! There is a new beach toy - a soft, floating toy to satisfy his retrieving instincts. I am left wondering, does one of these 3 genes that are responsible for color in the chocolate morph of the Labrador Retriever also contribute to the potential to be accident-prone?

The best comment I have received to date about Riker was the following: "I really hope he makes it to his next birthday" Just another day in the life of Riker the chocolate.