Gambler's Fever

Gambler's Fever Tuesday, April 5, 2011 Many years ago I had a dog that so desperately wanted to be good that one afternoon when I left a bowl of ice cream on a coffee table in front of said dog and hurried out the front door to watch a fire engine across the street, upon my return I found a melted bowl of ice cream and a very drooling dog. True story. It now must be revealed that the dogs was NOT a Weimaraner. It is not that Weimaraners don't want to be good, but when faced with temptation, they don't always make the best choices. Some things are self-rewarding. Trash baskets fall into this category. Complications arise if the household has more than one dog and/or more than one trash basket. Although in my house the dogs know I "own" everything, they may bide their time to see if they can score a forbidden object. Kind of like slot machines. You may not win every time, but that random prize will keep you trying again and again. Trust me. Through the years and other resident dogs, I have tried booby traps, bad tasting stuff and mouse traps, none of which worked for very long to keep them at bay, especially considering what sort of stuff gets tossed out. In fairness to a dog, I also have the concession that if something is on the floor, it is fair game. Since most wastebaskets are on the floor, I had to try to put these two thoughts together so we could live in harmony. Simply covering them did not work. One of our Weims loved to flip the cover off one of the wastebaskets just to hear it make noise. It was metal. He loved to watch how we would rush over to pick it up and put it back in place so he could do it again and again and again, well, you get the idea. And that basket had only office paper scraps in it. So one day on a whim I decided to put the bathroom baskets under the sink, behind the closed cabinet door, and VOILA! Suddenly the trash stayed where I put it. Yes, it was confusing to people, even those living in the house, as to the whereabouts of the trash basket, but at least we weren't picking up stuff or yelling like insane lunatics. Gradually I put all of them behind closed doors, even the one in the kitchen. In fact, to be doubly sure, there is a main basket and a smaller one for smelly stuff that can be closed tightly. Yes, that does deplete storage space, but finally the fight was over and the battle was won! All it took was to train the humans where to put the trash. Yes, there are some very clever dogs out there who can figure out how to open cabinets, but securing cabinet doors are way easier to do these days with the presence of childproof latches. And, after all, they are out "children". We owe it to them to keep them safe from our discards and our ranting and raving. The only other option seems to be lots of Metamucil for them and lots of bending and stopping for us to pick up stuff we have already thrown away. I think I will take the easy way out so when they get to the bottom of the Frosty Pay treat, the container is gone for everyone's good! Cindy Smaldone Eastpoint Groomer petresort@kyhumane.org