dusty the destroyer: escape artist edition

A few weeks ago, Dusty mastered the art of opening my apartment door.  Consequently, this meant you could find him roaming around freely in the front yard area, meandering into unsuspecting neighbor's apartments on their lunch breaks and positioning himself under other patient neighbors' cars, uninterested in any amount of dog treats used in an attempt to coax him out (I have the nicest, sweetest, best neighbors on the planet).  After two jailbreak days, I got him to stay in the apartment by locking my screen door from the inside, which took some creative maneuvering (aka breaking into my own apartment) to get back into my house at the end of the day. While the problem of him exploring the great outdoors all day seemed to be solved, he still insisted on opening the wooden door to my apartment each morning after I left for work.  Any hopes of having a cool apartment went out the window, and while I live in a very safe area, the idea of having my apartment door open all day did not thrill me.

However, what it did do was prompt me to get down to business with obedience and crate training.  This weekend, I dusted off Dusty’s latest crate (in true Dusty form, he bent the first one be) and got to work devising how to fix it/lock it/jury rig it in such a way as to prevent the successful Houdini moves he's been known to perform.  Joe had the genius idea of placing locks in two places I hadn’t thought of before and we led Dusty into the crate for a test.  We put the crate in my bedroom and shut the bedroom door. If he managed to wrestle free from the crate, at least he would be contained to the bedroom.  I have a knob on my bedroom door, so his tricks with the door handle will not work on that door.  We left for a few hours and returned to find Dusty, worn out from break-out attempts, but still in the crate.  It’s been three days since our first successful crate time and he shows no signs of escaping yet.  Little victories!

Have you had any little victories (with pets or otherwise) recently?  I'd love to hear them!

dusty the destroyer: bed frame edition



Dusty, in a calmer moment, resting on the bed

 I'm writing this post from the middle of my rickety bed.  The middle is the only place I can sleep without feeling like I will roll off my mattress.  The other night we had a storm.  Dusty, while usually quite calm and peaceful (at least when I'm around) sometimes flies off the handle when a storm is brewing.  The other night was no exception.  Around two o'clock in the morning, Dusty decided he just must get under the bed.  I have bins of off-season clothing and other stored items tucked under the bed, so he couldnt figure out how to get under there ( I have since moved a few bins so he can safely and easily get underneath).  The next morning, I awoke on the left side of the bed and felt like I was sinking.  When I got up, I heard the bed creak and saw the left side raise.  In all his fussing the night before, Dusty bent the bed frame.  I am hoping I can bend it back into shape, but until then, I'll be sleeping in the center of the bed.

dusty the destroyer: dashboard edition

About a month ago, I took Dusty in the car with me and headed over to work.  He hadn't wanted to stay home by himself and he loves the car, so it seemed like a good idea.  He has been in my car countless times and usually sits patiently and waits for me.  He chews on a bone or jumps back and forth from front to the back seat and enjoys having all of the car to play in.  And somehow, too, I think he feels closer to me when he is in the car instead of at home.  I went out during lunch to take him out and play with him, and then returned to work.

When I came out a few hours later to take him home, Dusty was in the passenger's seat with a guilty look on his face.  I noticed, to my horror, that he had chewed and scratched my dashboard.  Much of the leather was in shreds and the batting exposed.  While one of my first thoughts was gratitude that it hadn't been so bad as to trigger the airbag, I was furious with Dusty.  The seatbelt was bad enough, but the dash is so noticeable, so non-essential to fix, but now aesthetically horrendous.  There is no hiding it.  And, since the damage was done and he had likely forgotten about it, I found it hard to scold him effectively to deter future damage.  It isn't practical for me to banish him from the car (though I did for a while).  And he gets out of his crate despite several strategically-placed locks on different parts of the cage.  This is something the dog training videos just don't cover.  Cesar, I need your wisdom, pronto!

dusty the destroyer: leash edition



Dusty's fourth leash in as many months



So I realize that this post may seem mild compared to the other post I've written about Dusty destroying various things around the house and car.  However, regularly chewing through his leashes proves a costly and time-consuming problem to fix.  While Dusty is very obedient off leash, when I want to walk him around the neighborhood, I need to make sure that he is on a leash.  Dusty doesn't mind being on a leash when we walk.  He is much more concerned about herding me than anything else. 

However, in the car, I used to use the leash to tether him to one of the seats, wrapping the leash around one of the seatbelts in the back of my car.  This would encourage him to avoid attempting to jump in the passenger's seat while we were en route to our destination.   At some point, soon after the seat belt incidents (yes, incidents), he discovered that he could chew through most things (next dusty post will cover the damage done to the dashboard in my car) and proceeded to chew through three leashes in protest for being relegated to the back seat.  I've finally decided to use other methods to encourage Dusty to stay in the back seat (treats, bones, food, verbal encouragement, right-arm flailing and sudden stops), and these have worked marginally well, while helping to ensure that his latest leash lasts through Spring.  A girl can dream.

dusty the destroyer: blinds edition

truer words have never been spoken
photo via

Early on in my relationship with Dusty, I discovered that, when left to his own devices, boredom quickly crept in and he would resort to "re-arranging" my apartment to keep himself engaged and occupied.  I also discovered the hard way that he preferred to have the floor to ceiling windows in my living room, as well as the bank of windows in my bedroom, blinds-free.   This allowed him to look out without any obstructions and gave him lots of light in which to do his rearranging (nothing is worse than trying to reorganize in low light).

You know where this story is going.  Less than a month after adopting Dusty, I came home to shredded blinds, much like those pictured above.  One set of blinds in my living room was destroyed, and all three sets in my bedroom have seen better days.  I haven't had the guts to request four new sets of blinds from my landlord, though I'd be willing to chip in for them.  So I'm currently living without blinds in the living room, and dealing with one exposed window in my bedroom, coping with the mangled blinds in the other two windows as best I can.  Oh Dusty, it's a good thing you're cute.

dusty the destroyer: seat belt edition

dusty hiding in shame, hoping to blend into the pillows

Last week, Joe took me out to Chihuahua's Mexican restaurant for dinner.  Initially, I was a bit hesitant because of the name of the restaurant, but Joe assured me that he had been several times and their fajitas were really good.  Since Dusty had proven a few weeks prior that he could not be trusted to stay in Joe's house alone, we brought him in Joe's car with us.  Dusty was a champ all through dinner, and stayed peacefully in the car.

Joe and I pushed the envelope when we decided to run by the grocery store on the way back to his house to pick up a few things for the Super Bowl party we were throwing later in the week.  We were gone less than 10 minutes, and we returned to discover Dusty chewing through Joe's seat belt!  Luckily we reached him in time to prevent him from completely chewing the seat belt in half, but  Joe still had to piece it back together with duct tape before we drove off.

Fast forward to a few nights later, when we took Dusty back to the same grocery store, this time in my car.  He had been in my car for much of the day since he protested staying in my apartment while I was at work.  He then sat obediently  in the car through dinner with my parents, not so much as touching any seat belts.  However, the very short trip to the grocery store proved to be more than Dusty could handle without retaliating, and this time, Dusty was able to chew my driver's side seat belt in two.  I used a combination of knots and duct tape to piece it back together and hope to attach the two pieces together more effectively with a needle and thread.  As the saying goes, fool me once, shame on you.  Fool my twice, shame on me.

dusty the destroyer: protein powder edition

photo via

Late last year I made the mistake of leaving the pantry door ajar before I headed off to work one morning.  When I returned home that evening, it smelled like chocolate in my apartment.  Suspicious, I rounded the corner and found, to my horror, a mound of protein powder, piled like a large ant hill, on the carpet right in front of my kitchen door (I would later find 3 additional mounds in the rest of the house).  Boxes of pasta, old plastic grocery bags, paper plates and other pantry items lined my kitchen floor, with nary an exposed tile in sight.

dusty smiling sweetly

The protein powder stuck to the carpet in damp clumps, since Dusty had not only dumped the cans (yes I said cans.  2 protein powder cans and 1 can of white hot chocolate mix!) of powder, but also licked much of it so that it stuck to the floor and could not be vacuumed up.  I used a metal fork to get under the clumps and pull them off piece by sticky piece.  Three-and-a-half hours later, I had cleaned all four mounds up.  Moral of the story: close your pantry door before leaving for the office and dog-proof your home.  Moral # 2, avoid buying large containers of protein powder. Moral #3, pop in dog-training videos that I got for Christmas, pronto!

dusty the destroyer: starter log edition

photo via

Last night Dusty and I went over to my friend, Joe's (and by friend, I mean someone I am dating's) house to hang out and watch Horrible Bosses.  Before the movie, Joe and I decided we needed candy, so we headed down the street to Walgreen's.  I asked Joe if we could leave Dusty in the house since we would only be gone a short while.  Joe agreed and we closed all of the doors to the carpeted areas of his condo.  We snagged some Sour Patch Kids and were back to his door in ten minutes.  We opened the door to find an overjoyed Dusty, ready to get out of the house and do some exploring outside.  I noticed, as we let him out the front door, that he had some brown chunks of something on his white chest.  I asked Joe to take him out while I investigated the source of these mysterious brown chunks.  I entered Joe's condo and saw red Solo cups scattered on the floor and a trail of brown chunks leading to his light blue sofa.

an innocent looking Dusty. who knew a dog this cute could do so much damage!

As I got closer to the sofa, I realized that Dusty had carried two of Joe's starter logs from their home next to the fireplace to the couch.  He had ripped off the paper covering on the logs and gnawed into each, leaving a crumbly mess all over the sofa.  Wonderful.  Way to make an impression, Dusty.  Doesn't help that Joe likes his apartment clean, and that his couch is light blue!  I prayed that the log chunks would not stain the sofa as I started furiously sweeping chunk after chunk into a cake pan I found in Joe's kitchen.  I hoped to finish before Joe returned with Dusty, but mid-sweep I heard Dusty's paws on the stairs leading up to Joe's door.  Joe came through the door with Dusty, let out a suprised chuckle and said, "Wow, we were only gone for ten minutes, right?"

"Yeah, I know" I replied, equally stunned.  "Guess we wont be leaving him unsupervised at your place again."  Joe came over to gauge my progress and quickly asked me to lead Dusty into another room while he vacummed up the rest of the wood chunk mess.  Lucky for Dusty, the wood did not leave any stains on the couch, and in a matter of minutes, the couch was back to normal.  Lucky for me, we were invited back.  Crisis averted!

dusty the destroyer: sequin edition

This post is part of a new (and hopefully, short-lived) series of stories about the ways in which my 8-year-old Australian Shepherd, Dusty, has “redecorated” my apartment as of late.

Around New Years I was inspired to make a few glitzy, crafty projects for decoration around the home.  I picked up a few bags of sequins from Michael’s craft store and drove home to start attaching them to anything that didn’t move.  Some of the projects I used the sequins for involved only certain colors, so I separated sequins into a few different containers and set them on the desk in my bedroom.  When I came home from work one night, I made my way into the bedroom only to find the floor covered in sequins. Dusty had also knocked over a cup of Coke that a friend had left on the desk, so sequins congealed in the sticky substance all over the desk.  I guess Dusty must have been jealous of all the crafty projects that I was getting to do with sequins and wanted to create his own. I must say, his was more high-impact than any of the ones I came up with!  I am still finding sequins in my shoes, on my body, in the covers (see photo of Dusty above for proof), in pockets and all over the apartment.  So glad I didn’t go with glitter!