What’s a dog to do all day?

Occasionally I work at home if I need to be around for some purpose, today it was the Heating & AC Service. So, I got to observe Georgia’s day around the house and I’d certainly enjoy this dogs life.

She’s looking for attention, but as I settle in at my computer, she takes a walk around the house. She’ll lie on the bed for a while and take a little nap. Then she’ll lay down in front of the living room window and watch the wildlife for a while. Then she’ll go down to the basement and outside to check out her territory, maybe do a little business. She might bark at the squirrels for a bit. Then she’ll come back inside and start all over. Every time she passes by me, she’ll give me a little noser, just to make sure I’m actually really there. If I get up for any reason, she comes running to see what I’m doing and if it’s something she can be involved in, like lunch or a snack or helping the service guy do his job.

So, a dogs life involves a lot of relaxing. At least with me around, she didn’t attempt to break into the refrigerator today. As dinner time approaches she becomes much more active, running from the front to the back of the house because the neighborhood wakes up as people come home and take their dogs out. In fact, she’s telling me right now to get off that damn computer and take her for a walk. Good idea!

Observing the wildlife from the living room window

Dog breaks into refrigerator, steals chicken

Sounds kind of like an Onion headline, yet it’s true and actually happened.

I’ve taken steps to safeguard my edibles from Georgia, but things don’t last forever and cheap things don’t last at all. The latch on the refrigerator was coming unstuck, probably due to visitors to my house not knowing it was there and attempting to open the fridge without releasing the latch. But it hadn’t fallen off in a while so I didn’t even think about it, assuming I was safe or rather my food was safe.

I went grocery shopping in the middle of the week, which I usually never do and since I’ve been working so much wanted to get some quick food that I could make last. Enter, Wegmans Rotisserie Chicken, an economical pre-cooked food that would last quite a number of meals. I had one leg for dinner and thoroughly enjoyed it, plus the protein was good for me as I’d been skipping too many meals.

Knowing Georgia, I put the garbage in the garage before I left for work, the chicken bone smell would have made her very determined to break through the plastic toddler lock on the kitchen cabinet where I usually keep my garbage. I merrily went off to work. 9 hours later, I come home to a wide open refrigerator, with a broken latch and no chicken. Usually, when she gets in the fridge, she likes to eat the cheese or butter, but this time she must have been too full from the chicken to eat anything else. However, who knows how long my fridge had been open, could have been 8-9 hours if she started her break-in right after I left for work. So, that middle of the week shopping trip did not really do me any good, because I just lost about 1/2 of it, in perishables.

Now I have a dog with a stomach full of almost a whole chicken, bones and all. Luckily, she didn’t appear to be suffering. I was slightly freaked, but she seems to have a cast iron stomach. A co-worker had a friend whose dog was in the exact situation and he was told by a Vet Tech to feed the dog white bread and pumpkin puree. I did have some white bread and also made some white rice. Instead of stopping food I kept feeding her normally. I added in the bread and rice to make sure her system kept moving. The first night I wasn’t sure what would happen, she was very restless and kept pacing and when I heard gurgling, I knew something intestinal might happen,  so I took her out a couple of times, thank goodness. It was about 4 meals before things started flowing normally again.

She’s fine and had a very nice treat. It didn’t faze her at all as the very next night she stole the dish that had roasted potatoes in it. I’m going to try to superglue the latch and really get going on researching kitchen remodeling, so that I can replace the fridge, maybe something not so easy for paws or nose to break into.

Georgia racked up at least 3 points on her score.