Last week I confessed that I called Delilah a Giant Ass Clown.   I was somewhat relieved to discover that many of you call your dogs names as well, it helped a little to alleviate my guilt.

But it also got me thinking about why I call her names.  I’m a person who likes to diffuse tense situations with humor.  I will crack a joke, drop an F-bomb, lower or raise my voice to inject a little humor in a tense situation.

So when Delilah does something with the potential to push me beyond my limit, I call her names.  It helps break the tension for me.

How’s that for self realization?

Most of the time Delilah’s antics amuse me.

Most. Of. The. Time.

Of course sometimes what she does is so unbelievable that I can’t laugh right away, it takes some time to process, but generally I can laugh after the fact.  Some times it’s well after the fact.

Even the time she ate so much dog poop that she threw it up.

In my house.

Twice.

It took me about two months (probably right after I finally got the smell to go away)  to laugh about that.  Some people know how to make an entrance, Delilah knows how to clear a house.

Skillz some peeps would say.

It’s almost automatic when she does something crazy for Giant Ass Clown or Douche Bag, or some other crazy name to slip out.  The other day I called her a Douche Bag and Hubby called her Douchelilah.  THAT made me laugh.  I may store that somewhere in my tiny brain and bring it out when she does something totally off the wall.

Something like:

• Using the dog bed I was repairing as a giant stuffy and de-stuffing it.

• Always managing to walk in front of me and block my way, wherever I am going.
• Stretching her foot out in a bow just as I place my foot down, almost tripping me in the process.
• Standing on the rug or the bed when I’m trying to straighten it.
• Licking oil out of a pan on the stove.
• Stealing 7 pounds of chicken necks out of the sink.
• Standing right in the section of the room I am trying to vacuum.
• Sticking her head in the garbage to remove a goody, just as I’m sticking my hand in there to throw something out.
• Cleaning up Sampson’s poop while I was busy shoveling snow.

• Racing me into the kitchen when I get up to check on something cooking on the stove.
• Squeezing herself into a tiny spot, just so she can be close enough to me to harass me about her snack.
• Running in front of me on my way to the kitchen.
• Being underfoot whenever there is food around.
• Taking anything that has any food remnants and cleaning it up.

Or yesterday when I was kneeling on the floor loving on Sampson and she stuck her nose right in my ass.

Yup, Giant Ass Clown it is.

Let’s face it.  Being a lab owner requires patience, diligence and above all a sense of humor.  If you didn’t laugh at the crazy shit they do you’d be pulling your hair out.

You know, if you have a lab they’re highly motivated by food.   The first time I took out the clicker and paired it with a green bean, Delilah about lost her mind.  She was so fixated on the green bean, she couldn’t see anything else.  Thankfully we’ve come a long way since that initial pairing, but anyone that knows Delilah knows if she had her druthers she’d eat until she exploded.  Which leaves us with an interesting question.

How do you know your dog has  a problem with food? 

You sit down to make a list of all the shit she’s eaten and you’re like…..I can’t even remember.

Really?  You’re going there?  After that plate of Nachos you inhaled last night?  Whatever Mama. Remember payback is a bitch and so is Karma and I know there’s a Human Shaming blog hop somewhere in your future.

So here for your reading pleasure….

The crazy shit my dog has eaten:

• Packing peanuts
• plastic tooth picks
• used tissues
• make-up remover cloths
• acorns
• wood bark
• packing peanuts
• Jojoba oil
• Bisquick
• a container full of vitamins and supplements
• baker’s chocolate
• 3/4 pound of butter including wrappers
• what was left of a bag of potato chips
• a plate of shaved corned beef
• pancake batter from the bowl
• a hot dog out of a pan
• cooking oil from out of a pan
• coffee with Bailey’s and cream
• dog poop

 

Shit she’s tried to eat but been caught or deterred from eating:

• 7 pounds of frozen chicken necks
• a can of crisco
• chicken from the pan
• a dog treat from Sampson’s mouth
• a rack of deer ribs
• a sandwich baggie full of ham
• an M&M chocolate bar

Of course, there’s always the stuff you THINK she might have eaten.  Like the time I called Hubby at work, practically hysterical because I thought she ate a metal fork.

I found it in the bedroom, she’d licked it good and clean too.

And then there was the time last week when she got up at 2:30 in the morning to dig at the carpet in the den.

 

She wouldn’t be deterred and kept returning to the same spot.  When Hubby came home I mentioned it to him and he said he’d dropped the chip bag the night before.    Her lab nose knew that there was a corner of a chip wedged under the heater.

Of course we gave it to her. I mean, she earned it after all.

Can you think of anything I’ve forgotten?  Do you have a Devouring Delilah? How do you manage a food obsessed dog?

Many thanks to Jodi Chick from Kol’s Notes for the awesome blog idea and intro.