femme fatale

You might not think it from her picture. Scout's fluffy white coat and puppy dog eyes give off a serene, almost pure countenance.

But this dog is lethal. Just ask any doodad (furniture included) that ends up on a floor in our house for too long. She has devoured and damaged and destroyed to her heart's content since joining our home in February. A partial list includes so many items that's it's practically painful to put it in print--the legs of our bar stools, a post of our kitchen island, the bench at our kitchen table, our newly refinished deck, the leather ottoman (this one is not entirely her fault as the kids had already managed to tear it in three places--the stuffing was almost begging to be ripped out), Stinky Pete's gym bag, the case for the portable iPod stereo, multiple pairs of flip flops, multiple pairs of shoes, no less than three of Ethan's books, various items of laundry, too many pens/pencils/crayons to count, a yellow highlighter (ironically this one was a highlight for all of us as she later threw up portions of the plastic in a fluorescent yellow pool of goo), a button on a PS3 controller, a hapless and now footless GI Joe figure (that one was yesterday), a shoe insole (as I write), any stuffed animal that she can get her mouth on, etc., etc., etc. If pressed, I could go on and on and on.

As if the chewing capacity of a puppy wasn't enough work, Scout has certain other tendencies that might make me give her up if Jason wasn't good enough to remind me that I wanted the dog for our kids after seeing Marley and Me. She has marked her territory all over my territory. The house training was (and sometimes is) just that extra amount of aggravation and work to send me over the edge at times. She's done such an excellent job defining her territory that she now feels compelled to defend and protect her turf practically to the death. I have to keep her tied up when outside with us for fear that she'll go after any dog that passes by our house (look closely at the pictures and you'll see her leash tethering her to the banister while I took the above photos). A couple of unfortunate dogs have wandered into our house and felt the fury of our fraidy-cat (the fact that off-leash and ownerless dogs manage to be around our house often enough must be one of Murphy's laws of pet ownership). Behind her sometimes vicious bark, Scout is, yes, a fraidy-cat who used to cower on our walks when we passed a parked pick-up truck/mini-van/water fountain/large object.

I'd like to begin writing about her virtues, but I'm tired of thinking about her just now. She has enough of them, otherwise she wouldn't still be living in my house.