little puppy, big spirit

ok, so i have this dog. he's just a little dog. his name is goliath. we thought it would be fun to give such a big name to such a little puppy. a cute, sweet, fun, crazy, chaotic, little puppy.

but he's got this big problem. two really. first, he has a cat gene. how do i know this? he loves yarn. i'm not talking just chewing-and-chasing-it loves it. i'm talking roll-around-in-it loves it. tangle-it-around-yourself-and-run-around-the-house loves it. let's-see-how-frustrated-i-can-make-mom loves it.

some of you who have facebook may have seen the evidence of this. oh, but you haven't seen the half of it. i have photos upon photos of the yarn that he has destroyed. wrapped around table legs. knotted around blankets. knotted to other yarn. twisted. stretched. pulled. wrapped. tangled. re-tangled. strewn. from one end of our living room to the other.

i have come home the past 5 days to all-out chaos. if it was "just" yarn, that would be one thing. that's frustrating enough. it started with just my knitting that i had left out. that mostly happened while we were in the house. sometimes while i was busy blogging or cooking or cleaning. or taking a shower. then i got smart (or so i thought) and put it in a basket. ha! he figured out how to pull just the right one out that i had been working on last. some say it's my smell. i say he just likes to mess with me. after a few days of untangling the yarn from the basket, i moved all of my yarn to a rubbermaid tub with a lid. i told josey that if goliath got in that, he has some very magically talented fingers.

BUT yesterday i forgot to put in a bag of previously tangled yarn into the tub. we left for a few hours. came home to not one, not 2, not three, but FIVE skeins of yarn tangled around pretty much everything in the living room. and each other. plus my previous knitting project. it was one big ball of tangled chaos.

all i could do was stare with my mouth hanging open and then unwrap it from the obstacles and then throw it all back in the bag. no sense in trying to frustrate myself further at this point by trying to untangle it. not only was there yarn, but also blankets, stuffed animals, kleenex and carmex strewn across the floor. across the couch. across tables.

that leads me to his second problem. he gets on the table....S...plural. and my desk. he first started to do that after we got done eating, but i thought i had taken care of that little problem because he hadn't been doing it anymore....not that we knew of anyway. so he does it while we're not home. how do i know this? pencils. erasers. carmex. papers. folders. a ziploc bag of feathers. from the tables & desk. chewed up. scattered. all over the floor. even an un-rolled roll of tape. stuck to itself. with pink feathers. big hole chewed in ziploc bag. a corner chewed off a green folder. it actually all started with pencils with erasers. we have very few pencils with good erasers around our home anymore. we have few pencils with good LEAD around our home anymore. pens he doesn't care for too much. it's the pencils he's after. then it moved to carmex tubes. the kind you squeeze. so i have about 4 tubes that squirt carmex out of 10 different holes. then he moved onto yarn. then a stuffed puppy that was on the back of the couch. little E will NOT be pleased when she discovers that goliath has been nibbling on spot. so this morning after church we came home to that. pencils. green folder with corner chewed off. tape with feathers stuck to it. and to itself. blankets on the floor. blankets unfolded on the couch. kleenex chewed and scattered. hey, but no yarn! hallelujah! 

so what am i to do? is he bored? does he need toys of his own? i don't think so. he has plenty of stuffed chew toys. a brown bunny. a blue cow. an orange squeaky bone. a pink monkey. balls. bones. i even gave him some junk yarn. he unrolled it, tangled it, then got bored with it and didn't touch it again. he plays with all his other toys while we're home. it's just when we're not home that he does all this other stuff. and it has only been the past 2-3 weeks.


otherwise he's a good puppy. he doesn't whine. he doesn't bite. he only barks when he hears an unusual noise or someone comes to the house. he's a protector. he pretty much lets us know when he has to go out. he goes to the back door and jumps against the door until we notice and let him out. he does potty inside at night tho. he probably wouldn't if i got up in the middle of the night to let him out. but i'm the type that if i get up after being asleep for an hour or 3, i can't get back to sleep. so wiping up potty in the mornings will be the consolation of getting a full night's sleep. i'll take the potty over no sleep any day.

ok, so he does have one other teeny tiny problem. well, maybe not so teeny. maybe not so tiny either. his breath. quite possibly the WORST puppy breath on the PLANET!!! probably the universe, as far as i'm concerned. it's not just puppy breath. it's what we have termed "dragon breath" around our house. it's absolutely atrocious! and i am NOT exaggerating. i am not. i am not. i most definitely am not. and because he's a licker, we get whiffs of this dragon breath quite often. and when he yawns. and when he sniffs around our face. or gets a little too close. like within 3 feet. seriously! you should really give it a sniff sometime when you're here and see if i'm not kidding.

oh, and he has 2 sets of canine teeth. has his not-too-sharp adult dog teeth. and still has his needle-like babies. not only are they needle-like. they are also curved. kind of like a fish hook. so they can really snag ya. and draw blood.

but as you can see from these photos, he's the most adorable, sweet, innocent-looking pup you could ever meet. until you leave him alone. or get too close to his dragon breath.