Bad dog!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have a dog named Cooper. He is a mutt, a mix between a Chesapeake Bay retriever, rottweiler and Border collie. He is black. He is about 7 months old. We love our dog. He is a good dog... most of the time. He learned very quickly. He minds very well. He gets really excited when he sees us. He is a lot of fun. I really love having him in our home, besides the hair.

So the other day... Darrik usually takes Cooper with him to work. He works construction so Cooper can run around and be where people are all day. Last Friday Darrik had a meeting in Salt Lake all day so Cooper couldn’t come. We decided that we could leave him in his kennel in the house and his mom agreed to come over a couple times a day and let him out. At about 2:30 I got a phone call from his mom saying she can’t find the key to our house we had given her. She was at our house and couldn’t get in. A little panicked and annoyed I told her I would leave work, come home and take care of him… and take care of him I did.

OH MY GOSH!!! I don’t know how they do it. Some dogs are escape artists. Mine just so happened to be one last week. We still to this day don’t know how he did it, but when I walked in the door he was standing right there wagging his tail like crazy happy to see me. He was locked in his kennel. The only way to open the door is to press down on one lever and pull up on the other one, standard kennel, but how did he do it? I opened the back door to let him into the back yard. I then walked around the house to see the damage. There was a dry pee puddle by the back door on the hard wood, better than the carpet. The kitchen looked okay, my couch was still intact, and my entertainment center was chew free thank goodness. So then I walked into my bedroom and found this…

My brand new shoes…

Garbage strewn every where…

A total mess, but luckily no poop...

I hate to say it, but I completely lost it. I let Cooper back in the house and told him to come. I was walking towards the bedroom and he wouldn’t come. He knew he was in trouble. So I dragged him by his collar. He has never chewed anything ever. He has his toys, his rope, bones, ball and frisbee and has always been content chewing and playing with them. We have never had a problem. I think because he was left home alone all day he went into abandoned mode. I smacked him a couple of times, kicked him, hit him with my eaten shoes. Then I just broke down and started bawling. I couldn’t believe I was acting this way. I was so mad at him, but it wasn’t his fault he was left home alone all day. I was not happy. But that is my bad dog story. Needless to say, he has been a perfect angel since then. I guess he just needed a good beating to put things into perspective.