Further Thoughts On My Theory

I still believe Mango is chewing because she is in competition with me for Zach's attention, however, it has gotten more complicated. I think she's angry that Zach has to leave the house to 'support' me and Jacob, and so is taking it out on us, his dependents. And when Jacob and I leave the house the tension only multiplies. Tension = chewing.

I wrote about what happened on Thanksgiving, but since then there have been no 'incidences'. Except for today. Jacob and I were only gone for 3 hours today. There were 3 incidences. One of them happened while we were all still home. One of them happened while we were all gone, and the last happened while we were all home again, but in the kitchen with the gate closed because dinner was being served.

What happened today, combined with what happened Thursday really sheds light on things. Thursday was my hat, remember? This was by far the worst thing she has chewed. Ever. We were all gone, but we were together. This togetherness combines the factors 'being left alone' with 'being jealous of me', thus explaining the choice of 'chew toy'. Friday, Saturday, Sunday we were all here, and the dogs got to be outside with us, getting attention from all of us, all day long. Nothing got chewed.

Today when Zach was in the shower, Mango got to the bottle of glue. This is important: He was in the shower. The first sign that he is getting ready to leave the house. When Zach came out of the bathroom she was right there with the top sticking sideways out of her mouth and glue running down from the corner, the bottle resting beneath with multiple open wounds.

While Jacob and I were away from the house today Mango got to that canvas holder-thingy that has pockets for whatever and hangs over the back of the door. It was big and in a million pieces so she probably thought it was something important, but what she doesn't know is that it came from the dollar store. No real loss there.

After Zach came home from work, he basically said hi to the dogs before coming to the kitchen and wolfing down dinner because he was eager to get started knocking down the back porch. In the middle of Jacob and Zach eating dinner I came out to the front room, where the girls are relegated during mealtime, to get something and I found Mango in the middle of a meal of her own, or in other words, a Thomas the Train book. Thank God it wasn't a library book.

See the connection?

Back to Thursday for a minute: We were gone all day long, together. Zach came home halfway through the day to walk the dogs. But then he left. To come back to me and Jacob. Mango had been teased, she thought she was actually going to have her man all to herself but it didn't last. She had to come up with the ultimate punishment. And my hat it was.

Either I'm crazy, or we have totally underestimated the understanding dogs have about human culture.