oh what joy and what surprise, to open up my eyes...

I would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that hippopotamuses do not make good Christmas gifts. a new pet is a huge responsibility, one that should be decided upon, agreed upon, and planned by the entire family. and the holidays can be a hectic and stressful time around the house, which is not an ideal environment to introduce a new animal into. please be responsible pet owners and wait until you have the time and energy to train and housetrain a hippopotamus, before deciding to bring one home or give one as a gift. thank you.

I do all of my own stunts

A short while after we started the crate retraining, mommy wondered if maybe I should not be able to enter and exit my crate as I pleased, if it would make it easier on me during the day to be locked-in, if I was also locked in during safe and inactive times, such as sleeping. She did that for a few weeks, but gradually moved back towards leaving the door open most nights because she feels bad that I spend all day in there.

After my destruction party the other night, mommy went back to locking me up overnight.

The other day when she woke up, I was out of my crate. But the crate showed no sign of struggle or destruction, the door was simply open.
Mommy can't figure out how I did it.
And I'm not telling!

Again, feeling bad, mommy left the crate door open last night, but shut the bedroom door to keep me from the rest of the house. Mommy THOUGHT that she would hear me if I was doing anything in the room with her while she was sleeping.
She woke up this morning, and although my crate door was open, with my bed that I love inside, I had pulled her new robe and new sweatshirt off of the hook on the back of the door (breaking the hook) and had made myself a nice mommy-clothes bed.
Comfy!

still no news, is good news

things have been going very smoothly around here. little bumps in the road, sure, but overall, things are right.

yesterday mommy didn't notice that I'd spit my tranquilizer out onto the floor until it was time to leave. but she came home to no news. she didn't have time to watch the video, to see how I reacted when I wasn't fully drugged, but she's going to experiment with that further, soon.

last night, when I should have been sleeping, I tore up the garbage and pulled some stuff off of counters and made a bit of a mess (mommy knows that I need less sleep and more activities). as mommy was leaving this morning, she noticed that I'd pulled our leashes, collars, and seatbelts down from the living room closet. without thinking, she reached down to pick them up and put them away. I heard the sound of all of our to-go stuff jingling and I started SCREAMING. mommy didn't have much time, but she stood there for several minutes, until I had a quiet moment, and she brought me a bully stick (in addition to the kong I already had). as soon as she left the room, I started screaming again. mommy was worried all day, but when she got home, nothing had happened. she watched the video tape (of the first four hours after she left, because that's how long the tape is) and I stopped screaming the moment she left the house. after 20 minutes, I was asleep, and that's all that the tape captured: four hours of me sleeping.

told you so

mom here.

yesterday we left Dent in the crate for about two and a half hours. today we did five hours. I would have preferred to take it slower, but time isn't on our side right now.

I walked in today and immediately had that floor-drops-out-from-under-you feeling. there were torn up boardgames and movies in a trail to the bedroom.
but Dent hadn't met me at the front door.
he wasn't in the hallway.
I didn't see him as I walked into the bedroom.
I walked around the bed, and there he was, in his safe spot, still locked inside the crate.

that's right.
Root.

we watched the video. almost immediately Dent started whining and pawing at the crate door. then Root came in and barked at him, a very mean bark that we've never seen her use with Dent. they argued like this, on and off, for 15 or 20 minutes and then we could hear Root, just off camera, pulling stuff off of the shelves and tearing it up.

Dent tried to use his teeth to pull at the crate door, he tried chewing and pulling on the side vents in the crate, and he tried digging out, but by 45 minutes after our departure, Dent was asleep and Root was silent (off camera), and that is how they remained for the rest of the tape.

I've always suspected that there was more to this story. I have no idea what's really been going on this whole time, but I know that we have a lot of exploring to do!

all is well

mommy needs to unblock the furnace so that she can turn it on (and I keep chewing on it). plus, the humans would like to have some furniture... or a floor... or walls... or doors...
and since I obviously can't stop destroying, mommy and my doctor have decided to try the crate again. mommy put it in my safe spot and I've been sleeping in it for a few weeks now. mommy started shutting the door only a week ago, but she says we have to take another step already. so today she put me in my crate and left (for two and a half hours), with:
DAP spray. ThunderShirt. bungee cords, clips, bolts, zip ties, and bitter spray to secure the door. a double dose of anti anxiety drugs. tranquilizer. and a frozen Kong.

she came home to a calm and crated dog.

all is well.

huskies like it cold

today when mommy picked up my prescription, there was a brochure in the bag, "PetRx, pet prescriptions now available at your Target Pharmacy."
BOL! the Target pharmacists know mommy on sight and often inquire about me, even when mommy is in the store for something else.
also, I am on three of the four medications listed in the behavior section of the brochure.
quite amusing, don't you agree?

in other news, I've been busy. I'd overlooked the kitchen renovations for a long while now, and it was high time I returned to the job. yesterday I pulled up some more tile and today I turned a small, patched hole in the wall into a large, gaping hole, big enough to pull insulation out.
mommy says that it's important that I remove the insulation from the only wall that is insulated (it -was- a new wall) since she can't turn the furnace on. because she boarded it off. because I was chewing on it. because.
she says she'd hate for the heat that we don't have to be unable to escape.

deep thought

mommy here.
(deep thought is the name of the computer mentioned below, I'm making fun of myself with the title.)

Dent is named after a character in the book The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. in the book, a computer is constructed to answer the ultimate question, the question of life, the universe, and everything. the computer takes several million or billion years to calculate the answer, and the people go back at the appointed time to get the answer.
the computer tells them that the answer is 42.
they are a bit disappointed with the answer and the computer points out that the question wasn't really clear.
they then must search out the question.

sometimes having one thing, without another, makes the thing you have useless.

sometimes you have everything, you just don't know what that everything is.

and sometimes it just doesn't matter.

life with Dent can be difficult, but I know what I have and what it's worth. to me, it's worth everything.

progress? or further setbacks?

today mommy left out apples and newspapers, and I touch neither of them.
but I did pee on the remains of the entertainment center.

Halloween decorating

yesterday I managed to get a large stack of glass bowls down from on top of the upper cupboards. when mommy was removing everything from up there, the bowls were kind of jammed in the back corner, and since mommy couldn't easily move them, she figured I wouldn't be able to move them.

yeah. I have eight hours a day to work on that.
mission accomplished.

unfortunately, flinging glass bowls to the ground causes them to break. I walked in the broken glass and then walked around on the counter tops, leaving bloody paw prints all over the counters, plus all over the floors.

it's a good thing that Halloween is mommy's favorite, I've managed to haunt the entire house, just in time!

typical me

today when mommy was leaving, I was shaking so bad that my teeth were chattering.
mommy is about that^ nervous about what she'll come home to...

and now for the evening update!
(drum roll please)
nothing.
as usual, I have confused my humans by being plain old, inconsistent and unpredictable, me.