Dogzilla vs. MENSA

First of all, on Sunday, I put up my pool. It was sunny and in the upper 60's. I wore shorts, and started working on my base tan.

Then Monday morning came, and along with it, this:



Unfreakin' believable.

Anyway, here's the "real" blog.

I've often told carriage driver trainees:

"You don’t have to be real smart to do this job, but you do have to be smarter than the horse."

Most qualify, some do not. I've had trainees who were barely smarter than the carriage.

I believe it's the same with dogs. It doesn’t take a genius to anticipate a problem. If you know your dog has issues, for example, chewing on everything it can get its teeth around, then you must accept the fact that if left to its own devices your dog will, as a matter of course, plow through all of your posessions like Godzilla snacking his way through Tokyo.

Every year I put my little above-ground pool up in my back yard. As such, the pool requires two main things: power to the filter, and hoses running from the filter to/from the pool. These things are external, and thus susceptible to dog-noshing. Especially if the dog in question could be transported back to the Jurassic period and hold her own. Easily. So, knowing this, I planned a pre-emptive strike in an effort to avoid unwanted surprises.

One: To keep my dog from chewing up the power cord, I used the frame from a previous pool to create a power cord pipeline.















Two: To keep my dog from chewing the flexible water hoses we installed two eight foot segments of PVC fence which keep her from accessing the area behind the pool where the pump is.





Three: to keep her from further chewing the rubber caps on the end of the pool ladder (Although my yard is fenced, I keep the ladder out of the pool so as not to allow unauthorized access. Read: my neighbors free-range children) I have turned the ladder upside down. Although this is inconvenient, it's easier then replacing the ladder.





A policy has also been instigated in our house of "No door left open." So, each and every portal to each and every room is closed up tight. This prevents our shoes, used Kleenex, and ball point pens from ending up strewn across the back yard in various states of disembodied, unrecognizable matter. That policy has been put in place because of this:

The carriage company owners require that the drivers tilt the seats in the passenger compartment "up", so the barn dogs, Harley and Rudy, can't sleep in them and ruin the upholstery.

Why not just teach the dogs not to sleep in the carriages in the first place, you ask?

Because, as the owners are fond of saying,

"It's easier to train the humans than it is to train the dogs."