Free and clear

And, we’re back!  Tripod has been getting into all sorts of trouble recently.  She even proved that she was smarter than her humans.

Memorial Day weekend, my family went out to visit my in-laws.  That was a dastardly affair all in itself.  My mother-in-law (MIL) has 3 dogs: Holly (an spaniel), Willy (a lab), and Barron (a puppy of which I don’t know origin).  They got along with Tripod thankfully, unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of them all playing, I was being tortured in other ways.  I now refuse to bring Tripod for a visit because we were not allowed to feed Tripod in my MIL’s house.  She was only allowed to eat outside or in the camper where we were staying.  All Tripod wanted was to eat with the group and be part of the pack, but myMIL wouldn’t allow it.  What’s worse was Tripod HATED the camper-it was infested with spiders and had a slight aroma of mold.  The only one who slept that night was Peter (I hope Sylvia did, but she was allowed to stay inside the house).  Tripod didn’t eat Sunday morning before we left, and didn’t eat until we got home Monday afternoon.  I was LIVID.

We got home and I gave her food, then a treat to prove that I still loved her even though I accidentally put her through Hell.   So over the next 2 days, I watched to make sure the visit with my MIL didn’t make her sick/stress her out too much.  I gave her food and she maybe ate half a bowl for the whole day (where normally she’ll eat 2 bowls a day) on Tuesday and Wednesday.  I talked to Peter, expressing that it was worrying me that she wasn’t eating, so we decided that if she didn’t eat Thursday, she was going to visit the vet.  I ended up going grocery shopping that morning and whatever didn’t need to go in the fridge/freezer was left in the bags on the floor; I was too tired to put it all away and proceeded to nap on the couch.

I woke up to the sound of rustling.  The first thing I thought was “Crap!  Tripod’s getting into the groceries!”  I ran into the kitchen to see Tripod coming out of the attached bathroom with 2 treats in her mouth.  Her ears went back because she knew she’d been caught.  I went into the bathroom (which is where I keep her food and treats because we have no room in the kitchen) and the bag of treats, which was full on Monday, was now completely empty.  She wasn’t eating her food because she’d been filling up on treats!  She doesn’t know how close she was to getting poked and prodded by the vet techs.  She’s now not allowed to have treats.  She’s proven she’s smarter than we are; we never even checked to see if that’s what she was doing!   Because of the previous weekend, we thought she became overwhelmed with stress or became sick.  I have to admit, I was so relieved and so pissed at the same time that all that I could do was laugh.  In the back of my mind though, I think Sylvia may have told her to do it…I didn’t know a dog would be that incredibly conniving. 🙂