(www.meowbarkblog.com) — My English mastiff Murphy and this dog must have been separated at birth, because they both are total water babies.

Contents Copyright © 2009 Kristen King

(www.meowbarkblog.com) — I got a frantic call from my husband today while I was pulling into the chiropractor’s parking lot about 35 minutes from our house. (I need adjustments 3x/week for the next 4 weeks thanks to my recent car accident.)

“The alarm is going off at the house!”

“Well, I’m at the doctor and I won’t be home for over half an hour if leave now, so…”

“Okay, I’ll tell them to send the police.”

Dave,* who’s been living with us for a few months while waiting for his wife to get a transfer from her job 3 hours from HIS new job, beat me home and called Jesse with the news: “The dogs ate that big box of chocolate. I think it set off the alarm when they were scraping the plastic across the floor.”

Oh, great. My dogs, who just a few days earlier, downed 10 lbs of flour, just ate 2.5 lbs of chocolate. Does it get any better?

Fortunately for all of us, it wasn’t very good-quality chocolate, so the amount of cocoa consumed even if one dog had eaten the whole thing alone would have been minimal. So far, everyone seems just fine. Even Pickles, who we learned from the projectile vomiting post-flour, tends to have a more sensitive stomach than the other dogs. Awesome. What else can they POSSIBLY get into?

Contents Copyright © 2009 Kristen King

• Not his real name.

(image: SXC.hu)

(www.meowbarkblog.com) — We came home from visiting family last night to find a white explosion all over the kitchen and living room. We should have known better than to leave the flour on the counter in preparation for tonight’s fried chicken dinner. But honestly, what is appealing about 10 lbs of flour? The world may never know. And my rug will never be the same.

My bedspread will never be the same, either, because about an hour after we got home, Pickles projectile-vomited a disgusting green half-liquid, half-paste mixture all over it. Oh, and have you ever used a regular vacuum to suck up 10 lbs of flour? I don’t recommend it. And neither does the manufacturer, I’m sure.

These dogs are VERY lucky we love them so much. Otherwise, we would be selling them to the circus, I swear. Oh, and did I mention how fun it is to clean flour from every surface in your home two days after getting in a car accident and having limited to no mobility due to back injury? It’s a blast.

Previous episodes:

• My Glasses Case
• Prescription Drugs
• A Framed Photo of the Dogs
• Electronics
• A Wallet

Contents Copyright © 2009 Kristen King

(www.meowbarkblog.com) — After putting it off for more than a year, I finally read the last three chapters of Marley & Me, in anticipation of the film release later this month. I don’t mean to be giving any spoilers here, but the dog dies at the end, as dogs are wont to do. And it’s not a particularly horrible death except for the horribleness that is death.

I bawled. I’m still sniffling, tears sneaking out despite my best efforts to remember that (a) it’s not MY dog and (b) it happened years ago and (c) he had a good long life for a dog anyway, with people who clearly loved him, so it’s not that sad. Those things mean NOTHING. Marley’s death is possibly the saddest thing I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a lot of sad stuff.

I think what did it for me was thinking about Murphy and what a bad dog he is even though he tries to be good. Murphy is Marley in mastiff form. And as much as he drives us crazy with his insane behavior and his eating everything that’s not nailed down (and some things that are, come to think of it: case in point, the patio steps), when he goes it will be gut-wrenching.

What is it about bad dogs that make them the most lovable?

We had been reading Marley & Me together, my husband and I, because we had both wanted to read it and he didn’t want me to do it without him. So every night before bed, I’d read a chapter aloud. But toward the end there, I was crying too hard to speak and I could barely see the words on the page. That’s why we ultimately set it aside.

“You should finish Marley,” my husband told me tonight as after he answered my cries to rescue Pickles from the soaking tub in the master bath. (She had chased a cat in and gotten stuck). I was lying in bed, sick, and it seemed like a good idea. But it was NOT a good idea. Bawling and heaving big shuddering sobs while you already feel like your sinuses are about to explode is not something I recommend.

But now that I’m mostly calmed down, I feel a kind of lightness that I needed to feel. Maybe just the physical act of crying did it, but I think it probably had something more to do with knowing that I’m not alone in loving a terrible dog who no one else could ever love, a good dog trapped in a bad dog’s body.

Contents Copyright © 2008 Kristen King

(www.meowbarkblog.com) — Murphy may look like a tough cookie at almost 140 lbs and about 30 inches tall at his shoulders. But he’s really a big wuss. (Unless he thinks you’re going to hurt me, in which case he will take you OUT, believe me.) He’s scared of loud noises, cars, any animal bigger than him, strangers, rakes, and umbrellas. Strangely, he loves the leaf blower and tries to wrap his mouth around it every time we use it. But everything else frightens him.

When I had to rush him to the vet last week with his serious tummy rash, we took the car to get inspected afterward. Of course I couldn’t leave him in the car to eat the garage people, so we went for a walk in downtown Fredericksburg to visit our favorite store, Dog Krazy, where Murphy gorged himself on grain-free treats courtesy of Nancy Guinn, the owner.

Murphy was mostly fine once he was in the store (mostly as in, aside from being terrified by the series of small dogs that came in while we were there). On the way there, though, he cowered against me every time a car passed us, and I thought he was going to poop all over himself when a fire truck went by with sirens wailing.

But everything changed when we put on his super-secret magical cape of wonder. We are trying to build Murphy’s confidence so he’s not so fearful, and we thought a backpack might be a good way to do that. Give him a job to do, make him feel important. The moment I put the Outward Hound Dog Excursion Backpack on him in the store, he was a different dog. He stopped leaning on me. He tried to play with Judy, the bulldog puppy that came in, who he’d been scared of and hiding from before I put the pack on him. He wagged his tail at strangers. It was a flipping miracle.

Will this be the key to working through his nervousness? It’s too early to tell for sure, but all signs point to “promising.”

Contents Copyright © 2008 Kristen King

(www.meowbarkblog.com) — Oh boy, oh boy, the dogs learned a new trick! It’s called “jump up on the counter and eat stuff they have no business eating and then shred the evidence all over the house so no one can prove nuttin’.” It’s totally precious. Except for NOT.

About two weeks ago, I came home from the post office and everything seemed normal. Until I went to make lunch and couldn’t find the baguette I had thought was on the kitchen counter. I called my husband at work.

“Did you take the baguette to work with you?”

“Uh, no, why?” he asked, like that wasn’t a perfectly reasonable question.

“I can’t fi– oh my God, is that part of a PANERA BAG????”

“What are you talking about?”

“Murphy just rolled over and there is part of a Panera bag under him on the dog bed.” I later found small pieces of it in about six other locations. But not nearly enough to make a whole bag. Hmm.

“Maybe you should talk to him about the baguette.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

In the week or so that followed, the dogs consumed:

• Half a pan of brownies
• A box of Krispy Kreme donuts
• A bag of single-serve coffee filters
• A raw, unwashed sweet potato
• Part of a grilled cheese sandwich
• Several paper plates and napkins
• Eight (8!!!!!) empty cardboard boxes
• A sheaf of brochures from my husband’s old company

And those are just the items we found evidence of. I shudder to think what may have gone missing without our noticing yet.

At first we thought it was Ty (he HAS been mighty pushy when I open the fridge lately), but based on last night and this morning, we’re pretty sure it’s Murphy. You see, Murphy has food allergies. Wheat, corn, beef, things normal dogs can eat. We switched him to food that doesn’t contain those things and limited his treat intake, and his dandruff and horrible stomach rash went away.

So when his rash came back in one small spot on his inner thigh (is that what you call it on a dog?) a few days ago and then spread with a vengeance I’ve never seen to the rest of his stomach last night, I took him to the vet right away. Turns out he has a staph infection (!!!) because he licked the living daylights out of it over the last few days, unbeknownst to me. The diagnosis? “Must be the stolen food,” the vet said solemnly. She did not add, “You neglectful dog-mother, you,” though I suspect from her expression that she was thinking it.

Now, not only do we have to change his TREATS to make extra sure he’s not consuming any allergens whatsoever and stop giving him people food entirely (what, you do it too, shut up), we can’t leave anything edible (or inedible, for that matter) on our counters or tables, lest he scarf them down.

It’s kind of like childproofing, except your toddler has the reach of a six-foot-tall adult and will not only mouth but actually consume whatever he can acquire.

Why did he have to finally realize just how tall he is???

Previous episodes of “Things Murphy Destroyed or Ate”:

• My Glasses Case
• Prescription Drugs
• A Framed Photo of the Dogs
• Electronics
• A Wallet

Contents Copyright © 2008 Kristen King

(www.meowbarkblog.com) — It’s been a while since we had an episode of “Things Murphy Destroyed or Ate,” so it was about time for him to ruin something. And ruin it he did.

This used to be my glasses case:

From what I can glean from the crime scene, one of the cats knocked the case to the floor from my nightstand while fleeing from Murphy. Thwarted in his attempts to eat the kitty, he ate the case instead. Fortunately, the glasses were on my face instead of in the case.

Earlier episodes:

• Prescription Drugs
• A Framed Photo of the Dogs
• Electronics
• A Wallet

He’s going to grow out of this soon, right?

Contents © Copyright 2008 by Kristen King

(www.meowbarkblog.com) — Murphy is a jealous dog. He loves his bullmastiff brother and pug sister, but at the end of the day, he would cheerfully sell them to the highest bidder if it meant more time alone with us with no other dogs around.

This weekend, we decided to give Murphy some special alone time with just us. Ty stayed home in the crate, with no e-collar for the first time in weeks, and Pickles had the run of the house and yard. They were both quite dismayed to realize that Murphy was getting a ride in the car without them. It was like the end of Pickles’ world, I’m telling you. Almost as bad as this.

But Murphy was in heaven. We took him to a local hot rod show, where he was the center of attention. He was such a champ. He growled at one man (who, for the record, we didn’t like either) and was a sweetheart to everyone else. He ate about a million treats, got about a bazillion tummy rubs, and even had his own flavorless sno-cone.

About halfway through the day, we took him to the creek that ran behind the place hosting the show, where he immediately plopped down in the water and rolled around. Although I think he enjoyed getting cooled off, I think his favorite part was chasing the french fries we threw to him as they started to float downstream. He also liked biting at the water as it rushed over the rocks in the creek bed.

There were two exhibitors who kept Murphy in ice water and ice cubes all day long, too, so he never got too hot. He was quite a hit, and a definite ladies man. One toddler in pink overalls and pink Crocs was a particularly big fan.

After the show, we took Murphy to visit his favorite friend Nancy at Dog Krazy, where he hung out while Jesse and I perused the Fredericksburg antique stores in search of a sofa table to go with our new couch.

And then, as if that weren’t enough, we took him to Alum Spring Park to swim for real in the creek that flows through it.

If I had to guess, I’d say this may have been the best day of Murphy’s life. He’s still sleeping it off.

Contents © Copyright 2008 by Kristen King

(www.meowbarkblog.com) — I think that when Pickles dreams, she’s a black pug, Murphy is a Great Dane, and Ty is a giant whose leg doesn’t hurt.

Contents © Copyright 2008 by Kristen King

Best “play dead” ever. We have to add this to the list!

Every time we try to get Pickles to shake, she just bites us. Sigh.

I met a dog at the airport who could sneeze on cue. It was adorable… This is not the same dog. Does she growl at him at the end???