Spaniels... Little Monsters in Training

It seems I have made a mistake. If you've read any of the previous posts on my blog, you would think I "saved" an innocent, cute, stray spaniel -- aka, fuzzy, black dog number three -- running loose in the wild. Not so. To the contrary, it seems I have acquired a four-legged monster. Bob is not really a dog. Instead, he is a fuzzy, black chipper and shredder that eats anything and everything he can get into his mouth. Perhaps he's part goat.

He was so meek and mild when he first came into the house. We had to be extra careful around him since fast movements and loud noises seemed to make him skittish. They still do, but he seems to be learning to adjust to sudden outbursts of "where's my sandwich" and "who ate the remote control??!!" He often finds and greets me with his trademark cute smile and eyebrows that alternately rise and fall.

He's learned to scour the house for anything left behind by my son. To date, he's eaten four boxes of cereal that haven't been returned to the proper cereal holding spot. He started into a plate of spaghetti on the dining room table once. He managed to acquire a sandwich from my hand once. I caught Bob trying to steal a raw steak on the counter that was to be grilled. Luckily, I managed to head that one off at the pass.

First it was just food. Then he began to show his true colors one day when I discovered only two small pieces of the remote control. To this day, we still haven't found the rest of that device.

Since then, Bob has expanded into other non-edible items. Here is but a brief list of items that have either disappeared or shown up in pieces: a school bag handle, the side of that same school bag two weeks after being fixed, a box of Gas-Ex, two lunchboxes, numerous plastic pens and mechanical pencils and  markers, one of my good cooking spoons and a long black string or shoelace. Please, don't ask how I know about the string...

There was one attempt on a cell phone, but my son managed to save it before any damage occurred!

I've asked the local pet supply store if they carry titanium muzzles for dogs. He laughed at me. I explained that anything less would be chewed through faster than a Ferrari on the Autobahn.

In the meantime, I'm performing searches on the internet for honest-to-goodness monster tamers. If anyone knows of any, please pass their name and number along before my computer gets