If you’ve owned a dog before, you’re very familiar with the “guilty look”: head angled downward, darting side eye, and body low to the ground like they are being pulled to the floor by an overruling magnet.  The first full day we attempted to leave Herk out of his kennel just happened to be the day he decided to have a solo pillow fight (caught on nanny cam) which then escalated to ripping our guest room mattress to shreds (suspiciously not caught on nanny cam).  How he managed to stop the recording remains a mystery to me.  Just in case I hadn’t noticed the explosion of feathers blanketing every freaking surface of that room when I returned home, the look of pure guilt combined with the squinty eye told me someone had been a naughty boy.  The only sliver of amusement I can draw from this otherwise messy situation was imagining that timeframe of pure joy when he was GOING TO TOWN on those pillows and mattress, prancing in clouds of feathers, probably trying to eat a few.  I imagine it’s similar to the feeling I have when there’s leftover cheesecake in the fridge. My intention is to only have a small piece, but before I know it, I’ve eaten past the point of no return and the last 3 minutes are a complete blur… any attempt to hide those moments of weakness would be futile so might as well just enjoy the rest. Maybe my husband will forget there was any cheesecake in the fridge to begin with. Only a dog would have the guts to annihilate an entire room out of boredom and just face the consequences later.  Like me with the cheesecake, I’m sure Herky had already come up with 10 different ways to rationalize his behavior. You’ve heard the [honorary] basenji motto, right?  Life’s short, destroy.

On the contrary, Ellie is the master of deception, the 8-lb David Blaine, the Gaga of poker faces.  I very rarely see the “guilty look” coming from these cute little bug eyes.  I adopted Ellie about a month after moving to Rochester for my first big girl job.  One day I came home from work and not only had she escaped from the kitchen (which was sectioned off, two baby gates high), but she had unrolled an entire roll of Toilet Paper throughout the entire apartment.  Naughty!  “A trained dog is a happy dog” is how I was raised to think (I think this might apply to children too, for future Marie reference) so I saw this as a trainable moment.  I gently walked Ellie over to the toilet paper and pointed at it waiting for the darting side eye…waiting…  She looked up at me with a look that said “Yeah Mom, can you believe this?  Who would do such a thing to OUR home?” then wandered off to take a nap. 

Are you serious??  For a split second, this little mischievous beast had me thinking that in my haste to catch the bus that morning, I may have thrown around a roll of toilet paper senselessly and then taken a bite or two out of a few squares.  She’s either a really great liar or she has a serious case of amnesia.  Whichever one it is, I have to admit that I am thoroughly impressed. After all, you’ve heard the Chihuahua motto. “Life’s short… …what was I saying?”