Sadie, You the Love of My Life and That's True

I still remember the first day we got Sadie about 12 years ago. We picked her up at a ladie's home who was housing her for the Montgomery County SPCA. Sadie's torso had been shaved at the pound so she was this scrawny, short haired cockapoo with a beard and a puffy, scraggly looking tail that swung everywhere. She was jumpy and I was a little scared but I still wanted so badly for her to like me right away. Sadie almost broke my heart when she sat on my sister's lap the whole car ride home. But one summer home alone together and she quickly became my dog.

Well, time has past and I've spent many years no longer living in my mom's place. Sadie has not only become my mom's dog, but she has grown old. Though she still smiles and her tail still wags (causing her entire body to sway back and forth while she smiles), after developing a heart problem she doesn't seem to have quite the same energy she used to and I've realized we might have to say goodbye for good in the near future.

So, in honor of Sadie, it's story telling time. Gather round kids and let me tell you a tale, the greatest tale of Sadie, the 14th cutest dog in the world, not including the romance novel cover:
From the very beginning we knew that Sadie liked to get into things she shouldn't -- from garabage cans to gum to food to my stash of Playboys shoved underneath my mattress (thanks again for getting me in trouble, dog!)*, she'd dig into it all. We learned to close doors and hide precious but "edible" items behind those doors.

Flash forward a few years and my sister has just returned from a college semester abroad in Denmark. We were excited to have her back so she quickly dropped off her things in her bedroom, checked to make sure nothing edible was exposed, and we ran out to grab dinner together.

Unfortunately, Sadie, always smarter than us stupid humans, had indeed found something edible. We got back from dinner and found tin foil strewn across the floor. The source? A pack of liqueur bottles wrapped in tin foil, or so my sister had thought. There were probably 12 bottles to start and about half remained. I unwrapped one of the bottles and we realized it was actually chocolate shaped like liqueur bottles and contained the liqueur inside the chocolate shaped bottles. Immediately we panicked. "CHOCOLATE! DOGS! POISON! AND SHE MIGHT BE DRUNK!"

We rushed Sadie to the emergency vet where they promptly made her throw up, pumped her full of Pepto Bismol and assured us everything would be okay. Crisis averted, we returned home and all sat on my mom's bed to watch TV. Only Sadie didn't join us on the bed. She had some more exciting plans in mind.

Probably 30 minutes into our TV watching we all heard some kind of a chewing noise in the bedroom. Obviously it was Sadie but we couldn't find her.
Under the bed? No.
In the bathroom? No.
There you are Sadie, behind the TV stand. But what are you chewing on?

Turns out it was another chocolate liqueur bottle! The sneaky dog had enjoyed her first bunch of bottles so much that she had hidden an extra one for later, just in case. I snatched it from her and scolded her, and though she couldn't understand a word I was saying, I reminded her that these things had been the reason we forced her to throw up just an hour earlier.

Back to the TV watching and within 10 minutes we heard some more chewing. This time Sadie was under the bed WITH ANOTHER CHOCOLATE LIQUEUR BOTTLE! ::Snatch, scold:: and Sadie exited the room. You'd figure she would go an sulk or at least sit in the corner and think about what she had done. No, not our Sadie. I followed her to another hidden bottle underneath her doggie bed in my bedroom. At this point I wondered how many bottles she had actually gotten around to eating and decided to conduct a search of my own. Eventually I found bottles

• underneath my dad's desk.
• expertly hidden behind a box of baseball cards, under my bed.
• in the corner of one of the stairs along with some carpet that was pulled up as she tried to bury the bottle under the carpet.

There we so many scattered around the house that we're not even sure if she ate any of the bottles.

We were all on the lookout for more bottles for a few days, though luckily none showed up.

Although I don't think Sadie learned any lessons from all of this, we certainly did: Sadie is willing to go to almost any extent to eat whatever she wants, whenever she wants. And I still wouldn't be surprised to find one more bottle laying around the house somewhere.

*-Just to clarify, since my mom is probably reading this, that Playboy incident didn't actually happen. Also, I never had a stash of Playboys hidden anywhere. I swear.