Early Christmas for Jake

I will start by saying today was seemingly one of the worst days of my life. After I calmed down from my pregnant fit of madness, waterworks and all, I realized a few things. The epiphany came from this true story. I wish I had taken a picture of the evidence, but I was still angry and cleaned it all up after I figuratively threw my dogs outside. 

When I came home for lunch today, Jake (our beloved yet secretly mischievous chocolate lab) was his normal happy self. I, on the other hand, was not so excited to see him. You see, after adopting our other dog Bruce, a German Shepherd puppy, strange things started happening in our house. Mysteriously, items were destroyed in our absence; the carpet, a leather-bound Torah, some college text books, a pin cushion (saw dust and pins were everywhere), the bathroom carpets and trash contents, and various others just to name a few. This was not something that happened in our house before. Only after bringing Bruce into our home did the destruction begin. My husband and I decided it was time to start crate training the puppy before further damage ensued. Since we never had any problems with Jake before, he continued to have the house to himself while we were gone. Problem solved right? 

Wrong! On a weekly basis, Zach and I noticed some of those same things were still happening. The carpet had been pulled up a little more, trash was still getting sprinkled across the living area, and now my house shoes were migrating. They hadn't been chewed up or anything, just moved to a different location. Sometimes it was the top of the stairs, sometimes it was by the front door. I guess it really just depended on the day. Surely, this could not be MY Jake committing these unspeakable crimes. Who else could it be though? All fingers are pointing at one chocolate colored dog and no other (unconfined) suspects are in sight.

So now that you have the back story, I will continue with my lunch break. I walked up to the door, all pissed off because this woman at the hospital was giving me hell about making copies of my medical record. Normally this would not be an issue, because there is a copier at work. However, my medical records folder is actually TWO folders, with about 600 pages between the two of them and stands five inches high when stacked on top of one another. There was NO WAY I was going to make two copies of that using the company copier and supplies. Anyway... I walk up to the house and Jake is barking. At what, I have absolutely no clue. I continue to walk in the door, come down the hall, and as soon as I walk into the dog play area to let Bruce out, I see wrapping paper everywhere. That little devil Jake had opened my Christmas present from Zach. When I say opened, I mean professionally. He didn't ruin the box with bite marks, but had somehow managed to remove most of the wrapping paper from the gift. This leads me to believe two things. First, Jake must have had an awesome Christmas last year and he couldn't wait until the 25th for presents. After seeing the tree go up on Thanksgiving night, he just couldn't wait any longer and thought he'd go ahead and celebrate now. Second, Jake knew we had bought presents for him and Bruce, but mistakenly thought we placed them in a box instead of their stockings. It's a good thing I already knew what my husband bought me for Christmas.