Baxter is our 11 month old Labradoodle puppy. I would say that he reminds me of the dog from Marley and Me...but truth is he is worse. My neighbors will attest to that as well....and probably everyone that has ever read my facebook page. This dog has done nothing but cause my hair to fall out since the day that we brought him home. You know at first it was just the normal puppy things that drove me crazy....going to the bathroom on the floor, wimpering all the time, keeping me up all night. I had forgotten what it was like to have a baby....and I didn't want another baby! Chris got fixed so that would never happen again...yet a puppy is so much like a baby. It really made me nuts. But we got through that....little did I know how incredibly terrible this dog would be. Now let me give Baxter a few props before I totally tear him to pieces. Baxter has a super sweet personality. He thinks he is tiny and craves attention. He has been great with the kids...never aggressive. I think that he might be smarter than he lets on. I think he plays the dumb card in order to get away with half the shit that he does.
Baxter's terror started with simple things....he would tear up papers...get in the trash. He would get his ass beat and the day would go on. Then he started to grow. Things in my house started to get destroyed. Oh and let me say...we just built this house about 9 months ago, so everything is pretty new. Baxter has ripped down all the blinds in the front of my house....he jumps up to see the kids outside...gets in his big ole paws and head stuck in there...starts flaying around until he is tangled. Then he runs away and my blinds end up in pieces. If you look at the front of my house it looks like an abandoned shack....ya know all the blinds dangling from the windows...broken and uneven. You know the Home Owners are lovin my house!
Baxter also loves dining on things that normally a dog would not eat. For example....socks, my kids underwear, any plastic toy, barbie heads, mardi gras beads (and we have a crap load of these as we lived in New Orleans for 5 yrs), paint brushes, rubber hair bands, pads of notebook paper, shoes, flip flops, the bills, bars of soap, tubes of toothpaste and the list goes on and on. The really great thing about Baxter eating all this stuff is that we usually get the pleasure of seeing it again. He either pukes it up or craps it out. Our yard looks hilarious!!! It cracks me up when the kids have to pooper scoop and they yell...I found Sarah's underwear!!! It's so gross but makes for good laughs. The worst though was the time that Baxter must have eaten some undies and a few socks. He had a pretty big belly ache and threw them up out on the back deck. Well I couldn't believe what I saw....no way did the dog just throw up a pair of panties and 2 socks! I went inside to grab a paper towel to pick them up and he freaked out....grab the panties that he had just puked up and ate them again!!!! AHHHHH! It could have been the single most disgusting thing I have ever seen. He pooped them out with a handful of Mardi Gras beads a few days later.
Baxter will also do ANYTHING for a scrap of food. He would go to the end of the Earth just to get a goldfish cracker that the kids drop under the couch. He is always hungry and relintless in his efforts to get stuff. When I load the dishwasher he loves to lick all the plates and bowls....he is just hoping that there is a little something left. One night I am loading the dishwasher, as I do a zillion times a day, and Baxter is just licking away. I finally snapped and yelled at him to get out...I was getting pretty grossed out. He freaked out and jumped back. However, his collar was fricking stuck in the bottom rack and when he flipped out he ripped the entire bottom rack out of the dishwasher and everything in it went flying all over my kitchen. There were broken dishes everywhere! I thought I was going to kill the dog....really kill the dog! He has also gotten his collar stuck in the floor vents....I am sure a crumb from a cookie or a fruit snack fell down in there and the dummy thought that he could get it out. He woke me up one morning when he walked into my bedroom with the floor vent stuck to his collar. I have no idea how long that sucker was on there....but he was just wearing it around like a big piece of bling. SO stupid!
But, Baxter is our dog. I am really not sure that he would be like this if he lived with another family. Nor do I know if any other family could live with him. I think most days that I will kill him....I also get some pretty good laughs from him. You will learn quickly that Baxter is like no other dog. He is part child and part goat....he runs through the neighborhood and makes me look like a jackass chasing him.....he eats everything and is lucky he is not dead. But if it wasn't for him.....our stories would be so boring.....soooo boring!
