And then there were two...One Dog's Crime

I am convinced that God makes children and dogs cute as a way of ensuring their survival here in their earthly lives. How many times has either of them driven you to the point where you actually think you are completely capable of murder? Flash back 24 hours to yesterday morning…

 I had spent Wednesday night making the loveliest banana cupcakes for my family to enjoy. It was getting late and I wanted to catch that night’s airing of American Idol so I decided to put off the frosting of the cupcakes until the next day. So yesterday after my husband Chris and I had returned from my daughter Grace’s 2^nd grade concert, I made and decorated my little cakes with a chocolate-peanut butter frosting, a toffee dusting and then I topped them all off with a single chocolate chunk. If you don’t believe me take a look for yourself!

Beautiful right?

Well my husband Chris had decided to take the remainder of the day off and go to the Home Depot to pick up mulch that was on sale along with grass seed and such. He then spent most of the afternoon outside working on preparing our summer garden, aerating and seeding the lawn and all the time with our dog Buster by his side. At 3:15 I made the announcement to him that I was going to run down to the local grocery store to pick up a few things I still needed to make dinner, and that my girlfriend was stopping by with her son to play with Michael after he gets off the school bus at 3:30. At about 4:00 pm I pulled into my driveway and I have to admit I was a bit annoyed. When I came out of the store and opened the back of the van to put my groceries in, I realized that Chris had pulled the back seats down and had loaded 12 20lb bags of mulch in the back of the van therefore displacing all the stuff I had in the back  to the middle seats of the van. Ugh…I knew if I didn’t move them out at that point I would probably be driving around with my vehicle looking like that of a vagabond’s until at least the weekend. So instead of pushing the issue of moving the bags with him, I decided to just take the time at that point and do it myself, thus putting into motion a series of events which ultimately lead up to Buster’s most sinister and criminal act of his short life.

As I was unloading the bags of mulch the kids came running around to the driveway each asking if they could help. Now I had the house windows open because we actually lucked into a beautiful day yesterday, however unknown to me both my friend and Chris were in the kitchen…and so was Buster!

When they heard the kids and me conversing they very admirably decided to come out to help with the groceries, leaving Buster behind. We played around a bit with moving stuff to the back of the car and I took advantage of the fact that the seats were down and could actually collect some of the crap my kids had stuffed under them. Honestly I think we were outside for all of possibly 8 or 9 minutes and that was exactly all the time it took for Buster to commit his crime of passion and then vamoose. Upon entering the kitchen with my friend I looked at the counter top where I had left my prized cupcakes and they were gone! So was the cupcake holder they were sitting in. At first I thought…”Maybe Chris moved them to keep them out of Buster’s reach”…but unfortunately that was not the case. I said in a panic…”We are the cupcakes?” which was followed by my friend’s response …”They were there before we went outside!” And as I came around the kitchen island I saw something that literally brought my eyes to tears. There on the floor was my cupcake stand, chocolate all over the front of my cabinets and two, only two poor cupcakes with all of the frosting licked off! “BUSTER!!!!!!” I screamed and then I saw the villainous four legged canine cowering in the laundry room trying to look all innocent!

Buster did not polish off just a few cupcakes, he did not polish off a dozen cupcakes…this dog, this monstrous big giant mixed up 95 pound lab, labro-doodle/bouvier or whatever the hell he is, ate 16, SIXTEEN CUPCAKES, paper and all, completely gone in the matter of only a few minutes. And I have no one to blame but myself…if I just come into the house with my groceries Buster would not have had the opportunity to devour my pretty little cakes.

The two surviving cupcakes were picked up from the floor and brushed off. The kids then came running into the house wanting to see the cupcakes and possibly eat one, but unfortunately there we stood, 3 adults and 3 children with only 2 cakes left, standing at the scene of a virtual chocolate blood bath. I went to the frig and opened it up to retrieve the small amount of extra frosting I had leftover and then after pulling a butter knife from one of the draws, I frosted the last two cakes. I handed one to my friend’s son to take home and placed the other one back in the cupcake stand to await the final decision as to who was going to get to eat it.

So in retrospect I have learned 2 valuable lessons as a result of this disaster. Number one, my dog is capable of consuming 16 cupcakes in roughly 8 minutes time and could probably take on any one of Adam Richman's food eating challenges on the show Man vs. Food with little to no stress at all on his digestive tract. The second, and most important of the two lessons, is that I do possess the strength of restraint and the inner resolve to be able to hold back and not to kill no matter how provoked I may become…and that my friends is a good thing know about one's self!