The long nightmare is over! (LONG)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

For the past eight years, I have been living without full use of my refrigerator.

Why, you ask?

I have a large yellow Lab (no pictures – I don’t know how to post them) who brings a new meaning to the word “omnivore.” Shortly after I brought him home, he learned how to open the refrigerator door and take all the food out. Believe it or not, about a year ago he finally figured out how to open the freezer compartment, too. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

Why, yes, I do eat out a lot. How did you guess?

Over the years, various solutions were tried with no lasting success. I’ve used bungee cords, shipping tape, baby locks, cement blocks, velcro straps – you name it. Eventually, my dog overcame them all. I bought one of those electronic devices that “zaps” the dog when he approaches forbidden areas, but it didn’t seem very reliable and I didn’t have the heart to tighten the collar enough to make sure the prongs made sufficient contact with the dog’s skin through his fur. I couldn’t just lock the dog out of the kitchen because the kitchen is accessed through a wide archway, not a door. Also, previous efforts to keep him away from food sources convince me that he would only have chewed through such a door if I had one. (This is a dog of endless resourcefulness. In his youth, he used to open the kitchen window and let himself out into the back yard when I was not at home. He also opened the gas jets on the stove once while trying to remove cat food cans from the cabinet above. There are no longer any knobs on my gas stove for this reason. Also, I store the pet food in the trunk of my car.)

The front of the fridge looks like it’s been dragged behind a truck because of dents from propping cinderblocks up against it, and the rubber seal is torn off from the dog clawing at it. There is a hole in the door handle where the dog punctured it with his teeth. The door shelves are unuseable because the dog long since ripped the “food retaining” metal strips off them, leaving only the plastic ledges behind. The motor is ominously loud (I’m not sure if it is safe anymore, actually) because it has been left to run for so many hours with the door open while I was away at work. Mind you, this is the second refrigerator that has been destroyed due to my dog’s efforts: the first one ended up on the curb shortly after it was purchased because my father drilled through the coolant pipes while attempting to install a padlock hasp to keep out you-know-who.

After raiding the fridge for so many years, the dog became complacent. Occasionally, he would walk right up to it and pop it open right in front of me to hunt for a snack, looking up with embarrassment over his absent-mindedness when I yelled at him. In this way, I finally found out how he opens the fridge. It isn’t in an alcove of any sort, it is freestanding, and the rubber seal is, as mentioned, pretty much destroyed because of his previous efforts (it costs $50 for a new one!), so all he has to do is insert his nose in the gap between the side of the fridge and the door and just pop it open with a jerk of the head.

Finally, about two months ago, I discovered this! Huzzah! (Interestingly enough, the device in question is marketed for, among other things, keeping people with pica out of the fridge.) I was afraid to use it for a while, being convinced that the dog would break off all his teeth trying to remove it, which was not an unreasonable fear as he has already damaged some of his teeth chewing off my side view mirror while trying to escape from my parked car.

Did I mention that he is a “difficult” dog?

I installed the Marinelock and left it unlocked with the padlocks hanging off of it for about a month in hopes of getting him used to the look of it so he wouldn’t associate it with his sudden inability to open the door. I finally locked it up two weeks ago, sprayed the locks with bitter apple spray and left the house. So far – success! The fridge has stayed closed and the dog’s mouth seems largely unscathed.

At last, I can leave a chicken in the fridge reasonably secure in the knowledge that the dog won’t choke himself to death eating the bones while I am out, or lock the door on a half-dozen cups of sugar-free cherry yogurt without fear of him scarfing it up and poisoning himself (dogs aren’t supposed to eat Splenda).

I still have nightmares about the time he ate a pound of butter and a dozen expired raw eggs, though. :eek:

2

LMAO. This story cracked me up!! You’ll never be able to say that your dog doesn’t have a lot of personality. :slight_smile:

3

Why, thank you.

Among his many interesting traits, he now salivates when he hears the car-door remote chirp (because I store his food in the trunk). Also, when he was young, he used to climb up on my toilet seat and open the bathroom cabinet looking for food when I was out. It took my mother to finally figure out why I kept coming home to find the bathroom cabinet open (I live alone), scratches on the toilet seat (from where he climbed up) and wet spots on the floor (from when he fell in).

4

Hahahahaha!!

I have to say, after reading what you’ve just described, I am very surprised that the lock is working. I wish you could figure out how to load pictures because I sure would like to see this dog.

5

Dude, we’ve got to see this dog.

You can upload pictures from your desktop to this site and then post a link to the picture here.

6

It took you two months to figure out to look the refrigerator up?

7

No, it took him eight years. :eek:

To be fair, though, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen a lock kit like that for a fridge. I bet you don’t find it at the local Home Depot.

8

I too would like to see a picture of this dog. Did his vet ever have any insight to a dog so food-driven?

9

Oh my. I have to give you a lot of credit. I think some people might have beaten or killed that dog by now.

He sure sounds like a determined fellow.

10

Tenar, your two posts are the funniest thing I read on the Dope, I was actually laughing out load. I could just picture your dog giving you a sheepish look as he opened the refridgerator door w/ you standing there watching him. Thanks for sharing that.

11

Hmm, I’m thinking you’re not the alpha male in your house. On the other hand, I am much more grateful that my yellow Lab only farts in her sleep and slobbers on the floor when she drinks.

12

Your dog is the best dog. What a smarty, I love that he can open the window.

13

I’m trying. I keep getting this error message: Upload Failed! Image Magick failed. Invalid format (jpg|gif|png|bmp|tif). This is odd as the format is definitely a jpg. Or are they trying to tell me that jpg is no good?

To those who express incredulity that it took this long for me to find the Marinelock, I did search for refrigerator locks IRL, but for the first four and a half years that I had the dog, I had no computer. By the time I got one, I had kind of given up on finding a solution and it didn’t occur to me to look online for one for a long time. (I’m fairly passive, to put it mildly). Prior to buying the Marinelock, I had never bought anything online except for books on Amazon and books and assorted tchotchkes on Ebay.

In other news:

  1. I’m not a dude. :smiley:

  2. I am extremely ashamed to admit that I have, indeed, smacked the dog out of frustration, more than once. I haven’t done so for at least five years, however, as I got control of myself. The bottom line is, he knows exactly what he is doing wrong, he’s just too bored and too compulsive to stop. Since the exact same things apply to MY compulsive eating behavior, it hardly seemed fair to expect a dog to show more self control than I do.

Please don’t bother telling me that hitting a dog is a terrible thing to do. I know it well. That’s why I stopped. It was making both of us feel bad and accomplishing nothing. Fortunately, being a dog of very poor judgment, he loves me anyway.

  1. As far as getting rid of him goes, well, easier said than done. I actually got him because he was wandering around loose in a park by himself and trying to cross a busy street back to the neighborhood from which (I assumed) he had probably come. I attempted to locate his owners to no avail, being, at that time, possessed of a very small house (which I still have – what’s left of it, anyway), another large dog, two cats, and no illusions about my suitability for dog ownership (which is, as implied above, poor.) I figured he wasn’t actually lost, but on an unauthorized constitutional, as he was healthy, well-fed, clean, very approachable and had soft pads on his feet, not like the rough, cracked pads my other dog had when I got her after a long period of living as a stray. I figured I would just take him into protective custody, as it were, until I could get him home to his owners.

Nobody in the neighborhood of his suspected origin admitted to recognizing him, and my many signs and posters proved fruitless, including the ones I put up in the pound. I didn’t want to take him to the pound for the obvious reason (fear of the outcome), even though I know the people at my pound are good hearted and have a pretty good rate success with placing pets. And, as it turns out, the owners weren’t looking for him anyway. How do I know?

About two months after I found him, somebody recognized him in the back of my car at a gas station. He was hard to miss, as he was jumping up and down and barking and the whole car was rocking. (He was a very energetic young dog.) This passing kid took one look at him and said “Hey! That’s Wally!” I was ecstatic! I asked the boy what neighborhood the dog came from, and he said he lived on one of the back streets across the street from the park in question. Bingo! Then I made my first mistake. I asked the boy to call the dog’s owners and tell them that he was on his way home. I was practically whistling as he stepped away to make the call. Not so when he returned, however.

He said, and I quote, “They told me not to tell you where they live.”

Yes, friends, a re-enactment of *The Ransom of Red Chief * right here on Long Island. It turns out the previous owners had found life very peaceful since his departure, and were in no hurry to renew the acquaintance.

Feeling crestfallen, and more than a little vindictive, I asked the boy to tell the owners that, since I now knew the dog was unwanted, I would feel no compunction about having him destroyed. (I later felt badly about this, as I had no wish to hurt the kid’s feelings, just the owners. For the record, though, the kid was a teenager, not a child, or I would never have said that to him. Still, a crappy thing to do, I will admit. I am more than capable of being Not A Nice Person on occasion.)

Anyway, I made sporadic efforts to get rid of my young canine charge for a while after that, knowing that it would be better for the both of us, but there were no takers, gangly, destructive, sort-of-Labs being no rare commodity. The more aware of “interesting personality traits” I became, the clearer it was that he might end up on the street again, or worse, if he went to people without a damned good sense of humor (and a sizeable furniture replacement budget. He ate my couch, and, to this day, tries to rip down the front curtains whenever he hears the propane truck coming down the street. He hates the propane man). I actually took him to an “audition” to become an airport drug dog (they recruit dogs from the pound sometimes), but the agent wouldn’t take him because he said he was already too attached to me and was paying attention to me rather than to the bait. Unfortunately, they do not use food as a reward, or the results would have been far, far different, I assure you.

At any rate, my friend and I have been growing old together lo these many years now. And, no, his current name is not Wally. (For the purposes of this thread, he prefers to remain anonymous.)

14

Madam, have you considered that what you have is not a large yellow lab, but in fact is an intelligent, opposable thumbed, sasquatch?

15

Wrong coast. I think sasquatches come from Oregon.

16

Labs…heh…who was it that came up with the idea that they make great family pets? In his youth, my sister’s Charlie ate everything inappropriate including her father-in-law’s $2K toupee, was a serial escape artist and repeat pound tenant, and unwelcome sire to several litters. (Yes, I finally convinced her to have him neutered.). I’ve heard similar stories from many lab-owning acquaintances.

Just out of curiosity, ever try a crate?

17

Has to be. All the labs I’ve ever met have been as sharp as a sack of wet mice.

18

Regarding Labs eating everything: You are correct, sir. (Or Ma’am.) I was once kept waiting at the vet’s office for a long time. He finally emerged from the back, saying apologetically “I was busy taking a carpet out of a Lab.” I didn’t doubt him for a moment.

My guy has also been to the pound a couple of times, both during his tenure with me and (apparently) during his previous life as “Wally.” When I went to pick him up at the pound, I mentioned how I had gotten him, and they said they thought they recognized him by that name, although they couldn’t remember the name of his prior owner.

Regarding crates: I considered it many times, but never bought one because the dog is very large, the house is VERY small (and I’d have to live with the damned crate), I felt guilty about confining him in a space even smaller than the house, I’m lazy, I’m cheap and crates are expensive (not more expensive than refrigerators, but still), and I always felt in my heart that he would find a way to break out of it anyway. I do realize that my woes are 99% my own fault, as the dog would not have become nearly so cunning if he weren’t bored out of his mind.

And now, in response to popular demand:

Deceptively Normal Looking Dog

My Boy Eviscerates His Prey With Extreme Prejudice

and

Hey! This Side Still Has A Mirror. I’ll Have To Do Something About That…

19

Brand new frig, only 2 days old. Needed to keep over eating step daughter out of frig. Did the exact same thing.

20

Apparently, a lot of people do. The advertising copy for Marinelock specifically mentions this as a reason to buy their product. (It sticks on with an extremely strong adhesive pad. No screws.)