How Can I Stay Mad At This Face

This is our farm dog Yellow.  Yes, The Big Yellow Stray That Stayed dog.  He has been here a year now.  He showed up as a huge sad eyed puppy and we could not find his home.  Or find him a home.   We didn’t want to take him to the pound and see him be put down, so now, this is his home.  We had him fixed, slapped a collar on him, fed him and fed him and fed him and have tried to train him as best we could.  He is smart and stubborn.  If I take his collar in my hand and try to walk him somewhere or hold on to it so he doesn’t go somewhere, he lays down, his body as limp as a wet noodle.  He looks up at me like this.

He knows he is too heavy for me to move him and I won’t be able to walk him anywhere.  He is sweet and goofy.  He loves the kids and is gentle with them even though he is so large and strong.  He lays around watching them play and just waits to be asked to join in.  He plays fetch until they will play no more.  He is a huge heavy lug of a dog.  He loves me.   Listens like he understands.   Tries to please me.  Keeps unwanted predators and dogs off our property.  Guards the farm animals in our field fencing and guards the kids.  If I am outside he follows me everywhere and will "stay" when I don’t want him to follow me somewhere.  He has a great recall and comes every time I call his name.   He patiently lays by me while I garden.  I love that dog.  He is everything I ever wanted in a farm dog and MORE.  It is the MORE part that I am not happy with and hope he out grows!

To be honest. Sometimes he makes me mad.  Since he has made this farm his home, just last year (in 2012) he has…pulled up an 8 foot landscape timber and chewed it up all over the yard.  Dumped out and chewed up at least 20 various potted trees and plants and destroyed the pots that they were in. Taken down many logs from the curing wood rick and chewed them up or debarked them all over the driveway.  Chewed in half at the base a newly planted 4 foot tall cherry tree. (think beaver!)  Dug up a whole 3 foot around "pompous grass" ornamental plant. Pulls drying laundry down if I don't hang it high enough.

In the heat of the summer he laid in my gardens on anything that was grassy and cool….so he smushed down whole beds of bee balm, monkey grass, canna lilies…..I could go on and on, as he never picked the same place to lay twice!  He chewed up hose nozzles, bike helmets, any toys that were left out or forgotten to be put up, even though we bought him tons of chew things.   

Notice the hinged flip up rails on the fronts of my raised beds?  Those are to keep Yellow out.  He would jump up into the beds and dig huge holes, in the soft dirt, destroying my garden plants!  Oh yes, and he chewed to pieces the “beware of dog” sign I bought and nailed to a raised bed in the driveway!  

Last year he was well behaved and good 10% of the time and this naughty pup 90% of the time.  He almost always did these things in the night so I could not discipline him in the act.   I would almost dread going outside in the morning because of what he might have done.   Or the kids would go outside first to take their dogs potty and come in saying “Mom, your not going to be very happy with Yellow.”  I would get so mad at  him and then he would look at me with those droopy sad eyes and sometime that day he would do something to redeem himself.  Sigh.  Could you stay mad at that face? 

We made it thru 2012 with him and these destructive puppy instances became fewer and fewer as he grew. He seemed to mature a bit as well.  He is now pretty good about 90% of the time and a big bulldozer about 10% of the time. 

He has always slept, dozed and laid around most of the day and patrols the property all night.  In the night he has caught and killed possum and a few squirrels.  He has also cornered a deer in the run in shed once.  We have not had a stray cat show up since he has arrived!  I have always seen his potential to be a really great farm dog and my dad thinks God sent him here to be with us.  There are moments that I agree and then Yellow does this.

And this.

Sigh.

If he even looks interested in my potted mint.

I say... "Don’t you even think about it!" and he looks at me like this.  

You see that!!! That's the Look!

I see him looking at my bee balm like it is a nice place to lay down.  All I say is, "Don't you do that."

And he gives me this look.

He is a bit better this year.  So far he has dug up a few potted plants.  He jumped up into, walked thru  and dug in my newly planted strawberries in my newly raised up raised beds.   Oh yeah!  And just a few days ago I bought a dwarf peach tree.  I was planning on planting it the next day and in the night he tipped it over, dug out all the dirt and chewed up the poor little things root ball and the plastic pot it came in.  I am sure the one year warrenty didn’t cover that!  What can I do?

Could you yell at a face that looks like this?  Stay angry at a face that looks like this?  I can’t for very long.

May we strive to be slow to anger and walk in love, in all we do, at all times,

susan


Ephesians 4:26  Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: