Isn't this just the most adorable puppy? His name was Theo and he was just a six week old ball of fur when we got him. A beautiful and very expensive pure bred Golden Retriever fresh from the local pet shop. We were in heaven and thought we'd picked the perfect dog for us. Little did we know what was in store for us.

Our first clue came on the very first day - when he chewed through the power cord on my computer. Oh well, puppies nibble on things I said, as I was shelling out $70 to replace it.

The next day, he ate the plastic tray out of his puppy crate. Then he chewed my wall hanging off the wall and ate a hole in the mattress in the guest room. So we moved him to the garage. Even though he was in a cage, he ate the bra off my husband's truck and 20 feet of extension cord.

We moved him out to the backyard. He ate all the acorns and apples - they aren't supposed to be good for dogs and aren't very edible, but when you've got three huge oak trees, what can you do? There were 10 million of them around the yard and seemed to be his favorite snack. The next week, he chewed through the cable wires on the back of the house.

We did try to work with him. We took him to puppy kindergarten. We got the videos and tried all the leash training. We used all the proper training techniques and the right authoritative voices, no luck. Theo ran through the house, refused to walk on a leash and chewed everything in sight.

The trainer remarked that he was overly "alpha". Not only was he a nightmare around other dogs, he was rough with Blake. From the beginning, he seemed to regard him as a littermate and wouldn't ever listen to him. He would run away from him and jump all over him. He was also showing unmistakable signs of being, um, "attracted" to him.


By now, Blake was a somewhat petite 9 year old and Theo was a pretty robust year-old dog. One morning, while I was in the shower, Blake went out into the backyard to play with Theo before school. Theo got his leg in his mouth and started dragging him around the yard. Blake was terrified and yelling for help, but I couldn't hear a thing. Finally, he managed to get a stick and beat the dog off of him. That scared me so bad, that dog was gone in 24 hours.

No, we didn't send him to the pound or palm him off on some other unsuspecting family, we found a breeder who wanted him for breeding purposes. Last we heard, he was very happy there and had fathered a couple of litters of very cute puppies.

But we did keep one souvenir to remember him by.



This has been one of the writer's prompts from Mamakat's Losin It. Join in the fun over at her blog.








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