Thief

Scott and I went out to dinner with Nikki, Mike and a few of their friends last night. Scott had been working some long hours the last couple weeks, so I was looking forward to having some fun and hanging out with my hubby. Before we left for the evening, we prepped the house in the usual manner:

• Shut the spare bedroom door
• Shut the bathroom door
• Place a big pillow and several magazines all over the bed
• Turn on the twinkle lights in the bedroom
• Turn on the palm tree lights in the living room
• Turn on the TV to Animal Planet, Speed Channel, or a sporting event (Presley prefers football, hockey and baseball, in that order)
• Put pillows, blankets and magazines on the couch in the living room
  
• Make sure the child-proof latch on the door to the kitchen garbage is secured
  
• Block access to the recycling bin
• Shut the office door

We've had to add steps this routine from time to time as the girls (or one of the girls) learns a new trick, like opening the food bins or opening the living room window and jumping out the window. Diesel is usually the most destructive of the two dogs while we're away. However, Presley has caused her share of trouble as well. Unfortunately, we usually don't catch either of them in the act. So we really don't know who the culprit is when something is amiss.

Last night, it turns out we should have cleared the kitchen counter of anything that might be interesting to the girls. They've swiped things off of the counter before, but they haven't touched anything up there in a while.

When we got home, we found some items missing from the counter:

• Ziploc bag of homemade pill pockets
• Small bucket of treats
• Two medication bottles
• One supplement bottle

Remnants of the baggy and cardboard bucket were left all over the living room floor. The pill bottles were on the floor, but thankfully, they had not been opened. The cap from the supplement bottle was damaged but it didn't look like any of the supplements were missing. I was quite upset because if either of the girls had eaten the medication, I'm sure that wouldn't have been good. Again, we didn't know which dog or if both of them were guilty of this latest infraction.

At about 3AM, Presley woke me up from her moaning/whining. My first thought was that maybe she had eaten a lot of those missing treats or maybe ate some of the plastic baggy, and now she had a stomach ache. When I let her outside to go potty, she peeped and ate a lot of grass but no poop or vomit.

About an hour later, she was up again and she was really agitated. At this time, I decided to stay up in case she was going to get sick. Of course, Diesel had to get up too but she seemed normal. Well, after a few hours of watching TV in the living room and keeping an eye on the girls, neither of them got sick. So I decided to go back to bed at 7:30AM.

That was a close call. We're definitely going to add clearing the kitchen counter to our pre-departure checklist.