Tuesday, July 13, 2021

Can This Family Be Saved? A Day to Whine and Win @LucyBurdette


LUCY BURDETTE: How, you might reasonably ask, are glasses related to a book giveaway? Answer: when the broken glasses were eaten by a puppy with a death wish, and the day becomes 'Whine and Win' because I can't think of another way to make myself feel a little less dumb...


This is the culprit...not a smidgen of remorse... I was shocked when she ate my beloved pair of blue glasses--I loved them so much and they were no longer on display in the optical shop. 



But happy news, the optician was able to order a pair and fit in my progressives (ka-ching), and we all learned our lesson. 

Right? Wrong, because a few days later, she ate these glasses. I loved these too! They went with all the things I own that aren't green or blue... 

That second escapade left me nothing to wear with a recent prescription--for those of you who wear glasses, you can picture that terrible feeling. Back to the shop I went to choose a second pair. Ka-ching, ka-ching. And so embarrassing...

Several days later, above culprit lifted John's reading glasses out of a drawer that hadn't been closed properly. Did I say 'I told you so, I warned you'? No I did not. 

Then I was busy cooking too many things at once, and I took the brand new blue glasses off to read directions (or something.) After dinner, those glasses were gone. I searched everywhere I might have put them, and finally found them out on the porch, frames mangled, glass in shards. 

Did my beloved spouse say 'I told you so'? Readers, I dare not say. But there might be room for two in the dog house...good thing they are both so cute. Now I must call the optical shop again.

Early photo

And it's your turn to tell a story about your own mishaps, with pets or without! I'll let Tbone (aka 'the good pet') choose one comment to win a trade paperback copy of THE KEY LIME CRIME.

And don't forget to order your copies of THE KEY LIME CRIME and preorder A SCONE OF CONTENTION. And ps, the ebook edition of THE KEY LIME CRIME is on sale for $2.99!

74 comments:

  1. Oh, my goodness! Those glasses need a home that the dog cannot reach!

    When we were first married, we had two golden retrievers, Rex and Gina. One day, I was making bologna sandwiches for lunch . . . my bread and mayonnaise were on the table. I spread the mayonnaise, got the bologna, and put a thick slice on each piece of bread. I turned away to get the cheese and when I turned back, there was no bologna on any of the bread slices. I couldn’t figure it out; I put the bologna on again and, as I looked away to open the package of cheese slices, Rex stepped up to the table and very carefully lifted the bologna [and only the bologna] off every piece of bread on the table! To this day, we laugh about Rex scarfing down the bologna . . . .

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    1. that's hysterical Joan! He was on a low-carb diet. We're pretty sure Lottie nabbed the last pair of glasses from the kitchen table. If you don't push the chairs in, she hops right up and helps herself.

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    2. LOL, Joan. I can picture it! Ha!

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  2. I would never have thought a dog had a taste for glasses, or maybe it's that your and John's taste in glasses is just irresistible. Hahaha! Don't you wonder why she started doing this? I'm sure you do. Does she eat the glass? I would think that's a bad thing for her health. I can imagine Tbone watching the pup with the glasses and shaking his head.

    We did have a dog that ate paper towels. Oh, and our dog Coco did run off from Philip in the front yard. He went looking for her everywhere, and finally when he was around the corner and walking down the road looking, a man came out of his house and asked Philip if he'd lost a dog. Philip said yes and followed the man around to his backyard, expecting to see Coco in the yard. But, the man continued on into his back door, so Philip followed. Coco was lying down on the man's bed.

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    1. OMG, I love that story Kathy! We rented in a neighborhood a long time ago where a friendly Scottie lived. He too would come in the house and get in bed!

      She doesn't actually eat the glassies, she crunches them to bits. I think she loves the noise...

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    2. Irwin just reminded me that one time my first dog disappeared and I searched the whole neighborhood for him. I found him down the hill at the Dairy Queen!

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    3. Lucy, maybe she could learn to pop bubble wrap. Hahaha! Judy, now that's my kind of dog, one that heads for the Dairy Queen.

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    4. Have you tried those soft toys stuffed with the crinkly plastic water bottles? Maybe those would satisfy her need to crunch.

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  3. Oh, Roberta. Glasses are so expensive, too! Naughty, naughty doggie.

    Our sweet pandemic kitten Ganesh matured into a maniac who loved eating strings. Our nice newish blinds with strings? Several are now unusable, and the others we had to stop using and run the strings along the tops of cabinets. Blinds don't come cheap, either! He also loves destroying cardboard boxes by chewing on them, but that's okay. For a while he had an entire box condo complex on the kitchen floor. Better boxes than my wrist, which he also decided it was okay to attack with his teeth.

    A few months ago we decided to let him go out during the daylight hours, and he's a changed young man. He's mostly calm when he come in to eat and sleep, plus he completely ignores strings. Time to order new blinds!

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    1. I saw pictures of his kitty condos on your Facebook page Edith--adorable. I will not tell T-bone that Ganesh gets to out...we have fisher cats in the neighborhood and can't risk it.

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    2. Of course not. It actually came down to either letting him out or giving him back to the rescue organization. We don't have a big enough house for his energy!

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    3. Edith, our Lucy goes in and out during the day. She was a roaming neighborhood cat, and there is no way we could keep her in all the time when she's determined to go out. But we have our routine and she comes in at dusk every night. There are benefits to this, we've discovered, as she's a champion mouser.

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  4. My daughter recently got a new puppy. A Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. So cute. Well, she ate my daughter's reading glasses, then ate my granddaughter's glasses. I don't know what the draw is with the glasses and dogs, but it's definitely there.

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  5. I had a similar experience with a pair of glasses and a beloved, but very bad, Lab puppy. While I was asleep she jumped up on the dresser and grabbed my glasses and chewed them up. I had to have a whole new pair made because she mangled the lenses too. I learned to put them in the hard case and into a drawer when not wearing them.

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    1. You know exactly what I mean--and you'd think I'd have learned that with the first mangled pair

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  6. 67777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777yyyyyyyyyyyyyyThis is what Jimmy the cat is fond of doing, but actual destruction of things, not so much. My neighbor's boxer puppy once got into my garage while I was gone and I came back to a line of items strewn across my yard and his. At the end of the line was one of my best-ever fitting work boots, the heel chewed. Bad pupper!

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    1. Bad puppy! Luckily they are cute when young and destructive...

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  7. Oh Lucy! And that picture. Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

    Koda is not much on destruction. He was a terrible counter-surfer when we first got him (I mean, when your head is above the counter, it's not hard). I cut two tablespoons of butter for cooking one night, put it on the counter, turned around for 10 seconds, and when I turned back it was gone, wrapper and all. And there stood Koda, licking his lips, innocent as all get out.

    Our first dog, Casey, also wasn't much on destruction. He did, however, manage to eat almost 100 pieces of miniature chocolate one Halloween when we took the kids out trick-or-treating. He pulled the bowl from the middle of the table, unwrapped each piece, and scarfed it down. I expected him to die, but he didn't even get sick. Stomach of iron, that dog.

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    1. I loved that he unwrapped the chocolate. Tonka once ate a whole bowl of Christmas Hershey kisses. I called the dog poison control but the woman was so obsessed with the exact weight of what he ate that I didn't get much help.

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    2. I assumed he wasn't big on the foil. LOL

      From what I understand, the ratio of chocolate to the weight of the dog is a big factor in whether they get sick, so that's probably why she wanted the weight of the chocolate.

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    3. Yes I'm sure you're right. But I did not know the weight of a kiss:)

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  8. Over the 40+ years with German Shepherds, the puppy stage is usually when things get chewed on. First dog ate a couple of nightgowns, so I began to hang them in the closet instead of leaving them under my pillow. Second dog chewed on a couple pairs of leather shoes. Third dog, not much destruction that I can remember. Kenai ate the corners off throw pillows and destroyed a couple dog beds. He had one dog bed that I nicknamed "his girlfriend" because of the other things he did to it, but the blog isn't about that, is it?

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    1. It could be though Judy LOL. Lottie has a snuggle puppy that kept her company when she was tiny. Now she humps it and tries to rip it apart. The friends who kept her for us for a few days call her a porn star:)

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    2. OMG, Lucy, too, funny. ROTFL!

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  9. What we put up with because they’re cute. I currently do not have a pet so am out of practice. A couple weeks ago was family week at the lake. I came in before the others. Put away the cold stuff, left a loaf of my favorite bread at the back of the counter. The visiting Newfoundland had no problem reaching it. He enjoyed the entire loaf.

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  10. Someone once told me that plastic has a sweet taste, so maybe there needs to be a tastes-bad solution to put on them. A friend's cats used to chew the phone cord, way back when, and he had to wrap it securely around the wall phone to keep it working. Another friend's St. Bernard ate half of my sandal. My brother used to get yearling dogs from the Humane Society. He said people gave up on them when they were just about to outgrow their naughty stage, so there's hope for better days. Meanwhile, a vault for the glasses? Hugs <3 (and a scene or two for a book?)

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  11. Oh no! When my dog was a pup she got my glasses from the coffee table (I was napping) and she made a few nicks in the lenses. I wasn't about to buy new glasses just for that so I waited until it was time to renew my prescription. That's when my eye doc told me they were guaranteed and would've been replaced! Now he tells me. Too, too bad yours weren't, Lucy.

    A different dog once swallowed my wedding ring! The vet said not to worry, we'd find it in a day or so. We didn't. We followed that dog around for a week and even waved a metal detector over him. Finally a week later we hit pay dirt, so to speak. Lesson learned.

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    1. the first pair the lenses were covered. But not the others:(. The ring story is classic!

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  12. Louie chewed my prescription eyeglasses during the height of the pandemic. If I owned a haz mat suit I would have worn it to the optician, who was able to repair my glasses. Our first standard poodle, Toby, chewed soccer cleats and shin guards with flipflops for dessert. Our first female, Jazz, chewed the carved walnut handle on an antique dresser. Our second standard, Boo, was a demon TV remote chewer. Pens chewed to smithereens leaking on the rugs, a two-foot hole in the sheetrock wall, electrical tape, Barbie dolls...I've given Jazz and Louie elk antlers to chew which has helped.

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    1. OMG Margaret, your family has suffered for love! this girl has a million chew toys, and I just ordered more...

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    3. Try real, hard bones (from the butcher), the round beef bones, boiled until gray/white. Cooled. Leave some shreds of meat on them and some marrow inside (not too much). Put puppy in the back yard and let him chew. Keep bone until it starts to splinter then give him different one. This method has saved lots of shoes and couch cushions chez nous.

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  13. Now I'm on a roll, thinking of so many others. Like the time I was decorating a cake for my girlfriend's bridal shower and I left it to answer the door. It was my friend's brother and I took him to see the cake. What we saw was a beagle mouth sized chunk out of it! We made a pact not to say a word and then patched with frosting!

    Or the time my mother took 2 pies to my son's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Instead of eating the pies right away after dinner (which disappointed my mother) we went for a ride. Only to come home to find 2 empty tupperware pie containers on the floor! His dogs, Bonnie and Clyde were not even remorseful. I told my mother that whenever she planned to take a pie somewhere to always cut herself a piece first and keep it in her refrigerator. That way she would be sure to have some.

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    1. The pie story--how disappointing! This reminds me of the woman who used to work with the Hemingway cats in Key West. There are many weddings on the grounds. One time she caught two cats on the table eating the frosting off the wedding cake. Patch job there too!

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  14. When Libby ate my glasses, my optical shop replaced them free of charge because they were still under warranty. I didn't think the warranty covered not being able to withstand powerful canine jaws, but the store made it work. Needless to say, I am now a loyal customer for life. At three, Libby no longer chews, but when she's bored and wants attention, she will run off with something valuable in her mouth. Nothing is more fun than watching me come running and screeching after her.

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    1. we play that game too Susan! The only way to rescue the prize is to yell "treat"--she drops the other item and comes running. I am certain that's a bad training method, but it's the only thing that works.

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  15. Oh no! I am still trying to understand why the glasses are so delicious…

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  16. Whodathunkit? Glasses?!? Another thing I've missed by not having dogs. Must be something about the shininess. Fortunately after I had cataract surgery, all I need are reading glasses - available at about $20 for 6 pair. They're not handsome like yours Lucy, or all that sturdy so they eventually break, especially with me taking them on and off a gazillion times a day. I'm down to two left intact.

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    1. Hallie, have you tried Peepers? They are the best!

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  17. I don’t have a dog… but my brother does. Max has eaten my sister in laws glasses, multiple charging cords, and lately the butter she had hidden on the counter! Lol. At my house he has eaten a towel!

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  18. My cats and dog are pretty well behaved but my daughter in law got a new kitten and he gets into everything. He likes to steal my grand daughter's Mr. Potato Head glasses and chew on them. He hides a lot of her toys. I've decided I'm much more a dog person than a cat person. 😊

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    1. we have grandchildren visiting soon and I KNOW Lottie is going to steal their stuff...

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  19. Let's see - there was the day back in the 1970s when I came home to find water flowing out of my front door. My six month old German Shepherd had eaten through the waterbed. As if that weren't enough - he also managed to open the feed cupboard, drag a 50 pound bag of kibble into the mess, rip it open, and feast! His name was Demian. We changed that to Demon that day. He was also fond of car upholstery. If he was in the back seat and quiet...

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    1. Meant to add that I am reading and loving Key Lime Crime right now. I'm trying to prolong the read so I don't get to the end so fast. Love T-Bone's cameo!

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  20. I don't have any pets now but we had 2 cats when we were kids. The older cat, Kit, used to meet the St. Bernard puppy wondering down the street, when he got out of his yard. She would jump on it's back and "ride" it home. Same cat, years later, brought home her first "kill" in many years. We had just moved to the other end of town. When we finally let her out to explore and she brought home a steak. Now why someone had a steak in their yard we will never know. We decided it was put out to defrost and Kit caught it. She was so proud of her "kill." Mom wanted us to ask some of our new neighbors if they were missing a steak. We said no.

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  21. Shoes, flip flops, furniture, cushions and digging up carpets. Never a dull moment with Bogie.

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    1. You're the winner of THE KEY LIME CRIME! shoot me an email with your snail mail address and I'll get it off to you! thanks everyone for the great laughs... raisleib at gmail dot com

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  22. Oh gosh. I think every dog we've had as a puppy has done weird things. Maurice the airedale was camping with us in the New Mexico mountains; our son was two or three. He managed to walk into a gulley and then waited patiently arms up for one of us to lean over and pull him out. He had an apple in one hand and Maurice walked over, took the apple and left to eat it. Not a rescue dog. Our two airemutts, Elliot and Reilly, worked as a team. Our son was home from school and cooked himself a pizza. He put it on the table and opened the door to let the dogs in. They rushed in, went to opposite sides of the table, grabbed the pizza, tore it in half, and raced out the door again with their prizes. They were the last puppies we had. We adopted mature dogs after that and didn't have to deal with a lot of chewy problems. Over the years puppies have destroyed boots, hoses, a riding mower seat, teethed on a rocking chair, gwawed a book we were going to give someone for Christmas. I don't remember now all the "victims" through the years.

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  23. LOL - when Otto was a puppy he ate FIVE pairs of the Hub's reading glasses. It was RIDICULOUS. Hub simply refused to put his glasses away in their clamshell case, thinking the puppy would stop because he told him "no". Honestly, I started saying "I told you so" just to irritate him into putting his glasses away.

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  24. This is amazing to me. I've never heard of dogs eating glasses before. Now, several of my CATS have gotten very excited about glasses and enjoyed rubbing the corners (if on someone's face) or gnawing the arms (if off.) I always figured it was skin oils or human smell that got them going. But eating them? No, thank heavens. It was bad enough the summer the Sailor lost/broke THREE pairs of prescription glasses at roughly $200 each. I certainly felt like whacking him on the nose with a rolled up paper afterwards.

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    1. My younger son was a chronic loser of expensive items, Julia - especially glasses. I finally started getting the cheapest ones I could find for him. He's 32 now and I THINK he's gotten over it.

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  25. My sister used to break my glasses all the time when we were kids, usually by accident though. My cat never has, instead she's my little bread thief. Any bread products are stored in the oven now because she'll drag an entire loaf across the house to chew on under the bed. We found out she can work zippers when she stole my sister's sandwich out of her closed lunch bag. I even caught her trying to get into a pop tart one night. Not sure why she has a bread fascination but we've had to be very careful about where it's left.

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  26. Back in the mid-to-late 1970's, the first family dog Jeff once trapped two of my father's fellow cops in the house. The first cop had dropped by to check on the dog while we were off on a day trip. Jeff may have let him in, but he had other ideas about letting him leave. So the guy had to call a 2nd cop to help get him out of the house.

    Now, he wasn't snarling or biting at the guys but apparently he took protecting the home seriously because he wasn't letting these "strangers" leave. As you might expect it was the last time my dad's fellow officers would check in on the dog.

    The second dog, Barney, was a beagle-chihuahua mix so he was pretty small when he was young. And whenever he would come in from the backyard, he would run into the living room and jump on the couch. Then one day my dad was taking a nap when the dog was let in. Barney ran in and jumped on the couch...and landed just perfectly enough that my dad ended up having to go to the hospital. Imagine trying to explain that this tiny little dog put the kind of hurt on you (admittedly while he was sleeping and vulnerable).

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    1. Jay, the worst dog-related injury Ross ever had - after a lifetime of dogs stretching back to babyhood - was when he was at a 4th of July BBQ with some friends, one of whom was fostering a miniature pinscher. This minipin was smaller than our cat at the time, and Ross decided he was going to make friends with it. The dog had a different idea, and bit him in the toe.

      Now, I didn't witness this, because I was away at some book event, and for some reason, Ross decided (despite my kids urging him otherwise) he would wait until i got home in two days before seeking medical attention.

      By the time I arrived back in Maine, his toe was the size of a golf ball. It had to be drained, dressed, and he needed intravenous antibiotics! He limped around in sandals for the rest of the summer, and every time anyone would ask him about the dog bite incident, the minipin got larger and larger... ;-D

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  27. We've been pretty lucky in the dog-damage department over the years. But our daughter's dog, Monster, was almost very unlucky. They were staying with us while waiting for their house to be remodeled and Monster, a rescue, was a terrible counter surfer in those early days. He somehow got into the tools in Rick's office and ate a pot of jeweler's rouge. Jasmine had a little munch, too, but thankfully she didn't ingest much. It turns out that jeweler's rouge is made from iron which is highly poisonous to dogs, but it also has tallow--beef fat, so apparently smelled like yummy food! Monster was okay after lots of very expensive treatment, but yeesh, who would have thought!

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  28. I had a kitten who was playing with a ball of wound up yarn and inhaled a three yard piece of yarn.luckily I noticed it the next day when she wasn't feeling good and my vet did emergency surgery on a Saturday afternoon. You always see cats with balls of yarn and think they usually play with yarn. Not a good idea, they can't spit it out because of their scratchy tongue and it wraps around the intestines. We had a good outcome, but very scary and costly. Now I make sure the yarn is put away and not near the cats.

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  29. Thanks for all these stories--I do feel like at least I have company in my idiocy! And Lottie keeps saying, see, I told you there were others like me!

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  30. Boy, does this bring back memories of all the crazy, quirky things our dogs and cats have done over the years! Besides similar incidences recounted, we've had a cat (Queenie) who would knock the cordless phone off that was docked in the answering machine, or step on the machine's buttons whenever she heard ringing and a voice calling, so we had to move it from the kitchen to the study/office and keep the door shut when we were busy or at work. And aside from all the foods and leather sandals/shoes previous dogs ate,(like couch cushions Lefty chewed & strew around when we were gone) our old dog Bob Marley would sit in the shade of our circular driveway on top of my car and began to eat his way along the black hard-top of my old Chevy Nova! Oh yeah, and when our calico & white cat Amy would try to lean over from the raised kitchen counter when we lived in Austin in the mid-70's and get into the trash can, she taught our new half-Great Dane(very tall) puppy Rufus how to lift the lid, and we'd come home to find they'd had a picnic, which included evidence of plastic wrappers on the floor and dangerous pork chop bones! It's all good, right?!

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    1. Haha Lynn, I guess it is. Your post reminded me that Tbone is an accessory to the puppy crimes. He knocks things off counters she can't reach so she can then have her way with those prizes:)

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  31. As someone who can barely see without my glasses, I find those stories very disturbing. Don't bring those glasses-eating dogs around me. I loved Key Lime Crime. Looking forward to the next book.

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  32. My dog chews up underwear even new ones. Doesn't matter whose they are either. A library book got chewed up too. She's older know and sticks to underwear!
    One time pies on the counter got eaten from my daughters lab.
    Never know with dogs. Even a brand new bag of candy bars bag and all. 😳 thank you for the chance

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  33. Perhaps you need to bring the dog to the vet? I wonder if she? he has a vitamin definicency?

    I am so sorry about the dog eating your glasses. I have heard of dogs eating hearing aids /cochlear implant speech processors.

    Loved Scone of Contention. I think it is my favorite book in the series since I am partial to Scotland.

    Diana

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  34. My male cat is my problem child. One morning about 10 years ago, as we're all getting ready for the day and I come out of the shower, I find the cat had gotten into the lower kitchen cabinet where I kept the bag of onions and dragged them out to the hallway leading to the bedrooms. This is the same cat that would bang the cabinet door open to demand his breakfast or dinner. And then half an hour after he's fed and happy, will stand in your face, licking and kneading you like your his mama and he's purring the whole time.

    Love this series, please keep them coming.

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  35. Had to take my glasses off from laughing so much!..
    One cat .precious..2..trouble !..at work one day, stressful as ever and coukd not wait to return home to relax witb a tea and my purring buddies..that turned out not well!..i opened the door to the apartment, only to take view of the crime scene...poor Beethoven was in shards on the piano bench, gbe plate glass mirror was wedged behind the piano ..sheet music like fallen leaves around the base of the piano..and 2 felines meowing for dinner..as a pet caregiver, one only shakes your head..bends down to pat the welcoming heads..and begin the process of putting things in order..just another day !
    ....i too am eating my way thru the series and loving it!..i order mine from key west island books.!

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    1. thanks so much for sharing your bad cat stories:), and for reading!

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  36. Petite is the winner of THE KEY LIME CRIME! shoot me an email with your snail mail address and I'll get it off to you! thanks everyone for the great laughs... raisleib at gmail dot com

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  37. I wonder if doggy chew toys come in the shape of glasses? Sounds just the thing.

    One of our cats absolutely will not leave a vase containing water (flowers too, of course) alone. It MUST be knocked over! Gaah! Water everywhere, sometimes wetting things that should not be wet. So, no more flowers in the house. We can still enjoy them in the garden, however.

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  38. I can relate to incidents with glasses. When I was in junior college, I was sitting inside with my friend and my glass shattered from a bb gun! I don't know why someone had a bb gun, but my glasses probably saved my eyes! lindaherold999@gmail.com

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