A Pit’s Christmas

The year 2006 was our pit-bull, Roxy’s first Christmas with us. She had been a Christmas gift the year before to a man who couldn’t take proper care of her – so he gave her to us.

We’d had her jus’ short of a year and felt she was progressing fine in her general socialization with the other dogs as well as the family. Because of this we let our guard down.

Shortly before Christmas, we went got a tree from the local Boy Scout’s lot jus’ down the road from our home. We brought it in and set it up, leaving it undecorated for a couple of days, allowing the dogs to get used to it.

First thing that happened was our black lab, Yaeger, raised his leg against it. I had to take it out in the back yard, hose it down and let it dry off, before bringing it back in.

I chalked this up to his desire to declare ownership over the pine tree.

A day or so later, I dragged the tree back into the living room, where it was left until the following day. That’s when my wife decorated it, using lights, bulbs and her many  heirloom ornaments.

Things went along fine for about a week, so we felt brave enough to start setting out packages under the tree. Each of the dogs took their turn sniffing the brightly colored wrappings, but none of them touch any and there were no more “canine watering” incidents.

Two days later, I returned after being in town for about three-hours, to discover the majority of the tree was missing from our living room. I say “majority,” because there was a number of broken branches and tons of pine needles scattered around the room along with broken bulbs and ornaments.

It took only seconds for my shock to ware off and turn to anger as I raced out the back door and found what remained of our Christmas tree. Roxy had managed to pull, tug and drag the tree through both dog-doors and outside.

For hours afterwards, all I could say was, “G-d damned dog!” as I spent the next several hours cleaning up the mess she had made. Oddly enough she never touched one package that had been placed out – jus’ the tree.

That would happen the following year. G-d damned dog!