When Wylie first came to live with me, he came with a note of caution. He also came with a number of signs on his kennel inlcuding, “Live Animal,” “This Side Up,” and the classic “I’d rather be fishing” (I don’t doubt for a moment that he would have preferred fishing over air travel). But what Steve told me over the phone was, “He’s gonna trash your house.”
For the first ten months, everything went splendidly. When I left for work, Wylie would watch me out the window and when I returned, he’d greet me at the door. After a few weeks he even started imitating Snoopy, but instead of sleeping on top of a doghouse, he’d sleep on top of the couch with his head strategically positioned so he could see out the window. It was a good arrangement and I soon forgot about Steve’s warning.
Over the course of the summer I became increasingly busy with work and the planning for the Jaycees’ participation in a series of events that became known as “Pumpkin Season” (with three back-to-back “Paint-A-Pumpkin” events in under a month, the label certainly fit). All this activity necessarily left me with less time at home and Wylie noticed. When I came home from Oktoberfest, one of the sofa cushions was in ruins with pieces of stuffing scattered throughout the first floor.
There was no point in getting angry with Wylie, he wasn’t going to make the association between his actions and my anger, so I did nothing. Assuming it was a one-time occurrence, I left him loose in the house the next day while I went to church. It wasn’t a one-time occurrence, when I got home a second cushion had met its fate.
Over the next two years, any time I had to leave the house, Wylie spent the day in his kennel. First in the plastic travel kennel, and later, after he’d shown a talent for breaking the latch on that one, a metal cage. As evidenced by his frequent escapes and attempted escapes, Wylie never liked spending time in the kennel, but we at least got into a routine where Wylie would already be in the kennel before I came downstairs.
Although he accepted the cage, it was clear that Wylie didn’t like it. He had frequent anxiety attacks, drenching himself in slobber and more than once hurting himself. Needless to say, I felt quite guilty about it, but what was I to do? As much as I didn’t want him to have anxiety attacks, I didn’t want him to destroy the furniture either. So I did some experiments.
The first experiment, conducted a few months after the first couch incident, was to try leaving him out during the day. I started out leaving him alone and out of the cage for a few hours at a time over a long weekend. It didn’t work, when I came back from work on Monday there was another (mercifully undamaged) cushion in the middle of the living room.
Over the past couple years, I’ve tried the experiment a few more times. The most promising one was when I tried leaving him in my bedroom. That worked great for the first week. Then I went out of town for a weekend, leaving him at the kennel. I picked him up on Sunday, giving him the day to re-acclimate. It didn’t work. I came home from work and found that in his efforts to find me during the day, he’d tried digging out of the bedroom. There were shreds of carpet everywhere!
Back in May I decided to repeat the experiment with leaving him in the bedroom. This time there was more than a month before I’d be going out of town, giving Wylie plenty of time to get used to being in that room. Just to be safe, I decided to take a lesson from the previous experiment, bought the smallest chair mat I could find, and cut it down to fit in the doorway. That way there if he tried digging again the damage would (hopefully) be limited.
The experiment seems to have worked. I’ve been out of town twice in the past six weeks and Wylie hasn’t destroyed the house.
One of the results of Wylie’s anxiety attacks has been an incredible amount of drool on the floor and bars of the cage. The result is that over a short amount of time, the cage has rusted and become quite an eyesore. Wylie seems to be OK staying in the bedroom all day (no doubt the softer bed is as much of an attraction as the larger amount of space), so on Saturday I took the cage apart and plan to put it out for Tuesday’s recycling pick up.
Wylie spent most of Saturday smirking.

Wylie watched as I carried my overnight bag and his supper dish out to the car in preparation for an overnight trip to Pittsburgh. “Whatcha think Wye? Are you thinking ‘road trip’?”

Wylie looked up and blinked as if to say, “‘Road trip’? I was thinking ‘toga party.’ But sure, ‘road trip’ sounds good too!”

A few months after Wylie first came to live with me, we were out for our evening walk when he spotted a rabbit hopping through the yard, trying to get away. He kept on walking but never took his eyes off the rabbit.
That’s how my dog hit a car.
The next night, he did it again. It was the same driveway, the same car, and probably the same rabbit. That was three years ago.
Laura came to visit this evening and around 10:00 we took Wylie out for his evening walk. We were on the last leg of the trip with less than a quarter mile to go when Wylie yelped. I don’t know what he was watching this time, but he clipped his shoulder against a pickup’s trailer hitch.
They say that those who don’t learn from history are destined to repeat it. This worries me somewhat as Wylie’s approach to life seems to be best summed up as, “Remember, I don’t want to learn anything from this experience.”

The first time it happened was about a month ago. Wylie started barking around 3 A.M. and after a few minutes I realized it was because of an unidentifiable noise coming from out past the backyard. I closed the bedroom window so the sound was muted and Wylie decided that was good enough and went back to sleep.
It happened again last night, but this time I listened a bit more carefully. At first, I thought it sounded something like a wild turkey or some other large bird. But very few birds (not even Terry Dactyl) are awake at 3 A.M. After listening a bit more, I thought it sounded a bit like a cat yowling. At least one of my neighbors has a cat that spends most of its time outdoors so I’ve heard plenty of yowling during the summer months, but that wasn’t quite right either. As the sound drew nearer, I identified it as more of a yipping bark. That’s when I realized what was going on. The coyotes were checking out the neighborhood.
Not so long ago, the Washington Post magazine section had a feature article about coyotes coming into this area. Although some people don’t like them, they’re generally the same people who overfill (or otherwise don’t properly close) their trashcans and then wonder why they draw nuisance animals. The coyotes are just exploiting a food source. For myself, I find their willingness to adapt to be somewhat fascinating.
Wylie and the coyotes (which I can’t help thinking, would be an excellent name for a band) traded barks a minute or two longer and then the yipping receded into the distance. Wylie then curled up next to the bed and went back to sleep.
It wasn’t until our walk this morning that I realized what had happened. Wylie had heard "The Call of the Wild" and, disgusted with the early hour, he’d hung up on them.

One of the useful bits I remember from High School is that when you come up with an idea in science and it seems to make sense, you call it a hypothesis. The next step is to perform experiments and see if the results of the experiment match what the hypothesis says they should be. If they match, then then the hypothesis becomes a theory. This process can be repeated as needed in order to refine the new theory and clear up any inconsistencies between it and the results of the experiments.
I’ve felt badly over the past two years about having to keep Wylie caged when I’m out of the house. The problem is, I’ve sometimes stepped out of the house for less than five minutes only to come back inside and find a couch cushion on the floor.
Over time, I noticed that the cushion Wylie most frequently pulls off the couch is the one by the window. So I formed the hypothesis that perhaps what was happening was that Wylie was jumping on the couch so he could watch out the window and in the process of jumping off and on, he was knocking the cushion onto the floor.
So, next I set out to test this hypothesis. Twice in the past week I’ve left Wylie out of the cage while I went out to run errands. Both times I came back after several hours to find Wylie sacked out on my bed and all the couch cushions exactly where they belonged.
I left Wylie out of the cage again this afternoon while I went out to finish my Christmas shopping. When I came back, I found Wylie curled up on my bed looking up, happy to see me, the very picture of innocent puppyhood.
There are, of course, pieces of couch cushion scattered all over the living room floor.