Pepper is now 8 months old. She is still very much a puppy and chews on everything in sight. Our yard is a mess most days because she's always bringing her "treasures" to the deck and front yard. I have had to re-pot many flowers and plants this spring due to her extra-curious nature. She's actually destroyed about $20.00 worth of plants that I've purchased or that have been given to me as gifts. I'm not impressed.
Each morning Pepper greets me by jumping all over me with her dirty paws. She is relentless until I start playing "ball" with her. Eventually she calms down, but I usually carry a mop pole with me to ward her off. She also has an extreme hatred towards Alaska (our mother dog), and tries to pick a fight with her whenever possible. She bothers the boys too, but not as much as she does me. She rarely ever jumps on Wayne. I'm the one that feeds and waters her and I'm the one that gets the most abuse. Go figure.
I've been this close to asking Wayne to have her go bye-bye, simply because of her destructiveness and aggressiveness towards me. She's not like this constantly, but until I give her the undivided attention she wants from me (at 6:00 a.m. each morning . . . ) she pesters me; and I'm getting tired of it.
However, in all of this contemplation about whether or not she's a good fit for us or not, she's definitely been earning some bonus points with me in the area of rodent control. In the last week, this is what she's decided our world is better without:
1. Two mice;
2. A gopher;
3. A rat;
4. A magpie;
5. A porcupine (Last night at 4:00 a.m. she barked frantically and growled relentlessly outside our bedroom window until Wayne got out of bed and took his gun with him. He was able to kill the porcupine, which was only about 20 feet from our house. Pepper had the good sense to only bark at it, but not attack, which our past dogs didn't get, which resulted in them with a mouthful of porcupine quills).
6. A minimum of 2 skunks (she's been sprayed, but at least she's keeping them from getting near the house).
7. Many other creatures that I probably don't even realize exist in our yard at night.
If you know anything about my absolute hatred and disgust towards mice and rats, you will understand fully why I want to keep her. A dog that catches mice and rats can stay. She's doing better than the cats in that department.
