The English Maximalista

It’s been over a week since I started this blog, and I’m fairly certain I have managed to mention my dog in most of them so far.

Sadie is an enormous part of our lives. Such that, we bought her a brand new king size bed-frame and mattress when we moved here, which she generously allows me and Mr Maximalista to share with her.

Naturally, since it IS her bed, she gets to sleep spreadeagled across the middle of it. Every evening, she nabs the lion’s share, whilst mummy and daddy are relegated to the edges of either side, shivering beneath the handkerchief-sized remainder of the duvet. 

But as long as she is comfortable, nothing else matters. THAT is how important Sadie is to us.

Labradors are generally acknowledged to be an intelligent breed of dog. Sadly, this is not the case for our dog. Yes, she answers to her own name (when she chooses to). But that is about the extent of it. She doesn’t even understand the age-old canine concept of “fetch”. 

23 hours of her day are spent in various forms of slumber. The remaining hour is spent slinking around the house, on the prowl for mischief. Her quintessential party trick is stealing napkins off the laps of diners. Even though her intentions are blatantly transparent and unvarying, since this happens at every single meal.

Sadie does love “people food”. Whether we intentionally give it to her, or whether she takes it stealthily. She has figured out how to open the pantry door, and one time ate an entire 500g bag of salted cashews off the middle shelf. Bag not included… Which shows how stupid she is, because if she had eaten the evidence, we probably wouldn’t have noticed that the cashews were even gone? 

Naturally we reorganized the pantry accordingly, after that little escapade. Like everything else in the house, it has been Sadie-proofed.

Just recently, she ate an ENTIRE bowl of a dozen apples off the coffee table, cores and all. Another time, she was walking around the house all day with a banana in her mouth, like it was an old tennis ball. So we no longer leave fruit bowls in low places.

Perhaps our favourite anecdote, though, is about the time when she stole an entire block of butter off the kitchen counter, which she then proceeded to eat, packaging included. Understandably, this was vomited up, shortly thereafter. In the front room on my wool rug.

Thank goodness she didn’t vomit on the tile floor, where it could have been easily cleanable.

What happened next, gentle reader, is not for the eyes of the faint-stomached. Please jump over the next paragraph if you quease easily.

Because the vomit induced by her greedy guzzling of the aforementioned butter brick was apparently so delicious to Sadie, she licked it with such vigor that it created a MASSIVE HOLE in the very middle of my 10×12 wool rug. (See picture below.)

We knew about the theft of the block of butter, but it wasn’t until several hours later that we noticed the bloody great hole in my rug. We had naturally assumed she was pouting in the other room because she had gotten shouted at for her thievery. But no, she was simply in there furthering her skullduggery, instead.

Sadie’s quest for human food is not because we don’t regularly feed her. We do. Nor is it because she has developed a highly sophisticated palate: she has not. Here follows proof.

The English Maximalista’s Comprehensive List of Things Known to have been Chewed and/or Ingested by our Stupid Dog:

• Candles (not lit / plural)
• 125 year old beautifully bound copy of Samuel Pepys’ diary, turned into pulp
• Cherry pits from the garbage ($230 to induce vomiting at the Vet)
• Sterling silver picture frames (plural)
• $50 mouthguards that Mr Maximalista wears to stop him from snoring (plural)
• Any face creams on my nightstand, preferably with a chewable plastic pump, so that the expensive serums within cannot be extracted
• Requisite socks (ingested / plural)
• Requisite shoes (chewed / plural)
• The bow off one Chanel ballet flat (singular — I learned a valuable lesson about putting shoes away)
• Daddy’s AirPods
• Bag of coffee beans (bag included)
• One cashmere glove (FULLY digested, if you get my meaning…)
• Pencils left laying around get magically transformed into matchsticks
• 2X laptop charger cords (not plugged in…)
• Dirt. Any dirt. The crunchy kind is the best. Which she brings into the house to eat like it’s a cookie, leaving crumbs in her wake
• Various kitchen utensils, not limited to wooden spoons, bamboo tongs, silicone spatulas (again: PLURAL)
• Goose poop
• Deer poop
• Rabbit poop
• A live vole (which she spat out, and it ran off)
• A desiccated frog on the tarmac
• And last, but by no means least, let us not forget her culinary obsession with used Kleenex, amongst other personal items from the bathroom trashcan that we don’t discuss in polite company.

It’s quite the Hall of Shame, isn’t it.

Once items have been nabbed, she disappears from our presence. Which in itself is a massive giveaway that she is Up To No Good, since she is usually very co-dependent and generally constantly demands fuss from one of her hoomins.

For some reason, there is one particular corner of the dining room rug where she prefers to hide the evidence of her larceny. This is the same not-so-secret place where she stashes her bones and rawhides. It’s quite endearing actually, even after one stubs one’s toe on them.

Any guests staying at our house are urged to keep their guest room doors firmly closed. Because Sadie WILL innocently appear on their bed, and the moment their attention is diverted, will shamelessly nose through their belongings with impropriety.

We always point out to houseguests that if they see an upturned laundry basket in an unusual place, it has been deliberately put there to keep the little twerp away. For some reason, Sadie hasn’t yet figured out that she could, quite simply, jump over the laundry basket…

As I already told you: she IS a moron.

Yet somehow, despite all of this, she managed to steal our hearts.

We just love her to pieces.

Lots of love,

M xo