I recently completed my Associate's Program from home through the University of Phoenix, Axia program. Bella is a major contributor to my success. Not only did Bella help me remember to put my research material away but she also reminded me over and over again, when it is time to study is not during the afternoon when she wishes to play. You see, this is very important going forward in all future endeavors for me because I have determined I will be a better writer than business manager. Mind you, I get plenty of practice at home refereeing a 15 year old and 5 year old day in and day out. I am always multitasking and giving redirection to these two children who are polar opposites in every way possible. I swear if Sean is going to say something nice, Brianna is going to report it as he was being rude to her. I have had to figure out how to be diplomatic in delegating punishment. I was unaware at how well happy little five year old children develop a knack for lying in order to show their power over a teenager who they consider a nuisance.
This brings me to why I feel it is best I have Bella here 24/7 even though she gives me grey hair more rapidly than I think it would develop naturally. I really cannot prove my theory since I get my hair colored without fail every five weeks. I have to or I look like Broom Hilda after more than six weeks, and manage to scare the children and the hubby too. Bella is always sniffing around my work area. More than once I have left papers out that I highlighted important information on only to come home or back in the room in some instances, to find nothing but shredded slips of the words I was working on adding to my memory folder. She has also decided that pens are a tasty treat beside her BBQ flavored dog bones. In the past two weeks, I have found the carcass of many a blue and black gel pen around the house. Luckily, I have not seen any evidence of splattered ink on the living room carpet. I believe she is smart enough to bite down on it once she is in the kitchen where for the most part, it is impossible to see a stain. I love industrial looking concrete flooring. It is so manageable. Okay, back to Bella sorry. I am not worried she is eating the pens; which is a good thing. We are making progress. We have found something she merely chews up and spits out; something she would like to do to poor Suzie.
You are all probably wondering what the correlation is between a five year old who is learning that fibbing is a good way to avoid a timeout or losing video game and TV privileges, and a dog who cannot speak and should be nicknamed DEMON. Well, it is a good thing the dog can be vocal in other ways or the five year old was going to scam one over on me today, and the 15 year old would have been in hot water without doing anything; this time. I keep finding empty pop tart wrappers all over the living room lately. There is no eating allowed in the living room by the kids. I had enough with empty fruit snack and go-gurt sleeves to last a lifetime. We put our feet down when we moved in the new house a couple years back that there was to be no eating in the living room.
I decided to gather the evidence and confront who I thought was the culprit. I was reprimanding Sean for lying about leaving the pop tart papers around and for eating in the living room. He was adamant it was not him. I did not believe a word he said, because like Judge Judy preaches "When a teenager opens their mouth, it is a lie!". Those words resonate in my skull every time I confront Sean about something I know he is guilty of. This time I was dead wrong. While I am getting more aggravated by the moment and determining in my head how long he is going to lose privileges this time, Brianna suddenly says "Mom, I have to go get something upstairs." and races out of the room with Bella on her heels.
About two minutes later I give up berating Sean and tell him to go finish his chores. We will discuss this later if it happens again with his father. All of a sudden, here comes Bella running full throttle down the stairs, into the living room and drops a mouthful of empty fruit snack wrappers, candy wrappers, a half eaten pop tart and an empty D'animal's container at my feet. This dog has a big mouth and really proved the carrying capacity with this haul.
Sean is just walking out of the room and sees this and yells "I told you it wasn't me!" I was totally dumbstruck. Brianna is now on her little knees trying to push the evidence under her hands so I won't see the inventory. Bella lays down and starts licking her hands and trying to nudge Brie's hands away with her head in protest of trying to hide the contraband. Sean starts laughing and says "FINALLY!" I did not know what to say. Had Brianna not been so frazzled trying to hide the content of that mouthful, I would have naively believed Bella had gone into Sean's room and brought me more evidence to build an even tighter case of misconduct by the teenager.
The dog was trying to do the right thing. She was making Brianna face the music by bringing her fibbing into the light. Not only had she been hiding wrappers in the living room; so apparently sneaking snacks, but also bringing food upstairs! That is a major NO NO in this house. Bella was doing a good deed by keeping a watchful eye on events as they must have occurred and when the little culprit tried to get rid of the evidence while the big one got blamed, Bella stopped her in this felonious act. When confronted, Brianna tried blaming Sean and Bella. She stated that Sean took the treats at bed time for a few nights but she was trying to be a good sister and not be a tattle-tale. She didn't want him to get in trouble. Her story is Bella was actually stealing the treats from Sean's room and putting them in her room so she'd get caught instead of Sean. The dog was trying to make her get in trouble. She said "It's not fair you believe the dog instead of me!" LOL
The moral of this debacle is trifold: I have learned five year old children do actually lie, teenagers do tell the truth sometimes, and crazy dogs are really really good to have around. She may chew up my school work, and now freelance writing research once in a while (3 -4 times per week if I'm not careful) but she makes a really good mediator and fact-finder in this house. I think her asset quality ratio far outweighs her liability status one hundred times over. Not only does she make sure I keep my paperwork in good order but the children as well.
I am going to be looking at installing child proof locks on the cabinets in the kitchen. The only problem is I think the five year old will be able to remove them and I won't.
