Gizmo's Revenge

Gismo’s Two Triggers

Years ago, my family had a full-blooded Pekingese. His name was, Gizmo. That’s him in the picture up top. Gizmo was one of the sweetest and easy-going dogs I had ever seen. He had a lot of energy, but he was still pretty laid back and accepting of just about any situation. However, there were always two things that would make him instantly angry and change his attitude. From the time he was a puppy, all the way through adulthood, if he heard the word, “bath” or was left alone, he would turn into a spiteful little thing.

Once you managed to get him into the tub to take a bath, he was fine. It was like he realized that he had lost at the point and so he would just give up. He’d give you a pathetic look from the tub, while looking like a drowned rat. As long as you talked to him and pet him as you bathed him, he was cool with it at that point. Getting him there was a different story. Once he heard the magic word, or figured out what you were about to do, he would run and hide in places he knew we couldn’t reach him. If you tried, he would snap at you. That last part was a habit we broke him of pretty quickly though. Still, he would get angry and you would spend the next hour trying to get him into the tub. After that, the war was over and it was all okay, since he had us there to pet him and talk to him while he was in the tub getting bathed.

His second trigger, was being left alone in the house. Unlike getting a bath, nobody was there to stop his tantrums. A lot of dogs will rip things up or chew on furniture to express their anger. Not Gizmo. His revenge? Collecting every sock, rag, towel, and underwear that he could find, and bring them all into the living room, kitchen, and hallway. Every so often, he would manage to get a shirt into the hallway or kitchen too. Most of the time though, they were too heavy for his little tiny body to drag around anywhere.

Creative Laundry Thief

Not only would he drag underwear and socks (his two favorites) into every room he could manage to get them into, but he would often play with them enough to have small holes in them, along with a lot of slobber. Any item of clothing that was light enough for him to carry, would be out of the laundry baskets, off of the bed, and in my room’s case… off of the floor. I was a teenager, so there were always at least some clothes left on the floor. By time we got home, they were downstairs and in another room of the house. Yes, he would go all the way up the stairs to collect anything he could reach too. If he could get in my room, he grabbed what he could. If my door was closed, he would go into the upstairs bathroom and bring down hand towels, toilet paper, and anything else cloth he could carry. We were always, of course, angry when we would get home, but we were often also a little impressed by some of the things that he would manage to find and bring into another room.

It was obvious that he was only targeting our stuff too. He had his own doggy bed, which also had a cover, sheets, and a little blanket on it. It would all be in a ball or messed up… but it was on his bed still. It was only our stuff that would be spread everywhere. It would become a scavenger hunt to try to find where all of your clothes, rags, and hand towels had gone off to.

When he was still a puppy, he had another form of revenge that was much worse. Not only would he drag clothes everywhere, but if he was left alone for more than a few hours, he would then proceed to pee on the floor, as he kept walking. There would be a stream of pee leading from one place to another not far away. A couple times, he peed on one of the beds. We broke him of that one, but the clothes thing never did stop being a thing. No matter how much we got on to him, it would happen every time.

Got Better but Never Stopped

Of course, eventually we had to start closing all the doors and putting the kitchen hand towel on top of the counter where he couldn’t reach it. We would do a walk-thru check of the house to be sure he couldn’t reach anything. He still managed to find something that we didn’t realize he could get to or didn’t think he could manage to carry, but it certainly got better.

Anyway, that’s the story of how Gizmo would always get his revenge every time he was left alone. It was the worst of his only two triggers, but I have to admit, it was kind of funny a lot of times too. He was a cool dog. We ended up sending him to my brother before we had to go to Okinawa, Japan for a few years, but he stayed in the family. Yes, he did the same thing to my brother and my (then) sister-in-law too. That’s all for now. Hope you enjoyed this post.