This Dog.

You see this dog? This is what he looked like when we first got him. He still looks just like this.

Yoda Bob Dog doing what he loves best: running.

See this sweet, harmless little mutt dog that we got from a rescue place two years ago? This is Yoda Bob Dog. He looks harmless enough, right? He's well behaved, he's friendly (unless you ring the doorbell or knock loudly, then he sounds like a vicious pack of rabid wolves), he's very affectionate.

He stays home a lot. I try to take him on walks fairly often, but work and kids and my crazy schedule don't always mean regular walks. He stays home alone a fair amount, and it's not usually a problem; he gets chew bones and he has the three cats for company and he seems pretty content most of the time. All of us have one of those days every now and then, though. Even Yoda. Yesterday. Yesterday he had one of those days.

Yesterday I got the boys home from school and we dived into homework and science fair projects. Riley is doing a project on seeing what happens to bones when you put them into acids and bases and coke over an extended period. Well, since the science fair deadline is fast approaching, he's running low on what qualifies as an 'extended period' for his science project, so we were getting that project in gear, and all was going well. We had the bones and the containers ready, but we ran out of time to get it all put together before we had to get Casey to his piano lesson, so we left the project in what we thought was a safe place on the table with the bones in safe places. We thought.

You know that face. The uh oh, I'm in trouble, please love me anyway face.

Oh, is it that obvious? You already know where this is going, right? Yeah. Guess who got up on the dining room table and carefully, neatly, snagged some of the precious bones for the Science Fair Project delicately out of their container, took them away to hide and then chewed them?

It took a little while to figure out what had happened when we got back; Yoda was acting incredibly guilty, slinking around and hiding, so we knew something was up. Riley eventually discovered that some of his bones were missing, and then we started finding the evidence. Yoda got yelled at, swatted and put out in the back yard for an extended time out while we attempted to salvage the bone project. The bones were chicken bones that had been carefully cleaned and prepared (don't even ask about the stench from the extended bone cleaning process). So we salvaged some of them, found some other bones we could use to fill in on the project and managed to salvage the project with some new measurements and data. Yoda languished pitifully outside for some time, then went off and disappeared in the depths of the back yard for awhile, and finally Riley begged me to let him back in, saying that he'd been in time out long enough. So he let him in, and the stench that came in with him and immediately permeated the entire house was indescribable. He'd gone and rolled in something in the back yard. Whether it was cat poo or something dead I'm not sure, but it was amazingly vile. And it was smeared in great quantities all over his head and neck.

After dragging Yoda out of his little bed under my desk (and getting the Vile Goo all over myself as well), it was off to the bathtub with Yoda and Riley and me, where we proceeded to give the dog a bath with Dawn dishwashing liquid. I have found through hard-won experience that Dawn cuts through just about any horrible smelly substance that an animal has rolled in; soaps or shampoos or even dog shampoos don't do as well. Yoda got well washed and Riley had a long hot shower after Yoda was done and I got soaked between the washing and the dog shaking off water after. Stupid dog.

Still watching Yoda to make sure the bones didn't do anything bad to his insides, but he seems fine. And he's very relieved that he's not banished forever. Though I was sorely tempted. Dogs.