Grating on My Nerves...

Okay, I can admit it...my plan to have Scooby slap some sense into Mae may not be going completely as planned.  While they play non-stop and he has calmed her down a lot, she has converted him to the dark side with more than one bad habit.

Mae loves to get food off the kitchen counter.  I once caught her eating a loaf of bread she had snagged.  She was eating it plastic wrap and all and I had to practically wrestle it away from her.  Well, Scooby doesn't get things off the counter (yet), but I have noticed that occasionally he'll pop his head up there to see what looks good.

She has also taught him to stand on Erin's little table outside.  They can stand on the table and see into the living room because I have the blinds at half mast.  They scope things out all the time.  They aren't hurting the table so I really don't mind.  But, it is a little weird to have one of them looking at me thru the door and the other standing on the table eyeballing me.

The fireplace, the fireplace, the fireplace...I cannot keep them out of the fireplace.  They both love to eat the lava rock that we have in the bottom of the gas fireplace!!  It's crazy.  I'll be sitting here on the computer at the kitchen island in the mornings and I'll hear the loudest crunching.  Both of them will be standing there munching on lava rock.  It's the craziest thing I've ever seen.  Tommy gets so mad.  It happens before he gets up but they are messy eaters.  We'll find little pieces of lava all over the living room and bottom of the stairs. (Mainly you find them with your feet.)  So, Tom complains that they are tearing the house up.  Just one more strike against poor Mae in Tommy's eyes.

We had been meaning to buy a fireplace screen for a while but just haven't gotten around to it.  I didn't want one when Erin was little because I was afraid she would pull up on it and it would fall over on her.  Now that she's bigger and the dogs are eating us out of rock and home, I bought one.  They were surprisingly hard to find and pretty expensive.  Amazon had a bunch of them but none that I liked.  On a whim I checked Home Depot and liked one of them immediately.  I was worried about the shipping cost but I ended up spending more than $50 so I got it shipped for free.

This morning is the first morning with the grate, so I'm sure the dogs will be ticked.  I wanted to see it with the fire going, so I've got it blazing now.  I think it looks good.

Here's a pic... now my little scoundrels will have to eat dog food and Milk Bones instead!