crime and punishment

It has come to my attention that we should consider renaming Puppy.

Last night, we had Dec's father and stepmother over for dinner as they wanted to give the kids their Christmas gifts. We found a superbly delectable broccoli and salmon casserole recipe in my favorite cookbook. (We can attest to the greatness of the casserole because the girls each had about four servings of it.)

At one point, the casserole was baking, the kids were playing Wii bowling with Grandpa, and Dec was talking to Stepmom. I stepped into the necessary room to, well, you know. As I finished business and came back into the kitchen, Puppy looked at me and slunk away.

If Puppy slinks away, I know that she has done something that she knows she is not to do. So I followed her as she slunk into the next room. But she didn't stop there. She slunk to her bed.

You should know that "Go to bed" and "Bedtime" are two different commands; the latter ends the day, whereas the former is You Have Done Something Terribly Wrong and Must Be Punished with Timeout and No Social Interaction.

Intrigued at what she had done to deserve Go to Bed, I retraced her footsteps to discover that she had eaten the discarded skin of five salmon fillets. From the garbage can.

I can only imagine the thoughts running through her head . . .

Eating people food is bad.
Eating from the garbage can is very bad.
I will not do this because it is bad and I'm a good girl, I am.
Ooh. But what is that aroma? I've never had that before.
There are five in there. Hmm. They'll never miss one. It's not like they're going to eat it.
But that would be bad.
But the smell. Okay. Just one.
Tasty.
Bad.
Tasty.
Bad.
Maybe one more.
Naughty, me.
I should go away. They haven't noticed yet.
But they'll find out.
And if I'm going to be in trouble anyway . . .
Oh, damn—they're all gone. And here comes Alpha.
I'll just go into timeout to save him the trouble.

And for that, we will hereafter have to call her Dobby.