I’m sitting in the bedroom on my computer.

I have been there for about an hour.

I go to the kitchen to make a cup of tea and notice, as I go through the lounge, that the latest DVD I received by post is on the floor and not on the footstool.  I pick it up, idly thinking that I thought it had still been in it’s cardboard wrapper.

It had been.  The cardboard wrapper is now in pieces in the dog basket in the kitchen.  At this point I also notice that there is the wrapper from a bar of chocolate (which had also been on the footstool) in the basket too.  The silver paper, almost intact, is on the floor.  I let out an involuntary ‘Oh, nooooo!’, at which point Dino slinks away, head down, tail between his legs.  I know it’s him and worry only about the fact that he’s not supposed to eat chocolate.

That was Sunday.

This morning, I sit by the computer for only 15 minutes, drinking my coffee.  When I arrive in the kitchen to wash my mug, I see, in the dog basket, two Videos and the remains of the back pages of the IKEA catalogue.  Then, as I am picking it out of the basket, I see also the remains of the Baci (chocolates) box.  Then I see a half opened, half eaten box of dates.

All these had been on the footstool in the lounge and it must have been the first thing he went for when we returned from our walk.

And, today, the cleaner will be in.  And I left the shortcake biscuits on the footstool.  And the cleaner won’t know that Dino is not searching for things on there.  I am resigned to there being no shortcake biscuits in the lounge now.

This, of course, has to be stopped.

Unless, like it was for Rufus when we still had Ben, we find that it is not the puppy but the older dog wot dun it!

But, somehow, I doubt it.

So, now, I have to put something to tempt him and watch carefully in order to stop it – before it becomes an automatic habit.  Damn!