My have we come a long way

For those that don't know, I got Monty because he's a resource guarder. His last home didn't give him a job, so he invented one for himself. Food objects mostly, which he tries to inhale at lightening speed regardless of the consequences just so that no one else can have it. We've worked a lot on his guarding since day one he was home, and he has improved tremendously and last night just showed how much.

Sunday night is garbage night here at my house. And last night I was really, really stupid. I currently have a cat that I'm borrowing to combate a mice problem, and my usual way of doing garbage is I go down clean the cat box, bring that bag of garbage upstairs, empty the kitchen trash then take those 2 bags outside to the trash barrel and move it to the street. Except last night I did it backwards. And it could have ended really, really badly.

I emptied the kitchen trash, and LEFT the full plastic trash bag Right In the Middle of the kitchen floor, right where Monty could get it. I completely forgot about his thing with food. He's been so good lately. I went into the basement to do the cat boxes and ask I came up the stairs I saw 3 flat coats staring at me, but no cardi. And went "Oh shit."

He had torn a hole in the garbage bag and was eating a cooked duck carcass left over from dinner the other night. Not good. He'd gotten a few good crunches into it, when I told him, "Mont, can we not do this? You're going to kill yourself." He let me scruff him, and he dropped it, I put it in the sink, picked up the garbage bag (he's still scruffed, as he'll just dive back into it if I let go) and then let him go. It was all rather painless. I got the garbage outside. Came in, fed him some bread to hopefully prevent any bones from perforating his insides and we went to bed.

All I could think of was how a 6 months or a year ago that incident would have been a massive fight. He would have hung onto that carcass until I'd practically cut off his airway to get him to drop it. He didn't do that last night. He would have sworn at me until the cows came home as I cleaned up the mess. He didn't do that last night.

He's come a long way my little short dog. Still gets into trouble, but it's a lot easier to get him out of it now than it ever used to be. Which is rather a huge relief. The work has paid off.