Ruby the Best Dog EVER

Ruby helping JoJo open her presents on Lucy's birthday.
Ruby "creeping" in the living room. One of her many hilarious features.
Ruby says, "I am a good dog!"

I feel I have given Ruby a bad wrap with my post on her swath of destruction while we were gone on vacation. Two mea culpas here. First, the photos of her with all the stuffing are actually taken after she chewed up a completely approved, given to her for chewing, stuffed animal from the thrift store. They were just too illustrative to resist for the post. Seth, Elise, and Mary actually cleaned up the vast majority of the filling and paper left from her binge while we were on vacation.

Second, all of her destroying was done while we were gone for 18 days on vacation. She hasn't chewed up a single thing since we got back (except see dog bed comment bel0w). She does love to rip the stuffing out of things but never does that activity unsanctioned. I give her one or two thrift store stuffed animals a week to eat up (60 cents a piece). She will go into the girls room when it is littered with stuffed animals and retrieve her one toy buried in there to bring to the living room and chew up. I've tried lots of expensive dog chew toys and she destroys them in minutes.

Also, aside from the one time right after we got back, she has also not peed inside since we got home.

So she really is a good dog (as you can tell from her photos!). We had a second incident of a dog biting a child at our local park so I am more thankful than ever for my tolerant and licky mutt. I have been pinching her like crazy lately as I pick fleas off of her (she still has some fleas despite two different flea treatments) and all she does is look at me with concern as I poke, prod, pinch, and move her around trying to get any fleas I see. She is currently sleeping peacefully on her dog bed (which we did have to glue back together two weeks ago after a bout of chewing but really, she is a good dog! that was the only thing she has eaten since we got back and since we fixed it two weeks ago she hasn't done a thing!).

Here is a list of some of Ruby Pancake's wonderful attributes:

1. does not bark at, growl at, or bite people
2. licks the girls faces when she wants them to stop doing something (a very gentle way of saying, "hey, could you stop doing that?"
3. also licks girls faces when they are covered with peanut butter
4. loves, loves, loves people
5. submissive, rolls over immediately upon greeting people
6. gets along great with 99.9% of other dogs (she did boss Lisa's dog Shasta when Shasta came to visit)
7. does not chase the cat
8. does not eat food off table or counters
9. Anyone can take anything away from her - you can even take food out of her mouth if you don't want her to have it and she just looks at you as if to say, "hey, aren't you going to give that back?"
10. humorous body shape and personality - likes to lay on back and kick legs into the air, likes to creep across the floor.
11. not very big - fits well in our house and could be carried in medium suitcase or very large pocket (o.k., maybe not a pocket, but check out these hamsters that I am thinking of getting - they definitely fit in a pocket).

I don't really need a list - ask Lena, I love this dog. even if she did eat three pillows while we were out of town.