Naughty Dog Stories - Our English Pointer
Meet Molly, Our Beautiful English Pointer and Our Very Naughty Dog!
Molly our beautiful English Pointer is loyal, loving, energetic, sporadically disobedient and sometimes she's a very, very naughty dog. These are some Very Naughty Dog stories.... like the time she ate our Christmas Cake, destroyed our chairs or swallowed the soap.
We are enjoying the good life, living in an old, stone farmhouse in the heart of the countryside in Limousin, France with Molly, our intrepid hunting dog.
Image "Talk about the cat amongst the pigeons".
Although these stories are light-hearted and funny, sadly it turns into a bit of a tear-jerker towards the end.
Check Out All These Other Naughty Dogs - Dog Shaming
Dog shaming is a site devoted to dogs and their naughty habits. owners post pictures of their dogs together with notices of their misdeeds - peeing and pooping habits, barking or eating 'daddy's' lunch - you name it they've done it! It's a hoot!
- Dog Shaming
All the misdeeds of naughty dogs - add your own dog even
How Molly chased the chickens
Naughty, but she rarely catches them
Molly comes with me to feed the hens every day and normally she is quite good (for an intrepid hunting dog), but you do have to keep an eye on her. Today I let her stalk the hens a bit for your benefit, but I cut it short at the end. Molly has been known to follow a hen into the undergrowth and to come out of the other end with a mouth full of feathers! We do have to watch her with the chicks though. She dreams of tiny, cheepy baby birds and shivers all over with eager anticipation of - I dread to think what!
The chickens are not terribly phased. They've grown up with the nose of a pointer directed to their beaks, never-the-less they do try to keep a bit of space between her and themselves.
You'll be pleased to know the hens all lived to tell the tale
Molly stalks the hens - English pointers are supposed to point not grab
Here's Molly chasing our hens and doing a smashing job of singling out the smallest one, stalking and pointing. Had to cut the video short before she actually made a bid to snap up the poor victim, but just at the last moment the prey skipped through the fence to safety.
Our hunting dog is hunting hens
Naughty Dogs Might Be Less Naughty If They Are Occupied - Kong dog toys are great for 'keeping them busy'
Molly is a real chewer and I bought toys for her only to find they had been 'finished off' in a matter of hours. Chews lasted seconds. Then, I was visiting a friend who had Kong toys lying about her garden, apparently unchewed.
This did the trick for Molly and kept her to busy to be naughty for - well - hours!
It helps to keep your naughty dog amused
Going Bananas
How Molly jumped to it
One of the funniest things she's ever done was over so fast that it was impossible to take a picture. Molly was young at that time, fully grown but perhaps under a year old and was in the kitchen. My husband had just selected a banana for a quick snack and he was chatting to me so had peeled the fruit rather absent-mindedly as he was talking and it was at that split second before he started to eat it that Molly launched herself into a beautiful, graceful, arcing leap and at the highest point of her trajectory she whipped off the exposed banana and swallowed it whole on her descent. The most amusing part of this story, though, was the look of amazement and stupefaction on hubby's face.
Molly's Not So Naughty Just Now! - The poor thing is recovering from an operation
I knew Molly was poorly when she wasn't getting into mischief! She was sitting quietly not causing any trouble. After a day of this I thought she ought to see the vet. She had a perforated uterus and needed urgent surgery. Here she is just back from the vets and looking quiet good!
Give the dog a bed - Posh beds for dogs - even 'naughtydogs'!
They hate drafty floors so why not treat your dog to one of these luxurious beds? Molly would one!
Won't help to train your dog but will make them happy!
How Molly chastised the pups
Molly gave birth to three beautiful English pointer puppies
When, after a great deal of effort, Molly became pregnant we were delighted. The birth turned into a nightmare but that is yet another tale, and in the end we had three adorable little puppies, two 'girls' and one 'boy'.
It has to be said that poor Molly had had a rough time and who could blame her for showing little initial interest in the pups. She suckled them, licked them and no more. She carried out only the most basic of maternal functions and grudingly at that.
That we could cope with. What drove us to despair was the growling and snapping during the night. Now Molly is not a growling dog. Apart from pup-care, I'd heard her growl just once when she was a pup herself and guarded her first bone with audible jealousy. You can imagine, then, what was running through my mind when we heard growls, snarls and finally the snapping and snacking of teeth during the night. I had visions of getting up and finding the limp and bloody bodies of puppies lying next to their murderous mum. I got up countless times during the night, always expecting the worst. (Having my own baby wasn't this bad; I only had to get up for him once a night). Eventually I leaned that the nightmare was of my making and the envisaged carnage never actually materialised, much to my relief. It finally dawned on me that Molly simply resented having her sleep disturbed every much as I'd resented having to wake up to feed our own muling infant. The difference was, she had no qualms about letting the little critters know that bad things happen to wains who wake mothers.
Molly hadn't read the baby books.
Read more about Molly's pups The Story of our Pointer Puppies
Molly is one tough Mom - The pointer pups looked shocked when Mom decided she'd had enough
Anyone who thinks kids should be treated with kid gloves should have a look at how one, no-nonsense Mom from the animal kingdome fixes the guidelines when she's had enough. Molly is one tough Mama!
Molly is a tough mom (as well as very naughty). There's a twist in the tail of this story
How Molly demolished the comfy old chair
English pointers are not normally destructive
Molly has never been a destructive dog, even when she was a puppy, so imagine how horrified we were to come home one day and find that she had torn the seat of our old, but much-loved and comfortable armchair to bits! My husband was furious.
I managed to calm him down a bit because I didn't really believe that Molly was really being 'naughty'. I thought about it, did a few sums in my head and realised that if she had been allowed to have a second litter, she would be giving birth about that time. Molly wasn't being wicked, she was following her maternal instincts and nest-making with the only materials available.
How could you be cross?
How Molly ate the soap
And lived to tell the tale
My son was finally cajoled into having a shower. Not always his favourite occupation but from time to time, a necessary evil, especially when we are going out and meeting other people. As soon as everyone was ready, off we rushed, late as ever, taking care to close the door to the sitting room after Molly and the chair-ripping episode, leaving Molly to roam between the kitchen, the dining room and (we now realise) the bathroom.
On our return everything seemed to be normal - until I went to take a shower and found all the tools of the showering trade, body wash, shampoo and nail brush scattered in the shower basin. All except the soap. Chewed bits of soap were lying on the shower room floor, one lump in good enough condition, but no sign of the metal magnet that we use to keep the bar of soap dry and clean on the magnetic soap holder. Putting two and two together the story emerged. My son showered, left all the accoutrements, including the tablet of soap, lying in the shower, and forgot to close the door. Much searching failed to bring to light the magnet and bit by bit the unpleasant truth began to dawn. Three days later, no less, we recovered the missing piece by the back door - so to speak, together with a free marble, and Molly was non-the-worse for it.
But who was to blame?
Train your dog - English pointers and hunting dogs are easy to train
To make sure your dog doesn't make your neighbours chickens into Sunday lunch for one, train them well. Here's how.
How to train your naughty hunting dog
One thing we love most about Molly?
Life's never dull with her around!
How Molly ate the quiche pastry
And couldn't have cared less
I don't often entertain, my husband does the cooking for our Bed and Breakfast Guests, so I attempt lunches and dinner parties, I tend to get into a bit of a tiz, especially as I continue to underestimate the time needed and so am always in a mad rush to get everything ready in time. Some people never learn.
True to form, one day I'd invited friends around and was madly using the last of my flour to make pastry for quiche. I had just about enough time; ten minutes to finish the pastry, ten minutes to blind bake and half an hour in the oven, plus ten minutes in hand. Finished the pastry and went to find my rolling pin in the cupboard in the dining room. I fished around in the bottom, found it and arrived back in the kitchen just in time to see Molly woolf down the last mouthfuls of my short crust. I was incredulous, AND furious. OUT! I yelled OUT! BED! And the poor dog was sent out into her kennel in the barn. Being sent to bed is the supreme punishment in our house and is reserved for only the most hienous crimes such as 'biting' the cat, and, well, stealing food.
Now I had to set about re-making my dough and had only just enough flour for one flan.
I forget what happened next. I guess the dinner party would have been an anti-climax after all the pastry theft drama. Did I learn my lesson? Yes. Never to turn my back on Molly in the kitchen.
And she didn't even have the good grace to look ashamed.
How Molly Sat on the XBox
My son just told me this story
I'll elaborate on this a bit later, but my teenage son was just telling me the story about how Molly, seeking heat in mid-winter, was found curled up on my son's new X Box. Of course, the W Box needs ventilation and Molly efficiently cut this off - with consequences.
Read my son's article about the Xbox 360 Slim Console
How Molly scratted out the good-luck shoe
In France a shoe is placed under the floor for luck
In the process of renovating our ancient French farm house, we had to lift many of the floor boards revealing the cavity between the floor and the earth below. Imagine how surprised I was to find these wooden clogs. One tiny one for a small child and one that would fit a fully grown man. Being English and interested in such old and foreign objects, I pulled them out and cheerfully displayed them on shelves to give a French, 'olde worlde' ambiance to our dining room.
Well, we then suffered several major set-backs and struggled quite a bit for a couple of years. I put this down to life in general. It wasn't until I was doing research for a lens about feet and shoes that I came across the various superstitions attached to shoes, one of which is that when a house is built, a shoe or shoes are placed beneath the foor or in the walls to bring good luck. I immediately grabbed the large clog and poked it back below the floor via an air vent on the front of the house.
So what has this to do with our dog Molly? Time passed, but every now and then I would find the clog outside the ventilation hole and in front of the house. I put it back. It came out. This went on for some time until, despite NOT being superstitious, I began to think the house didn't want me to have good luck. Eventually, though, we caught the culprit red-pawed when we came out to see Molly with head thrust as far into the air space as possible, tail wagging furiously and paws scratting out everything within reach - stones, sand, rubble, bits of old ironware and - yes, you've guessed it - the lucky shoe.
So now the shoe is well and truly pushed under the house, and I'm hoping that we'll all receive a bit of extra good fortune; including Molly.
Read more fascinating facts about shoes in: All about shoes and feet
This is what we did to stop Molly scratting out the shoe .... - Blocked the air vent with a mill stone
I think that 'settled her hash' as my mother would say!
How Molly ate the Christmas cake
The worst 'crime' of all
Eating the pastry was bad, but eating the Christmas cake was even worse! Granted she didn't eat the whole cake, just a rather large chunk of it that my husband, son and I were looking forward to demolishing ourselves.
This is the story. I was studying to be a plumber in Limoges. That's right, me, a middle-aged English 'lady' with a penchant for DIY. I was the only woman in the class of about twenty French boys and men, so I thought I'd bake a Christmas cake to take in on the last day of the first term. All went well. They viewed the cake with great suspicion. The French like French food most, and English food least, but all were too polite not to even try it and they had to admit that it was very nice. Some managed second helpings and one even went so far as to accept a third portion. Triumph! There was just enough left for the three of us to have a nice slice each.
My husband picked me up in Limoges. It was late, about 5.45pm and already dark. We then called in at my son's school at Rochechouart and collected him arriving home in the cold around seven in the evening. We all spilled into the house. I put down my bags on the dining room floor and turned to get the wood burning stove going while my husband closed the hens and put away the car. My son made a bee-line for the TV and I went to get matches from the kitchen.
The next thing I heard was an enormous carry-on coming from the dining room, and I arrived in time to see my husband waving around an empty case of tin foil over a cringing, crouching dog who was, never-the-less, still licking the last crumbs from her floppy little lips. Molly's body language told you that she knew she'd 'done wrong' and was 'in for it', but she had a devil-may-care glint in her eye. She always weighs up the situation carefully deciding if the pleasure of disobedience is worth the 'pain' (and I use that word metaphorically; we never hit our dog) of the punishment. In this case you could see in her expression that the Christmas cake more than compensated for any punishment that we would mete out!
Molly never repents.
My great aunt Jenny used to make our family Christmas cakes when I was young and I still use her recipe: Traditional English Christmas Cake Recipe Delicious. You can take Molly's word for it!
And she also ate the last of the marzipan for my Fat Rat Cake!
This is my photo of the ingredients for my novelty Fat Rat Cake, minus the marzipan! Yes, you guessed it, Molly ate it. At least she left me the cake though, and I had already made the tail and ears for my Halloween Nastiest Nibbles Still, I was quite cross. Here's what the cake looked like in the end, complete with marzipan tail formerly a nasty nibble worm! this Fat Rat is a super cake for Halloween.
And is Molly a Fat Dog? Not in the least! Molly is the Posh Spice of the dog world even though she's had pups and is middle aged now. Life is definitely not fair!
Last but not least: How Molly killed the chicks
A sad end to the Naughty Dog stories
Should I add this story to my catalogue of dog disasters? I thought long and hard before I decided that I'd tell the sorry tale of how Molly killed the chicks, but I also decided to make this the last one. If you just flick down to the comments box you'll see that I had a bit of a premonition about this felony. Spooky (or just plain inevitable.)
The situation was as follows ....
On the evening of the 1st of June we were expecting our first equine guests - along with their human companions. They turned up early, two pony traps and four magnificent, black horses. Everyone sprang into action the minute the traps drew up in front of our gite. All hands were occupied in removing the harnesses, hosing down the horses and packing everything away. The horses gleamed in the sunshine, and Molly was fascinated with the whole process.
When all was done and dusted the horses were led down to the paddock and that was where it all went wrong. I couldn't marshall all four horses and the six Dutch guests into the paddock and make sure that the gates were all closed with Molly on the right side.
I must admit that although I warned everyone that we had six chicks, only three days old, and that Molly would be after them if given half a chance, I didn't expect that the mother hen would have taken the chicks out of the chicken run. Now you should know that the chicken run is secure against dogs and other animals getting in, but the six foot high wire mesh fence is no barrier for the hens and cockerel who pass in and out quite freely. Of course, as fate would have it, the hen and her chicks were in the very paddock that the horses were to use.
You guessed it. As the horses were released into the long grass, Molly siezed her opportunity and before any of the six guests or myself realised what was happening until Molly had caught and despatched two chicks. One black and one yellow. Both tiny and fluffy. Such things are Molly's dreams made of.
Molly, this time, really was in the doghouse and she knew it, but you could tell from the gleam in her eye that she had loved every minute!
The valiant mother hen and her four surviving chicks. - But we have be so very vigilant
To continue to protect the four survivors, we have to keep every gate closed. The gate to the field is only one way out or in! Molly has hands, not paws and she can open doors and gates if not secured by bolts and hooks. 'Snecked' we would say in Yorkshire. If we forget just once and Molly will be off. I'm sure she remembers the suprime satisfaction gained when she snatched the first two unlucky youngsters.
However, if we can just hang on until the chicks start to fledge and plump out a bit, they will be a little safer. They'll learn to be more cautious, will be able to fly out of danger and be a bit less attractive to our intrepid hunting dog! Keep your fingers crossed.
PS. I'll let you know what happens
Update: It's now October, the chicks are sleek teenagers and three survive. Shortly after the dog disaster one chick just went missing. I don't think it was Molly. We have lots of predators around: buzzards, foxes, pine martins, ferrets and magpies to name but a few. Still, we now have three healthy chickens and I think they are all hens. So much the better.
I hope you've enjoyed our doggy tails
We have so many stories to tell about our life at Les Trois Chenes. So many things have happened to us and we have done so many things over the last few years. I've enjoyed reliving the 'sins' of our dog and I hope you've enjoyed reading about them. Do feel free to leave a comment in the box below; we'd all love to hear from you and if you are thinking about coming to our neck of the woods, do drop by.
How was it for you? - And why?
Which story was the naughtiest?
Addendum - A List of All the OTHER Naughty Things Molly Has Done - I've just got to vent my spleen on somebody!
I know I've said that this lens is finished, but I'm so cross with Molly today that I've just got to get a bit of it off my chest! So I've started a list of all the OTHER naughty things that this blooming dog gets up to. Here goes:
- 16th June - I'm cutting grass so Molly is on the loose. She gets into the hen run where the compost bins are, (despite latches and large stones piled against the door), and then proceeds to jump onto the compost heaps, scrat off the carpet cover and dig out all my hard-won compost. What Molly began the hens continued .....
- Same day! Molly lets herself into the vegetable garden by pushing through the wire netting and pushing the bottom of the gate in just enough to allow this skinny little dog to squeeze through, then proceeded to 'harvest' my strawberries! (She'd already partially wrecked my flower bed searching for the alpine strawberries that I thought would be such great, weed-smothering ground cover - and they were .....
- Molly stripped my lovely plant of most of its leaves!
My Beautiful Plant Ruined - Two splendid specimens outside our holiday cottage in Limousin, France
And now, thanks to Molly, one splendid specimen and one eyesore!
More Doggy Tales
- Molly, an English Pointer Puppy in France
Our dog Molly - The story of our puppies
Molly's pups - The puppy and the peach
How our pup swallowed a peach stone and was rushed to the vet - it changed her destiny