Never share your tricks

Our first pup was a Corgi. Not a planned thing - she was the biggest dog we could get at the shelter within the 30 lb limit set by our landlord. She was already six, most likely dumped by breeders who could no longer make money off her, and she had attitude so the shelter didn't want to send her to a family with small children. We only had small cats, which the little duchess ignored, so she fit our family just fine.

Corgi's may appear cute, but do not be deceived. Within those adorable eyes lies a cunning mind fully fixated on its next meal. As we both worked during the day, we would leave our little Corgi home for a few hours with a couch and a full bowl of kibble.

Only to return to chaos.

It started with the cabinets - she quickly learned how to open doors of any size, terrorizing first the cabinet in the bathroom --- goodbye, cotton swabs --- and then the trash cabinet under the sink, which afforded a much better haul. The closet held little interest, just some towels which she pulled about like ragdolls. The other kitchen cabinets had dishes and pans, or bags of rice and pasta with no taste or flavor. Boring. After several child-safety locks and a few hardware installations we managed to secure every swinging door in our small one-bedroom home.

Then there was the day we left one of our hiking backpacks on the floor. To our dismay and horror, she managed to unzip the main pack, then unwrap and eat two whole protein bars - luckily, with no harm done. From then on we secured all bags and briefcases inside high shelves in the closet, which had also been secured with a better door handle.

All this held for a few months, without incident, and we lapsed into a false sense of security.

Then the first cat tower fell.

Since Corgi's are short, we had been keeping all the cat food up high on wooden towers, nearly three feet off the ground. The cats had no problem leaping up to this height but the duchess, of course, couldn't jump that high. She could only jump as high as say the ottoman next to the towers, if it were suddenly knocked onto its side by an unseen force...

We moved the ottoman.

Undeterred, the next thing to fall was the cat tower itself - from the pattern of teeth marks on the edge we could tell she had managed to jump up and grab hard enough to pull the entire thing over.

We weighed the cat tower down, and moved it back behind a wooden board that now blocked the tower completely from access.

We felt secure, but over a few days we noticed the cats eating more and more, their bowl empty nearly everyday when we got home. Curious, I weighed the cats - both generally underweight - only to discover they hadn't gained a pound.

The duchess, however, had gained nearly two.

Suspicious now, we eyed the towers again. No evidence of tampering. No furniture nearby in disarray. How had she managed it?

The only point of entry we could see was the thin board of wood itself, which ran between the end of our bed and the wall next to the towers. Our pup had access to the bed, with a set of steps on one side so she could climb up at night to sleep with us. Yet there was no such access on the other side of the bed where the board was. The top of the board was barely an inch wide, if that, and while we had secured it tightly in place there was no way it would hold a 35 - 40 lb barrell of a dog. Right?

Yet again and again, we came home to empty bowls. I started feeding the cats at night, trying to avoid leaving any food out during the day. Still, we couldn't figure out how she did it.

So one day, at our limit, we set up a small camera in video mode on the headboard and filled up both cat bowls. Then, under the pretense of "going to work", we gave our little pup a pat on the head and went outside. We waited there for about twenty minutes before we heard a soft thud. Excited, we dashed back inside to catch our little culprit red-pawed ----

---- only to see our innocent little Corgi looking up at us from the bed, our recording device inexplicably lying on the floor. The cat food was still there, untouched.

Reviewing the footage from our little fallen camera, we saw:

- Adorable Corgi jumping onto the bed, eyeing the cat food

- Adorable Corgi butt moving towards the board at the end of the bed

- Adorable Corgi suddenly stopping and looking back directly at the camera

- Adorable Corgi turning about and moving back towards the camera

- Adorable Corgi nose filling the screen, sniffing, and then the camera view tumbling downwards

After the failed sting operation, we gave up and moved the cat towers yet again to a corner without any any surrounding boards or funiture. For many years, we remained vigilant, never knowing exactly what our little duchess was truly capable of.