The Case of the Dog Who Dug Holes

The hole was deep and wide, gaping open under the dead apricot tree in the hilltop orchard. It seemed impossibly big to just show up over one night's time, this red gash in the sand. Was it some sort of sinkhole or had some animal's burrow caved in? "The dogs must have been after something," Jack said as he inspected the two foot deep and nearly three foot long hole. "I rather wished they hadn't done it on the path to the clothes line," I replied.

The next day another hole appeared, a few feet away and under edge of the clothesline, just waiting for me to fall in as I unsuspectingly hung up the wash. This hole was Y shaped with the arms of the Y being deep and narrow and the stick being shallow and wide. Huxley, our springer spaniel, has been a digger before, but usually only when burying a toy he had snuck out out of the house or in hot pursuit of a mole or gopher. Those holes were mere divets compared to these man traps. Perhaps these holes were just so deep because the ground was so soft and loose here compared to the hard clay in our old yard.

A few days later when I went to water the little bit of garden, the cucumbers had been torn up and the culprit was still there, digging away gleefully. It was not Huxley. I had caught Clemintine in the act, filthy, sand flying around her. Poor Clem, this was the second strike against this stray that had been dumped at my in-law's house right before we moved. Now that we were here, she seemed to spend most of her time at our house. I couldn't stand to feed Huxley and her watch, hungrily sitting there, so I had been feeding her too while we tried to find a home for her. She tended to jump on Rubilee and Bell so she needed a home besides ours. She was obedient to me - perhaps the teacher voice works on dogs too.

Over the next few weeks, Clem settled into being the better dog on the place. She did not dig any more holes in the actual yard. She loved games of fetch at the lake. She settled down. We discussed her fate. She seemed too good of a dog to take on a one way trip to the woods, but no adopters had appeared and she was a voracious eater. Economically, I just couldn't keep her. Besides, she seemed to encourage the worst in Huxley and he didn't seem to get enough attention if we had to divide our time between two dogs. To top it off, she has been attracting some unsavory boyfriends, the sort that aren't nice to my cat or my child. A solution had to be found.

This week Clem must have gotten bored. She seemed to be the instigator in all manner of bad behavior like bringing trash up in the yard that wasn't ours. A towel was torn off the clothesline. And then one night when Huxley was innocently inside, she ate a water shoe that had been drying on the porch. She began jumping again, being so rowdy at meal time that I could barely get the food dishes on the ground.


Clemintine, the digging dog, has now been taken to the shop. Harold has a shop in town and sometimes finds homes for the strays that get dumped out here. Perhaps the local animal control will nab her. I do not know and I feel bad about it. I really do. On the other hand, she is not my dog. Maybe, some great family will take her and have time to play so much fetch that she does not have the energy to dig holes or eat their shoes. For now, Huxley will not have anyone to blame if more holes show up during the night.