Rage Fits.

"What a good dog that is!" I seem to hear this a lot when it comes to Darci. Yes, Darci is an awesome dog, but there is another side to her that most people don't seem to realize.

Darci, to put it simply, is not an easy dog to live with. She has to have several jobs to do on a daily basis just to keep her in a tolerable state. For example, she gets all of the food bowls when it's time for the dogs to eat, she takes empty bottles to the recycling bin, gets the mail, helps me with laundry and picks up her toys every day. This combined with atleast an hour or so of training each day is usually enough to keep her in a relatively dormant and happy state.

I try to keep her in this peaceful state as much as possible. Darci is naturally a very happy dog, so it isn't very difficult.

Unless something sets her off.

The one thing Darci hates more than anything else on the planet is when my parents dogs start barking. I haven't figured it out completely, but I think it is because she cannot make them stop and she knows their barking drives me nuts.

Yes, I understand dogs bark, but my parents have Welsh Corgis who think that barking is an essential part of survival and if they don't meet a certain quota of barking each day, they might explode.

If I am home during one of these outbursts, I can usually control Darci's reaction by reminding her to chew on her Kong and to get a grip. It is when I'm not home that the problem occurs.

If the other dogs start barking when I'm not home, it sends Darci into what I refer to as a rage fit. She will begin making high pitched screaming noises and drooling. This is followed almost immediately by the destruction of the first thing(s) she can get her jaws on. This includes, but is not limited to shoes, pants, jackets, pillows, dog beds, ceramic dog bowls, wire dog crates, even the comforter off of my bed. She will destroy whatever it is that she has locked in on.

There is no stopping her. She has become a whirling dervish of destruction.

Before you ask, crating her doesn't work. She will literally pull apart the crate from the inside. I have resided myself to either being home or taking Darci with me when I know the other dogs are going to start barking incessantly and hoping that perhaps one day she will grow out of it. Unlikely.