So smart, and yet so stupid

I'm pretty sure our dogs are able to track the days of the week. I say this because last night, we went to a friend's house for dinner, and Sunday is an unusual night for us to go out. And indeed, apparently our dogs knew that Sunday should have been Pack Togetherness Time, because when we got home we discovered they were PISSED, and had expressed their displeasure by mounting a raid on the dining room table. As I've mentioned before, Toby is lanky enough to get up on counters and tables, and occasionally the dogs pull off daring heists requiring a degree of cooperation that would make the Mission Impossible team proud.

Unfortunately, this time of year there are often extra holiday goodies on the dining room table, which we don't always remember to move to higher ground. So, when we got home, the detritus in the dog lair indicated that the heist booty included: two red Christmas candles; a tsatsuma orange; a package of fruit chews (contents eaten); the warranty card for our new DVD player; and an entire box of chocolate truffles - consumed, wrappers and all.

Yes, we are aware that chocolate is toxic for dogs. But fear not. We've had reason to check on this before. They would have to each consume about four pounds of pure baker's chocolate to have any real ill effects. It's the wrappers we're more concerned about. It's not as bad as the time Toby consumed an entire burlap bag of butter cookies - if that bag made a reappearance with no harm done, I'm hoping the little gold foil wrappers won't pose a problem. If nothing else, we've always wondered how Nelly and Toby divide up the spoils in our absence, and this should provide us with some empirical evidence - we can just count the wrappers as they appear, should we feel curious enough to do so.