This is Skip. See Skip run. See Skip chew. See Skip shred plants with his bare teeth. See Skip dump over and break pots. See Skip act innocent. Bad dog, Skip.

I don’t know how we ended up with another dog. Oh, yes I do. I’ll blame it on my husband and kids. Lab puppies are so adorable, so playful, so destructive!

Someday, Skip, who will soon be a one-year-old, will be a very good dog. But for now, he is at the top of my BAD list. He loves to run away and “visit” our neighbors, swim in their pools and play with their dogs.

He thinks fences are made to dig under and that an acre of play yard is not enough. His companion, our old Lab, is not interesting enough to keep him home. Oh, and he loves to bark at everything.

He also gets a kick out of destroying my potted plants, if he can get at them. He has knocked over and broken several very nice pots, then dug up the plants they held and played with a glass looking ball until he broke it. He also loves to run through my beds, leaving broken stems in his wake.

He hunts down my gardening tools and chews their handles, removes the fingers of my gardening gloves and the young rapscallion even got into my seed packets, shredded them and scattered the seeds everywhere.

He has chewed at least a dozen garden hoses, broken down a screen door, eaten four leashes, destroyed numerous pairs of shoes, trashed all of the pool toys, ripped up lounge chair cushions and popped all soccer balls that come near him.

Aside from these things, my husband thinks he’s a great dog. Although, he wasn’t smiling the day Skip dragged out some of his backpacking and fly fishing stuff.

I would say Skip’s most disgusting act was when he pooped in our swimming pool, twice. It took a lot of skimming, vacuuming, shocking and chlorinating before any of us would stick a toe in the pool.

They say it sometimes takes years for Labs to outgrow their destructive behavior. I just hope my garden will survive Skip’s endless puppyhood.