Our 4 year-old Gerta never took an interest in chewing things around the house, except for getting into the trash occasionally when she felt she wasn’t getting enough attention. She wasn’t even particularly interested in chew toys so carefully selected for her, so when shoes started going missing in pairs, the family understandably didn’t consider she might be the culprit.
We looked all over, but there was no evidence – no pieces of chewed shoes, no slobbery socks, no clues at all. Both shoes were just gone!
One day I was by myself in the house, looking for Gerta to take her for a walk when she pranced by, happy as could be, with a favorite shoe of mine in her mouth. She didn’t notice me, and I stood “shell shocked” for a second as she passed, then got my wits about me and stealthily followed her.
I watched her open the sliding glass door by herself, prance into the back yard and gently place the shoe on the ground next to its identical twin. She then just walked away, no digging, no chewing, back into the house through the open door.
Walking around her queendom of our backyard, I found four pairs of shoes sitting side by side at various locations with not a toothmark to be found. She was just collecting shoes, one shoe at a time – paring each with its mate, and just leaving them in the yard! (To admire later? Waiting for them to bloom or grow larger? Who knows?) I believe she had been taking them for a few weeks. Her first loot was a pair of my mom’s sandals, sadly ruined in the rain. The others were mostly mine, and in fine shape.
Even after the shoes were recovered and returned to their rightful owners , she continued to try to collect pairs of shoes until her very last days. We just watched her carefully and rescued any footwear that she kidnapped.
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from Anna, Tennessee
(Editor’s note: In case you’re wondering, Gerta had a large “foresty” yard with lots of places to “hide” shoes out in the open. Having no reason to suspect her, her family never thought to check in the yard, and the lay of the land hid them from a casual look-see. One pair of shoes was a little moldy, but the others were recovered in usable condition. The family never realized Gerta could open the door, they just suspected one of six children had opened it to catch a breeze, to let the dogs out into the fenced yard, or simply forgot to close it in passing.
Everyone was coached to put their shoes away where Gerta couldn’t get to them, but slip-ups occurred and shoes occasionally went missing again. The family knew immediately to suspect Gerta, and to check the back yard. They realized that a sure clue was when they found the back door open at “dog width” instead of wide enough for a person.
After her shoe capers were discovered, Gerta expanded her door talent. When the family’s Great Dane wanted out, he would go to the door and bark, and she would open the door for him – pawing intensely to open it enough to allow her to shove it open with her nose, the same technique she used to escape with her foot treasures.)