Doll Diaries: Nala on the Prowl

Our Aunt's dog Nala will soon have been living with us for an entire year, and in all that time I'm pretty sure we've only pictured her here once.

Here is that original photo, when she was roughly 6 months old:

Don't let that innocent face fool you. My sisters and I may as well be living in the same house as an African lion, as careful as we've had to be to avoid becoming casualties.

Here's a list of a few things she's accomplished in the past 11 months:

Grew in size and power. She's now nearly able to pull full grown adults off their feet when she lunges.
Discovered how to check if closed doors are latched or not. If not, she lets herself right in.
Learned how to scale and burrow under the chain link fence in the backyard, to ignore an invisible fence on full power, and to effectively evade recapture.
Learned to jump up on the kitchen table and onto kitchen counters when nobody's looking.
Consumed an entire chocolate bunny stolen from Mom's closet - and never even appeared to feel ill.
Destroyed a wide variety of objects, including but by no means limited to: the face of a wolf stuffed animal, a starfish ornament, shoes (always just one of a pair), window screens, a cooler, carpeting, and her own beds and blankets.
Wolfed down over a dozen unbaked chocolate chip cookies before they could go in the oven (again, she appeared to suffer minimal effects).
Learned how to run and pee in the house at the same time.
Claimed the white leather couch overlooking the front window as her domain. Everyone's given up trying to get her to stay off it - it's wrecked from her toenails anyway.
Decorated most doors and woodwork in the house with deep toenail scratches.
Destroyed nearly all of her toys, with the exception of an old red Kong and 2 lifetime-guaranteed "goughnuts."

Today, it finally happened. Nala got into Mom's room.

It was Saturday morning, and Nala was still in her crate when Mom went downstairs for breakfast. Mom figured her presence downstairs would trigger barking, hence she planned to come right back upstairs and left her bedroom door open. But, since Nala was being remarkably quiet for once, Mom decided to quietly use the computer downstairs. She was so engrossed that when Grandma came downstairs and let Nala loose, she didn't think much of it.

The jolt of horror hit several minutes later, when she realized that 1. it was way too quiet and 2. her bedroom door was open.

There was damage, but thankfully, Mom caught her before things got really bad. Nala had been most intent on finding anything edible. Hence she went for a ziplock baggie (to her dismay, it only contained rocks), a decorative box that contained a mint chocolate truffle (chewed up the box, ate the truffle, left the wrapper), and some cosmetics from on top of Mom's dresser (chewed up a tube of chapstick, hadn't gotten around to chewing on the mascara tube yet). Her big find: two wrapped cakes of soap (favors from the wedding Mom went to this summer). She took them up onto Mom's bed to chew on, leaving plastic, soap debris, and slime over the blankets, comforter, and a few unfortunate stuffed animals. Shaggy (one of Mom's 3 favorite stuffed animals), the new microwaveable fox from Christmas, and Licorice the Valentine's Day bear took the brunt of the sliming on the bed. Fortunately, all the stuffed animals were still in one piece, unless you count a chewed off tag (Slapshot, a beanie baby penguin).

Mom was pretty ticked with herself and with Nala, but she's more relieved than anything else that nothing worse happened. My sisters and I sure echo that, and we are really glad we were all safe in the basement at the time!

Granted, this incident has done nothing to endear Nala to us, but we do admit that she is not all bad. It's not her fault she lives here and that her owner is rarely around. While none of us dolls are big fans of pit bulls appearance-wise, we think whatever she's mixed with makes her more attractive than many. Here are a few shots of her: