My New Hiking Buddy/The destroyer of our nice things

About two weeks ago, we welcomed a new friend into our apartment. Craigslist made him seem nice enough, nice enough for us to overlook the whole "7 month old" part of the ad. We had looked around for a few weeks for a dog, after finding a husky/timberwolf mix on craigslist, we had our sights set on something with husky in it. The first few dog opportunities we found fell through, and then, well, then there was Benji . The ad was posted in Vermont; we figured it couldn't be much more than an hour so we called the ad-placer and decided to meet them later that same day. We told them on the phone we were a little more than an hour away, but after mapquesting the address we realized it would take about twice as long as we thought it would to get there. Nevertheless, we drove out through the developing snow storm to find our new friend. Halfway to our destination, the roads were getting a little icy, my Subaru AWD kicked in as always and we couldn't have felt any safer. Can't say the same for the newer Chevy 4x4 Truck in front of us that looked as if it would careen off the road at any given moment. After nearly two hours of driving, we arrived in a small little town, Windsor, VT. As we drove in I couldn't help but feel a sense of familiarity, and a minute later we realized why. For our final 2d assignment at art school, we were assigned a landscape painting to accompany a piece of classical music (the feeling evoked from the painting was meant to mimic that of the music). It was our last final due and all of us were sleep deprived (and mentally deprived) from an overwhelming semester of art school, so we decided we'd drive (from CT) to Vermont to do our projects. We drove without much of a destination in mind, the only guide was the compass on my watch which I made sure stayed pointing North. It was in the same small of Windsor, Vermont that we would park in a high school parking lot and sleep four to the trunk of a honda civic in late December (we woke up freezing, despite the mass amounts of blankets we brought) and wake up to the sunrise over Mt. Ascutney in the distance. We figured the two events were a bit of a coincidence, so we overlooked them and concentrated on finding our dogs address. After much turning around back and forth on the main street of the town, we finally found our road - at the end of which was the exact area where I had chosen to paint my landscape . We assumed this was some kind of awesome form of good luck - if it was, it hasn't shown itself yet (kidding, wait, am i?). We met Benji (he barked at us at first, then we realized he just wanted to play). He had a hell of a lot of energy but I figured that was for the best since Rachel doesn't enjoy wrestling with me as much as a teenage Husky - Border Collie mix would. We talked to the owner for a while and paid a small adoption fee, and then we were back on our way. We stopped at a little farmer's market on the way back and picked up some awesome cream cheese dip - the five minutes we spent with Benji in the car had us returning to one sad looking puppy. We drove the rest of the way home and introduced him to the Adirondacks. He seemed to enjoy everything about our apartment, everything except our possessions - he kept to chewing on just his chew toys which we thought was great for his age. My nalgene bottles cap would prove us wrong the next day. After reprimanding him thoroughly and trying to teach him chewing was wrong, I guess he got it in his head that just chewing up my stuff was wrong. We left him home for a little while the next day since we had a lab class, and returned to find that he had made hasty work out of most of the contents of Rachel's brand new North Face pack (as well as the side pockets and straps of it) and of her favorite pair of shoes. He's getting a little better about all the chewing, or at least he was, until today. Maybe he decided he'd send off his chewing fit with a bang - at least we hope it's over. We came to the car after a short class period to find my brand new water purifier demolished (it was still in the package and we thought it was well out of his reach). Then the worst of it came. When I went to pull on my seat belt, I reached up to nothing. He had chewed right through the belt and had apparently sent it flying right back into the retraction system. I drove seatbeltless (one of the few times in my life) to the Subaru dealer down the road only to receive some even worse news - they wanted to charge me $350 for a new driver's side seatbelt. After my initial shock of hearing this, I pulled myself together and checked out craigslist - the first guy I talked to told me he could take it out of the car he was selling for scraps for $30. Wow. Dealerships sure are legitimate places of business. We're trying to figure out the best way to deal with his chewing, and we're still loving him unconditionally and taking him snowshoeing as much as possible. Let's just hope the BPA in the nalgene bottles doesn't affect him too much.

Benji's List of Destruction

• Rachel's Backpack
• 3 Tubes of Chapstick
• My Subaru Nalgene's Cap
• Rachel's Nalgene
• Water Purifier
• Seatbelt
• Rachels Shoes
• My Teva Sandals made of Cork and Leather (Tasty!)
• He threw up some of the sandal and we just caught him trying to get it out of the trash can that we got rid of the cleaner - upper materials in. Hey! Get out of there!
• His nice leash
• A notebook made of sugar cane fiber

I'm also gonna give a "shout out" to "The Health Nut" who is giving away a BPA free Nalgene over at her blog.