DOG is GOD spelled backwards

The dog ate my God Box.

The God Box is, I believe, a twelve-step thing. It allows the owner to manifest physically the concept of "turning over" a problem to one's higher power. The idea is that you write down the thing that is fretting you and put it in the box. You've turned it over. I find it to be like writing troubling things down in a journal. It's a nifty idea.

My sponsor made me a God Box. It was cute and round and nicely decorated. A lovely gift. But I left it out on a side table and Boomer, my 22-month old lab, ate it. I wanted to kill him. It's not the only thing that dog has wolfed down. Last week, he went after a two-pound cube of cheese on the kitchen counter. One minute it was there, the next, gone. I chased him into the backyard and he growled at me while I tried to pry his jaws open and dig it out. I got about a third of it out before he swallowed the rest, wrapper and all. All I could think of was if he needed to go to the emergency vet, I couldn't drive him there. It didn't slow him down at all, though. In fact, a couple of days later he stopped in the hallway, hocked up the wrapper on the carpet, and just kept moving. Unbelievable.

Other things that dog has eaten, or at least tried to eat: my glasses, my blackberry, my red stiletto patent leather pumps, and several other shoes I once held dear, a few books, food off the table, food from the kids' hands, and an awful lot of trash.

I've had labs my whole life. I like having dogs around, I even let them sleep on the bed. But the two black ones I have right now can overwhelm me. They each weigh about 75 pounds, which is only slightly heavier than my kids. Sometimes I feel like I have four kids. My house is just under 1300 square feet, so when I'm walking around and the dogs are underfoot, and the kids are underfoot, I kind of feel like the Bumpuses.

No wonder I used to drink so much. You can understand why the kids' dad really wanted his own room when we were still together--I cannot blame him.

Here's what's funny about getting sober, though. When I was drinking, I really thought that was the only way I could deal with the stress and responsibilities of holding down a job, rearing kids and taking care of these dogs. But in reality, I kind of ignored the dogs. Now, with all this time on my hands, the dogs tend to get walked a lot more. The kids like to go, too, so we spend more time at the park.

This is all very positive, and yet the damn dog continues to eat things. He regularly pokes his head into the trash in the bathroom like it's his own personal snack bar, pulls out a tissue and just munches it down. I happen to wear bras with underwire in them, which I guess make great chew toys. Look out if he gets ahold of one of those--I'm a lovely sight chasing him around the backyard with a pink Victoria's Secret hanging out of his mouth.

What I'm wondering is, if I write down my troubles on a piece of paper, and feed them to the dog, could it be the same as giving them over to my higher power?