Benjamin Linus update: Still not that one!

Benjamin Linus has been making a mess of our house as of late. He has dragged his blankets outside in the pouring rain (New Jersey is turning into a rainforest as of late, fraking global warming) and then pulled them back into the house soaking everything in a 10 feet radius of the wet fabric.

He has been lugging in huge branches through the doggie door and then grinding them down to saw dust on the living room rug. The fanatical dog has even pull in pieces of slate stone that litter my yard from the previous owner and ground them up all over our lovely home. To simplify, we gave him a dog door and he gave us a headache.

The little brat has even started shedding so significantly that we were forced to vacuum daily (sometimes twice daily). We vacuumed so often that our Dyson (Dyson is a euphemism for “super expensive and most likely not worth the price”) vacuum cleaner became less then functional (the hose worked but the brush didn’t spin). The wife and I were losing the alpha male war to our dog and something had to be done.

My action plan included a pair of pliers, electric clippers, and a lot of peanut butter. First off, I lured the dog into the garage with a spoonful of peanut butter. That went well, but it may have made the dog a bit hyper for the next activity. I had my wife hold the dog by the collar and rear while I used the clippers to shear Benjamin Linus of all his excess hair (turns out we could have made 3 or 4 additional dogs from what came off him). That took about 4 hours (he was a bit squirmy) but the shedding has mostly stopped.

Finally the wife and I attacked the vacuum issue. I pulled every tube I could out of the vacuum until I found one that was completely clogged with Benji hair and saw dust. Some of it was so far inside the tube itself that it could only be reached with extra long needle nose pliers. When all was said and done, we had pull around 4 cubic feet worth of dog hair and other refuse out of the vacuum. Unfortunately I am not entirely sure how to put the vacuum back together. But once I do, I’m pretty positive it will work just fine!

Anyway after losing battle after battle to Benjamin we finally are starting to turn the tide!