A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
~Ogden Nash

Although we had gotten each dog at a different time, by the time they got older it felt like they were the Three Musketeers — always together, having fun, and getting into mischief, including one Fourth of July some years back.

We were at the lake visiting my mother-in-law. We had brought all three dogs so they wouldn’t be alone back home when the fireworks went off. They were all terrified of fireworks.

So we loaded Brandy, the Springer Spaniel, Coco, the chocolate Lab, and Stardust, the Golden Retriever, into the van for a day at the lake. After swimming, boating and fishing, we decided we put the dogs in the laundry room to have their supper while we watched the fireworks. It was plenty big enough for the three of them. They’d had fun romping in the lake, and we anticipated a relaxing evening watching the sky light up with fireworks while they slept in the laundry room. The house was far enough away from the lake; we thought they might not even notice the noise.

After watching the fireworks, our youngest daughter, Shiloh, decided to run up to the house to check on the dogs.

“Dad, Dad!” she yelled as she ran back. “Come quick!”

“What is it, honey?” my husband said as he started running toward the house with the rest of us right behind him.

Try to imagine our shocked faces when we beheld what looked like a giant rathole in the laundry-room door. The dogs were all lying in there looking very innocent, as they had scurried back in when they heard Shiloh enter the house. All these years later, I still can’t figure out how exactly they did it.

The Three Musketeers are all gone now, and all we have are memories of them. But none are as memorable as how they celebrated the 4th of July by chewing through that laundry-room door.

— Donna Collins Tinsley —