This evening, during our regular constitutional with the dogs, Bob told me that Jude ate some random, discarded alley bread in the morning. Worse, it was the bleached white variety devoid of any nutrition or flavor. When they returned home, Jude made a beeline for the toilet in order to rinse his verboten snack down with some refreshing tank juice. An eight year-old, 65-pound Australian Shepherd/Rottweiler swarmed with affection, high quality food, medical care and fabulous designer dishes has the culinary inclinations of a starved Depression-era chain ganger. Bob and I imagined him a prisoner/bootlegger, using his white bread and john water to ferment jailhouse gin.

This is Jude.

In June, shortly after Bob and I began co-habitating, I came home to a household of three pets for one of the first times. Dino, my fluffy, four-pound, 16 year-old ball of kitty might, is renowned throughout the blogosphere. I’ve written about our relationship for some years. But life progresses unpredictably, and a woman never considered a dog person suddenly found herself eagerly learning the quirks and schedules of two new, very large babies. I met Bob one cold February night and that was it. My heart stretched to fit the exact dimensions of this motley crew.

I returned home that rainy June evening to Dino, Jude and our 10.5 year-old German Shepherd/Rottweiler mix, Meko. When Bob rescued her at age six, she had the longer name Kameko. Bob, ever the enemy of needless syllables, shortened the moniker. It fits. She’s a no-frills gal. I swear she even looks like a Meko.

Anyway Meko has been, as they say in the adoption world, “re-homed” twice. Bob is at least her third daddy. We’ll never know her complete history. But we’re certain that she’s very much afraid of storms. Not when she has the chance to run around in one in the yard, mind you. Fear of proximity would make entirely too much sense and dogs don’t operate on logic. Instead Meko cowers from tempests – but only when indoors. Actually no, cowers is absolutely the wrong word. More like she goes WWE on our garbage cans and rugs, tearing up the recyclable shopping bags with her considerable 70-pound fangs.

This is Meko.

So that June evening. It was raining rather intensely in the Chicago way, with lots of spring lightening and gusty wind. I walked home from the train after work as fast as I could, expecting to encounter one of two typical scenarios – a peed upon bath mat or golden showered doggie bed. Thankfully we have access to a large washing machine. But this was no rehearsed production. My adopted darling canines had much more in store for the new mom.

By workday because he is a grazer, tiny and both rescue dogs were ill-fed in their past lives (Bob adopted Jude at one, but the poor fella still has a strong aversion to old men bearing canes or umbrellas – sad and enduring), Dino is sequestered with his food, litter box, heating pad, kitty condo and water in our second bedroom. There’s a window facing East and the little bambino likes watching the sun rise.

One may access this room in two ways: a conventional door off a long hallway, or from a bathroom closet that hangs a sharp left into the back of the bedroom’s laundry space. No human being over the age of six can fit through the latter entrance, owing to the built-in (backless) shelves that straddle the width. But if one were to say, leave the bathroom closet door unlatched, there’s room enough for a burrowing duo of determined, troublemaking doggies.

On this stormy eve, as if ripped from an Edgar Allen Poe scene, I returned home to gruesome carnage. I entered through the kitchen and saw the red metal garbage can, slammed several feet distant into the front hall entrance – broken and twisted. Coffee grounds and stale beet juice remnants were smeared across three different rooms looking eerily like human waste and blood. Already horrified (by sight, smell and the knowledge that I’d be cleaning this mess) and unable to locate Jude and Meko, I ran toward the bathroom.

Sure enough, the closet door was open. I could see through it to the dramatically overturned laundry baskets that had been stacked against the french doors. Clean and dirty linens flung about the room in a tornado of chaos. Meko, the massacre’s ringleader, had burst through the blockade in a mad fit of rain distress, the sartorial fortress intended to add another layer between dog and cat food. Jude crept behind in her wake – the shameless scavenger. I’m not svelte enough to scrape through the passage, so I headed to the hallway to enter the second bedroom.

What greets me? The sight of two calm, satiated dogs leisurely relaxing on the floor, adjacent to a non-plussed feline covered in socks. Dino’s food (and water) of course long gone. I was furious. Dino looked at me with betrayed, accusing, hungry eyes (without the joy of the classic Eric Carmen tune).

But here’s where unmitigated gall surpassed credulity. Both pups had the nerve to look at me with innocent joy, I dare say relief, that someone they love came to the rescue. For as doggedly determined (pun intended) as they are to reach a goal, they’ve never figured out they need to retreat the way they invaded. Obedience school should teach the domestic harmony of covering crimes more intelligently.

Jude was so eager to run from a self-inflicted prison that he took off from his resting place like a shot, stepping on my bare right foot with untrimmed claws, cutting the big toe at the nailbed. Tons of delicate blood.

When Bob came home, I was in a fully outraged stir. Bandaged and 30 minutes into cleaning, straightening, and refreshing Dino’s food, I couldn’t wait to tell him what “his dogs” had done.

But as I started spinning my yarn (and you know? I do that), the body and spirit rejected righteous indignation. I reached the part of the story where Jude sliced my toe in haste to leave the scene, complete lack of guilt about his mien. I started laughing so hard I had no option but to let go. In anarchy, there is often delicious, humorous harmony. Bob labeled Meko’s destructive, trash and laundry-scattering fit, not an emulation of the Incredible Hulk, but rather a special Meko-brand Smash.

We giggled. Bob devised fake apologies and voices for the dogs, issuing long-winded regrets about our cheap, parental taste in cat food. He also created a bit involving an affronted Dino, shaking an elderly paw at the damned kids (middle-aged dogs) on his lawn. Then we laughed some more, toasted the silliness and wondered how we entertained ourselves before we became a family of five. A happy, messy menagerie.