Recently, my parents decided to go out of town for the weekend, and I graciously agreed to look after their two Dalmatians and one cat. Okay, truthfully, they had exhausted all other options, and I grumbled, "If I have to."

I’m not a horrible daughter; I just knew exactly what I was getting into. Dog-sitting two huge, staggeringly hyper Dalmatians involves walking them-a lot-two times a day and feeding them-a lot-three times a day. And it’s not just dumping kibble into a bowl, either. The feeder has to stick around and make sure Archimedes, the hefty boy dog, doesn’t eat too fast and that Sappho, the flighty girl dog, doesn’t get distracted from her food, thus allowing Hefty Boy to finish off her Alpo.

When my parents are gone for longer than a couple of hours, the dogs have a tendency to completely destroy the house. For this reason, they have one of those baby gates, which are typically used to keep babies from tumbling down the stairs, but in this case is used to block the dogs out of a room. Before they left on Friday, I asked my dad if I should put the gate up to keep the dogs out of the living room. "Nah," he said, optimistically. "Only use it if they rip up a record album or a book."

When I checked on them Saturday morning, they hadn’t ripped up a record album or a book-they had done both. Up went the gate.

I took them on their two long walks on Saturday, freezing my ears off and scooping up copious amounts of the stuff you scoop up on dog walks. Everyone was fed, watered, walked, and gated when I left Saturday night.

On Sunday morning I returned to what appeared to be a war zone. Apparently very unhappy that I’d blocked off the living room, the dogs took their anger out on the music room. Reams of sheet music were torn to bits and strewn around the room, and three different musical instruments were on the floor with teeth marks all over them. They had even ripped light bulbs out of their packaging.

I just stood in awe for several moments. Then I spent the next hour cleaning it all up, knowing that, for the dogs’ wellbeing, my parents shouldn’t witness the wanton destruction. I was dumping the last of the mess into the trash bin in the kitchen when I noticed the cat had upchucked all over the previous day’s mail. After just cleaning the music room, I wasn’t in the mood to clean up partially digested cat food, so I simply dumped the mail into the trash, too. It was mostly junk mail anyway. I think.

Next up was the dogs’ first walk of the day. Having learned my lesson from the day before, I bundled up in a heavy coat, warm gloves, a scarf, and a hat. I had the appearance and agility of a toasted marshmallow, but I was warm. This bundling-up soon came back to haunt me.

A few minutes into the walk, Sappho yanked her leash out of my hand and took off like a shot. Waddling after her and shouting her name didn’t yield much of a response. I got close to her three different times only to have her scoot away at the last second.

The fourth time I approached her, drastic measures were called for: I decided to dive on top of her and wrestle her to the ground. Luckily, all of my padding made for a fairly comfortable wrestling match for the dog. I felt like an idiot, but once again, I was in possession of the leash. Needless to say, the walk ended right there.

After I had fed the beasts, I wrote my parents a report of the weekend-after all, I had to explain why the record, book, vomit-stained mail, and half the contents of the music room were in the trash.

My mother called right after they got home, and her first words were, "So, the dogs misbehaved, huh?"

I assumed she had seen my note, but she said that she hadn’t gotten that far yet. She explained that the minute they had walked in the door, the girl dog took one look at them and urinated all over the carpet. Apparently, that’s how dogs demonstrate that they know they’re in trouble.

I told my mother that with everything that had happened over the weekend, they were lucky that’s all the dog had done on the floor. TPW