TRAVERSE CITY — There's a little bite to the holiday card Kay and Jim Goodall sent their pastor's wife this year.
The card not only bears greetings but teeth marks from where the Kewadin couple's dog, Lily, snatched it up from her perch on the couch.
"She will get anything within reach, like that Christmas card you've got on the table stamped and ready to mail," said Kay Goodall, of the couple's "Daisy Dog," a hybrid cross between a Bichon Frise, a poodle and a Shih-Tzu. "For our (Christmas) tree we had to build a box 2 feet high, otherwise she would have taken every ornament off the tree."
Pets are beloved for their antics, except perhaps at holiday time. That's when their natural curiosity can get the best of them — and their sometimes flustered owners.
"We're sitting here for the fourth year with a naked tree," said Sally Walker, who had to stop decorating her artificial Christmas tree after Casey the cat decided to make it his playground. "You put layers of branches on, and before you get to the second layer, he's in there. He's in the box before you even bring it up."
The gray-and-white Maine Coon cat began using the tree for leaping exercises when he was just a kitten, said Walker, a retired Jackson resident who summers in Elk Rapids. Now he does it "just when he wants to get somebody's attention."
So when the couple put up the tree around Thanksgiving they leave it bare, save for one special "ornament" — a red velvet ribbon with green felt letters that spell, "Crime Scene: Do Not Cross."
"Even that he takes off," said Walker, whose collection of Fancy Feast ornaments linger in the basement. "He doesn't like anything in his tree."
Traverse City pet sitter Sara Smith has seen it all as the "Furry Godmother." Like the time she went to walk a husky named Frosty and detected the smell of freshly baked sugar cookies — and the sugar itself.
"Right in the middle of the floor sits Frosty, and he'd taken the sugar canister off the counter. It was still upright, but the lid was off and the canister was all hollowed out inside," Smith said. "He went for a very sprightly walk."
Laurie Olson Burke came home shortly before Christmas a few years ago to find demolished boxes and colorful Christmas paper scattered all over the yard. After following the trail through the doggie door and inside to the tree, she discovered the family's dogs had gotten into the wrapped gifts sent by relatives and placed underneath.
Olson Burke called her mother in Kentucky and her sister in St. Louis to learn who sent what. Then she re-wrapped the packages and hid them away.
But the story doesn't end there, said Olson Burke, a realtor and substitute teacher who lives near Alden.
"The following spring I was out working in my flower bed, turning the dirt and readying the soil for planting," she said. "As I dug, my trowel hit something. It was larger than a rock, and I carefully dug it out only to find a buried Christmas present."
After examining the paper and ribbon and finding them intact, Olson Burke unwrapped the gift to find an undamaged bag of Starbucks coffee beans. She took it inside, poured the beans into a bowl and sifted through them to make sure they were dry. Then she ground them, brewed a cup of coffee and took it outside to enjoy the spring day.
"I then called my sister to thank her for the belated Christmas present," she said.
Olson Burke figures the dogs were attracted to the gifts by the smell of the coffee and of scented soaps and candles. Although she suspects the family's late yellow Lab, Sophie, of being a participant in the orgy, she thinks the real culprit was black German shepherd Wolfgang.
"How do we know it was Wolfie?" she said. "He's the only of our dogs to bury his treasures. None of the other animals believe in deferring their gratification."
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