Poodle_Mum

Ok - I couldn't resist putting this one up. A friend of mine has a Standard Poodle service dog who just turned 3. This is very typical of Standard Poodles, especially service dogs - they MUST be entertained with something every minute of the day (sleep and food excluded).

She was in the kitchen making supper and the boy disappeared. Thinking he had gone to play, she wasn't concerned and continued making supper.

She returned to the living room to get him to come to have his supper, looked down at the contented boy who held within his paws the remnant of the coil strip of stamps he had just eaten.

When she told me, I had to laugh but at the same time, I thought about how many times my boys have come close to "helping" with my stamps by trying to pick them up off the floor when they dropped. I distinctly recall dropping a Nova Scotia pence issue and my beautiful Standard Poodle service dog came over to "assist" me by picking it up. The poor boy got bellowed at and he didn't understand why, because he was only doing his job. I, on the other hand, had images of a $600 stamp disappearing forever.

So, my friend lost a $50 roll of stamps to her beloved Standard Poodle, bless his heart, she isn't a stamp collector who may not have been quite forgiving - although she is still ticked off at the poor boy.

 
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redmc3

10 Feb 2014
04:07:06pm

re: The Dog Ate the Stamps

Your post is similar to what my grandchildren did last Easter weekend although I don't think they ate anything.

I have a room that I use for reading, music, photography and stamp collecting. There are usually little piles of stamps all over my desk. My grandchildren think that is the best room in the house because grandpa has a meltdown when ever they go in there if he is not present.

My daughter happened to look in this room as she walked by and her kids (my grandkids) were in there happily sticking OG stamps on printer paper. Luckily the stamps were big, colourful stamps from different African countries that weren't worth very much.

When we asked them why they were using those stamps (stickers in their little brains) they said those stickers (stamps) were better because you didn't have to use Scotch tape to hold them down.

 
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Poodle_Mum

re: The Dog Ate the Stamps

I have had three beautiful Standards. The first two (pictured here on my profile) died from Addison's Disease and my beautiful lunatic that I currently have is fast asleep snoring on the couch beside me. I would give anything for them. In fact I sold off the bulk of my stamp collection a few years ago to try to pay for some of the medical bills that I had for my second Poodle.

I admit, he has "assisted" a few times, but over the past 12 years I have learned to only play with inexpensive stamps when any of them have been awake. I didn't realise I had dropped one not that long ago and he came over and handed me half a stamp. I looked a wee bit surprised, so he left and came back with the other half. He looked so innocent, I couldn't scold him, but I knew that when I had put that stamp on the table it was only one, not two!

 
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re: The Dog Ate the Stamps

With the dog eating a roll of stamps, the stamps were self-adhesives, right? If so, we should do a test and see if stomach fluids work on soaking the stamps off of stomach linings. If that works, maybe it will work on paper. Then the trick would be to try to get stomach fluids.

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cdj1122

re: The Dog Ate the Stamps

In similar vein;

The Blue Four Skilling


I recently sent a letter to a friend and had used a special stamp for the postage on the envelope that I thought would relate to her other interests. A few weeks later she wrote to say that she had received the letter and thought the stamps I had used were quite nice, so she told her daughter and little grand daughter that she was going to save them. Shortly thereafter her grand daughter brought her the stamps that she had been going to save, cut through with a scissor as the child tried to "Save them for Grandma".

I wrote her a further note a part of which tells the tale of the "Norwegian Blue Four Skilling".

".... Dear Phyllis,
I am glad you got the letter I sent and certainly understand the difficulties that a well meaning grand child can create. The stamp itself is not any great value and the next time I get to attend one of our stamp club meetings I will replace it and send you an envelope with some similar items."

"Your experience reminds me of an incident that occurred while we were living in New York about forty years ago. My oldest daughter, Mary, was about three or four and very helpful. I had quite a stamp collection even then and had acquired several early Norwegian stamps. They were from the 1880s and denominated in "Skillings" which was the currency before they changed it to "Ore" around the turn of the century. Mary had, of course, seen me remove stamps from the paper remainders of their envelopes by soaking them in water."

"One of the nicest was a four skilling blue that had been used in 1872 or there abouts and it was the prize of a group of some ten or twelve similar stamps. One evening after arriving home from work I went to the bathroom to do what had to be done and take a shower. As I sat there contemplating some vacuous thought I spied my treasured four skilling blue on the floor along with several other Norwegian stamps. Before I could react, or act at all, for the matter, and while a guttural scream was but forming in the best Bosun's mate's tradition in the pit of my lungs, little Mary (Who is still alive I will add lest you become fearful of the outcome of this adventure) entered the room and told me that she had washed some stamps for me that day.
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I gathered strength by pausing and finally asked, Where did you do that sweetheart?", fearing the answer and knowing that it was already to late to prevent the obvious. "In the bowl" the little angel replied with that helpful smile that protects infants from the mayhem that would be due them were they just a wee bit older."
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""Here are some of them " she added and I accepted the gift of love with all the grace and class that I could muster. She also looked around and found several more off to the side. So what had been a group of ten or twelve, ( I do not like to dwell on the exact number originally there) became a group of eight that were salvageable and one that was slightly torn and had to be discarded. I remember carefully placing the survivors of their trip on the SS Tidy Bowl to the side to be rewashed and eventually I took a long , long, cold shower."
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"I still have them and when ever I look at the page where they have resided for the last forty-one years I think of this and remind myself to put the damn stamps away when I am through with them."

 
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