Trash can dances with wolves

by Susan Anderson
Tuesday, January 8, 2008 2:57 PM MST

Only a selected few dog owners truly will understand the appeal of a trash can that has been field tested by wolves. Maybe the owners of the golden retriever I heard of that ate the siding off of a house would get it.

But after coming home for the umpteenth time to find disgusting garbage strewn around the house from a successful dog raid on the garbage can, we were desperate. An Internet search turned up a Web site and product designed by a woman whose German shepherd sounds a lot like our dog.

She described a fraying relationship with Katie the dog after not only did Katie upend each and every trash can her owner bought, but she got sick from eating the contents. As a veterinarian quoted on the Doggy+safe Web site said ominously after describing an entire turkey carcass consumed by one dog, “Sometimes surgery is needed.”

How true.

Last ditch effort

I have written in the past about the two different child-safe contraptions placed on our garbage can drawer and on the futile effort to put garbage bags up on a counter that should be too high for the dog.

After picking up coffee grounds mingled with old turkey guts in the mud, I decided to buy a crate and imprison the dog when we leave home. My husband said he would do one final search to see if there might be a perfect garbage can out there somewhere.

So we discovered the Doggy+safe dog-resistant trash can.

We were directed to a video of the wolf field test on the trash can. The owner of a wolf rescue and education center in Colorado described how four wolves wouldn’t even touch the can.

So they brought in the thousand pound gorilla. Actually it was a large white wolf named Wakonda, described by his rescuer as “cantankerous” and a terror.

“Put anything down and he will massacre it,” said the kindly rescue center owner.

We got to watch a video of Wakonda going nuts over this trash can that had raw meat inside it. He chewed, leaped on top of the can, tried to dig under it. Clearly he and our golden retriever went to the same training school for delinquent dogs.

It made me sorry that we didn’t have a hidden doggy cam like the one used for Wakonda to watch our dog Molly in action.

Saving a marriage

One happy customer wrote that the trash can had improved her marriage.

For years, her mild-mannered husband would get home first from work and clean up after the wife’s neurotic boxer. His patience would last only so long, she feared.

Another wrote that she had tested it on mastiffs, Anatolians, wolf half-breeds and a pot-bellied pig. I never heard of half of those, but I’m impressed that it foiled a pot-bellied pig. They are named pigs for a reason, but still the wonder trash can survived.

But before we put down $108 on this miracle of modern design, my husband made a last ditch effort. He installed a $4.67 lock and key on the garbage can drawer, like the ones on desk drawers.

So far only the humans can turn the key, so the trash remains untouched by doggy vandals. We are ecstatic.

Stay tuned.

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