Blow up the Dog

My friend encouraged me to write down all the dog stories I told over several pints. Perhaps one day those stories could be made a book. Here is one of them.

We used to have couple of plant pots right near the entrance to the living room, the area is several steps higher than the garage floor. The dogs are not allowed to get crossed the line into the living room (they are not even permitted to linger near the entrance, my mom would definitely give them a hard-to-forget lesson if they do).

I think we sheltered a stray dog one time and he was very brave in challenging the authority. He loved to dig open the soil in those plant pots and chewed on the roots. Nothing seemed to stop him from doing it again and again. We could only clean up after him.

One slow Sunday afternoon, my father decided to take the action. He showed me how to sand through a little light bulb and fill in some black powders from the firework left over my brother and I collected and stored since Chinese new year. That's the basic of the ignition module. A small firework's ignition thread was inserted into the light bulb via the hole. We then wired a circuit with a AA battery. The circuit switch was weld into two seperate pieces of metal plates. We carefully installed the whole device in one of the pots and lightly spreaded some soil on top of the upper metal plate seperated from the bottom with a plastic spring.

We then went back to the living room and watched TV. Just within half an hour, the dog could not resist the temptation of an unguarded pot and dashed out of the garage screaming after a small explosion.