Bob Fuda and his dog Blitzen (Fuda got Blitzen during the holidays 14 years ago). Blitzen is quite skilled at finding his own food but that just means his food has to be well secured or he will find it and eat it.
Bob Fuda got his dog Blitzen, a Border Collie, 14 years ago from a lady on the eastside out of a litter of 10 to 12 pups and he and some friends had brother dogs. Blitzen is a very tall dog for this breed but Fuda explained, "His brother got the short legs and Blitzen got the long legs." Blitzen also has relatively short hair for a Border Collie
Blitzen's talent that Fuda finds most notable is his ability to find his own food. Though that has led to some comical consequences.
"I live in a condo down on Alki and I left my cabinet door open ajar, so when I got home I saw that he got in. He couldn't get the garbage can out but everything in it was all over the floor. That's one incident. The second one? I just bought 50 lb bag of dog food at Costco, and put it in the bedroom where he stays and left it there. I didn't think he would do anything about it. Well...I came home from work and there was the bag, but I didn't notice it right away, but he had eaten to his heart's content. Next incident? He climbed up two shelves and found a box of doggy bones and got that down and tried to chew that open but that didn't work. Then, I had a half a case of Alaska Amber beer and he tried to get beer. He chewed the box!"
Blitzen also prefers to sleep on the leather couch but Fuda had to come up with a novel solution to prevent it. He just made it less comfortable. "I had to put two golf clubs, in an x-pattern on it to prevent dog napping there."
There's a Halloween toy that Blitzen prefers, possibly because speaks when he chews on it and he often goes and gets it when friends come over.
Milk Bones are the choice for treats because Blitzen has a "finicky stomach," Fuda said.
Food for many dogs is a motivator of course and for Blitzen it's central, prompting him to do things unexpectedly as Fuda explained. "One time my wife left a bag of potato chips on the picnic table and he got the bag, opened it, and he demolished the whole bag. In fact we have a picture of him with his head inside the bag. He eats, and he doesn't care what it is."
That incident with the beer may not be that hard to understand if you knew that, "One day as a joke my wife poured some beer into a cup and he drank the beer too. Nothing stops him. If it's there he'll eat it."
West Seattle residents might know Bob Fuda or his father Joe Fuda who owned Alki Cleaners for more than 40 years.
