This scene is very familiar to me. We have a new dog, Bo Bo. Bo Bo is a yellow lab who is ten months old. I often come home to scenes like this. If Bo Bo needed any instruction on getting into trouble, he could turn to our 13 year old brown lab, Buddy. In his youth, Buddy once ate an entire chocolate birthday cake, the contents of my wife’s clutch purse and my mum’s eyeglasses over the space of a month. All those items passed through Buddy without a hiccup. Whenever a dog eats something that he knows he is not supposed to eat, he intuitively knows that he is in for trouble when his human parents get home.
All dogs that it is except for Leona Helmsley’s dog Trouble. Leona Helmsley, the “Queen of Mean“, was not particularly well-regarded when she was living. But perhaps Helmsley’s most bone headed move was leaving a $12 million bequest to her dog Trouble.
Trouble was the source of trouble for many years. After becoming the richest dog in the world, Trouble spent her final years in Sarasota, Fla., being cared for by Carl Lekic, the general manager of the Helmsley Sandcastle Hotel. Trouble’s lifestyle was crimped somewhat when in 2008 a judge determined that Trouble’s inheritance should be trimmed to $2 million.
Thankfully, Trouble was able to scrap by in her final years on about $190,000 per annum. If you can believe it she had her own security team and those security teams don’t come cheap. Trouble’s cost $100,000 a year. Her grooming team cost $8,000 a year, she put away $1,200 of food a year and her medical expenses ran from $2,500 to $18,000 per year. Oh, and let’s not forget Mr. Lekic’s annual guardian fee: $60,000. If anyone knows of a rich pooch in need of a guardian, I’m available.
While Ms. Helmsley’s Trouble’s tail is simply troubling, Sarah Mazzone of the Made in USA Challenge blog let me know about a much more inspiring Trouble the Dog story. This Trouble is a plush Dog who is the inspiration of Sheila Duncan. Sheila wanted to create a huggable dog whose sole purpose is to bring comfort to children facing a variety of emotional struggles. Take my word for it: Don’t click on the video of the little boy on the Trouble the Dog website unless you want to start blubbering like I did on hearing his story! Sheila also wanted her Trouble to be made by members of our extended American family, and she succeeded. Any Trouble the Dog you order will have been created by the manufacturer Sheila partnered with in Arizona. I encourage you to support Sheila and Trouble.
Finally, what post on trouble would be complete without a link to a classic version of Louis Armstrong’s “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen. Certainly not this one.
