Riley swears it was a beaver

After more than two months of trying to sell our house on our own, with only the two low offers right at the beginning, John and I decided to hand the work over to someone else.  We signed with an agent last Sunday, so now he’s in charge of marketing our house and following up with the people who come to see it.  He’s the guy who put us on the MLS for a small fee, and he’s been super helpful these months, answering all kinds of questions and providing advice, so we figured if anyone was going to get a commission from us, it should be this guy.  He hosted an open house for us today, freeing us up on a Sunday afternoon for the first time in a while, and our fingers are crossed that he’ll get our house sold.

We’re anxious to get moving, and not just because the life we have planned is going to be so cool.  We need to get out of this house before Riley destroys it.  He’s never been a chewer.  Really, never.  That was Roxy, and she was only destructive when she was a puppy.  Riley was never interested in chew toys, even, unless he was taking them away from her, and then he didn’t bother to eat them.  He just kept them away from Roxy.  So imagine our surprise (and horror) when we came home last Saturday morning to find this:

And this:

And this:

We were only gone for TWO HOURS.  And, of course, we had an open house planned for the next day.  We spent the whole rest of that Saturday fixing the house.  It’s all better now – no sign of the rampage Riley must have begun the second we got in the car.  He took a chunk out of another wall (similar to the last picture) a couple of days later, but he hasn’t done anything else like it since then.  We brought in a couple of sticks from the yard, and he seems to be focusing on those.  During the open house today, we took him to a pet store and he picked out a couple of chewy things (which was also kind of jaw-dropping – he’s never paid any attention to what’s going on in the bins in pet stores).  We don’t want to have to crate him all day, so hopefully the chew toys will work.