Not my proudest moment

I was putting up certain festive items that shall remain nameless but may or may not include tiny lights, bulbs and tree skirts. From the living room, I could hear Big get off the couch and start sniffing around one of the less stable festive items; decorative lights tinkled against each other and I saw the lights from the corner of my eye, swaying back and forth.

Big? In the festive artifact?

No.

My dear. My son, my apparent manly, dominant son with four legs but no manly parts of his own, was showing Frosty who was boss under the festive artifact, and looking up at me as if to say, Mom could you KNOCK before you came in, because I wasn't done?

And Frosty, the foot-tall stuffed festive decoration that he was, lay with his plastered-on smile, screaming "help, help" in his jolly, booming voice.

How do you tell a dog that straddling a stuffed object is no way to treat a holiday artifact, no matter how threatening you find his demeanor?

I'm so ashamed. I think I'll start carrying around a water gun so I can just shoot him to get him to stop, and not have to make eye contact with him while he defiles such cheery objects. I can't take it.