Re: Silly Puppy-Dog Jokes

Julie Smersh said:
Lab: Oh, me, me!!! Pleeeeeeze let me change the light bulb! Can I? Can I? Huh? Huh? Can I?

My new Lab has decided on his own to do some telecommunications work around the house: First, he decided that the charger to my cell-phone needed "customizing". Then, the phone-line itself apparently wasn't up to code, so, he began the process of rewiring it... :S

Yep, puppies seem to like electronics as much as wallets, shoes, and furniture. Our house is predominately raggedy furniture. If they go after the sheetrock on the walls, it can get very annoying.

You can put pepper sauce on no-chew items, which helps unless the spice makes objects more tasty. Pet stores sell a 'Bitter Yucki' no-chew spray that is supposedly more humane than capsaicin. Dunno the effectiveness, because I didn't get a bottle until after the last pup had decided that the household rugs and furniture had already been sufficiently modified.

When wife was a kid, her family had a collie pup kept in the screened-in back porch when they were away at work/school. During the teething phase, the pup chewed entirely thru a wood leg of a table on the porch. It was an 'inside leg', so the project wasn't noticed until it had been completed. Idle teeth are the devil's playground.

AFAIK most pups eventually grow out of it. It took the little aussie 5 years to grow out of it. Any time a shoe, wallet, or remote control went missing, we would automatically go hunting in the back yard.

If the theft was noticed soon enough, sometimes the remotes hadn't been so severely modified as to lose function, but the exterior of all such devices in the house were heavily customized.

The expandable baby gates help keep puppies away from wires and such. Had to put baby gates several places in the music studio when the black lab was teething. All those cables behind the equipment racks were just too tempting.

If sufficiently motivated, they can easily chew thru the plastic mesh in the baby-gates. The young coon dog discovered that trick. He is nearly un-trainable for tricks or obedience, but he is a genius at getting in trouble. Hardware cloth wire mesh is easily tacked on baby gates. Perhaps it makes sense to buy hardware cloth when you buy the baby gates...

One other thing on Lab habits-- At least noticed with our dearly-departed Lab. Maybe they don't all do this--

If a door was closed, she would knock by scraping that big paw down the door. That was also her method of pushing-open un-closed doors.

We have antique old-house natural-finish doors. After her passing, when the remodeling got around to refinishing the doors, several doors have big deep concave souvenirs of her legacy. We just sanded em off, stained and lots of polyurethane. I like seeing the reminders of her legacy. It remains pretty wood, just 'distressed' with her signature.

If you don't want such souvenirs, you can buy big sheet-brass scratch-bumpers to pre-emptively protect the doors. The brass will get scratched up, but it is a sacrificial item to protect the door.