Friday, August 21, 2009

Pooches: Destruction and the Bored Dog

Despite this situation, we usually don't have problems leaving the pooches home alone. However, when E and I returned home from dinner the other night, we found this outside Mr. B's teepee:Curious about why he had a spatula, we investigated further and found this:
This made a little more sense. We keep this grill, which we use on the barbecue, in one of the lower cabinets. Mr. B must have smelled some of the meat remnants and dragged it out to eat. But, what was most troubling, was this:
Mr. B. had actually taken the burners from the stove and dragged them over to the table. This means Mr. B had to actually jump up and grab these heavy burners off the stove. And, he must have done this twice!
We pride our dogs on being well-trained and respectful, and we haven't really had any other incidents like this one.
Dogs become destructive when they have too much energy, or they're bored. This means we have to be more proactive helping the dogs release energy. Usually we're good about taking the dogs to doggy daycare, throwing the ball around, or going on long walks. We've actually been a bit lax about taking the dogs to daycare, and I've been going on shorter walks because of the heat.
The other thing we need to do is keep them engaged with dog toys. Usually the pooches get food-loaded kongs, which are like a puzzle, as they try to get the food out from the middle. We also need to be better about switching out the available toys, so the dogs always feel like they have something new to chew on. Even the best-behaved dogs will have relapses...after all, they are still animals. Luckily nothing was destroyed, and this was just a wake-up call for us to make sure we're still engaging our dogs adequately.

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