He's Had a Bad Week

I promised Chris that I wouldn't blog about Snickers too much but I couldn't resist sharing this. (warning..Long Post)

Overall, Snickers is pretty well behaved. He still is a puppy but he's usually not too bad. Well, this week he proved me wrong.

We usually crate Snix when we leave the house. Lately we've (yes, Chris too. Not just me) felt pretty guilty putting him in the crate. We decided to try leaving him in the kitchen because we have a 'puppy gate' that blocks him from the rest of the house. Our neighbor, Sue (she takes care of Snickers and really deserves her own post!), usually leaves him in the kitchen for about an hour or so before we get home from work so we knew that he could handle it.

This past Sunday we went to Petsmart to get this...

Bitter Apple Spray.

We were going to spray a couple things in the kitchen so Snickers wouldn't chew anything up. We've never tried the spray before but have heard good things about it.

We went directly to Petsmart and Starbucks and came right home. We were gone less than an hour and look what we came home too..

Seriously?!? The Irony.

We were out buying him spray so he DIDN'T chew anything up. And here he is--a whole role of toilet paper from the bathroom off the kitchen.

He can't figure out why we haven't come inside yet. All we could do was laugh about it before we went in to punish him.

The mess. The sad thing is that it probably took him about 5 minutes to make it.

Refusing to make eye contact with me.

'Maybe they'll stop punishing me if I pretend that I don't hear them.'


The bad week didn't stop there. On Tuesday night, the weather was unusually warm. I couldn't wait to get home and take Snickers on a run outside. He's actually a decent runner and loves to be outside. I got home from work, quickly changed, and got his leash ready to take him on a run. We have a gate to our driveway that I kept open knowing that I was going to go right back out for the run. While I was getting the leash ready, the backdoor was cracked and Snickers snuck out, ran off the deck, down the driveway, and out the gate as fast as he could. Are you kidding me?!?

We live on a somewhat busy street. Especially at 5:15pm. I had no choice but to run after him. He stayed on the sidewalk but ran as fast as he could as cars were driving by. He kept looking back at me thinking 'I love our runs Mom. Look how fast I can go.' And let me just paint a picture for you. My house was left wide open and I'm running down my street yelling at Snickers, who is only running faster the more we go. Thank God that I was in my workout clothes already and not my work clothes, or worse- halfway dressed.

Snickers finally turns onto a side street and slows down because there are some little boys playing on the swing-set in their fenced in yard. Their bulldog was behind the fence as well and Snickers wanted to stop and check everything out. This didn't mean I could catch him though. Every time I got close, he ran around me.

I asked the three little boys if they would help me catch my dog.

Here's the best part- Guess what they responded with?? "No, you're a stranger. We can't help." Ugh!! Do I look threatening in this HOT pink jacket?? I had to explain to them that I'm not a stranger, I'm their neighbor.

To wrap-up this long story, the boys finally realized that I'm a nice person and not a threat and helped me get Snix. It took around 25 minutes and it was probably the best 25 minutes of his life. Snix had four different people 'playing' with him. Needless to say, Snickers spent A LOT of time in his crate that night.

Chris and I have decided to get Snickers more training. He needs Doggy Bootcamp. I know we need to be stricter with him but he's so cute and loving that it's hard to stay mad at him too long.

A little flashback...I wish this was our only behavior problem.

And I had to post this for my sister, Whitney. This is her big pup, Milly. At least our pup is small and I'm sure his messes don't take as long to clean up as Milly's. :)