Christmas in July and Time Out!

DISCLAIMER - I DO ACTUALLY DO WORK AT MY JOB. I ACTUALLY WROTE THIS POST EARLIER THIS WEEKEND AND JUST REALIZED I HADN'T POSTED IT YET! :)



Okay, so I know all I do is blog about our dogs, but they are our LIFE. And we don't have kids to blog about yet - and our lives are VERY uneventful outside of the doggies - so this is what you get :)

Last Saturday, when I got off from work, Chris and I decided that our doggie toy box needed a makeover, so we brought ALL three dogs to PetsMart and let them each pick out some toys! It was an adventure for sure. We won't ever be doing that again, by the way. So, Buddie gets in the shopping cart because he loves it and we throw all the toys in there with him. He's in doggie heaven.

Meanwhile, Jack and Harlee bark and pee on everything in the store... sigh. Anyway, after spending an UNDISCLOSED amount of money at the pet store, we head to the dog park to try out some toys, then head home and we FILL UP the toy box. The dogs were LOVING IT and they were constantly running over to the toy box and taking everything out. I tried to make them understand that they can only have one toy out at a time, but they just didn't understand... oh well. I have to pick my battles. Here's a pic of Buddie and Harlee LOVING the full toy box!

So, the entire evening was just a HUGE toy-fest and Buddie, especially, was having so much fun, that he forgot to go sit by the door to let us know he needed to go outside. And as he realizes he needs to GO he walks towards the door and doesn't quite make it and lovely, wonderful pee begins to fill our kitchen floor. Lovely.

So, whenever our dogs do something really terrible - this normally only includes tearing something up, or going to the bathroom in our house - both of which happen MAYBE once a year - we put them in time out. Now - I have to note that this only applies to our older 2 dogs - Jack and Buddie. Our big puppy, Harlee, has no clue what doing something bad means, thinks she is always good and therefore always thinks you are loving on her, even if you are punishing her. So, anyway, Jack and Buddie TOTALLY know what time out is and they KNOW when we mean business.

So, I go to clean up the 5 gallons of nasty dog pee and scream at Buddie the entire time... while he is hiding underneath the coffee table, of course. He KNEW when he started to pee that it was wrong... so he went ahead and hid when he was done. Smart dog. So, after I clean it up, I walk over and pop his nose and tell him how bad he is and that he's in time out and he cannot go back into the kitchen to get his ball he left in there while he was leaving a nice mess for me to clean up. Now, understand, that this was the BRAND NEW ball we had JUST bought at the store... AND.... wait for it.... IT SQUEAKS!!!! It's is favorite ball and he hadn't put it down all day since we bought it. He was SO upset. He laid down in the den and just looked at his ball in the kitchen for about 45 minutes until I told him time out was up and he could go get it.

Just LOOOOKING at his ball... it's the green thing at the top of the picture.

After 5 or 10 minutes, he laid down and stared at it. How pathetic!

When we finally told him time out was up, he got his ball and RAN to the toy box to see what else was in there. Too funny!

And after about 20 minutes playing, he was emotionally exhausted from the experience he had just gone through and PASSED OUT (not kidding) halfway inside the toy box.

Seriously - our dogs think they are children and therefore act like it. I have no idea how we trained them to understand "time out" and understand when we mean business, but we did and they are AWESOME at understanding us. Maybe it's cause we totally treat them like children... who knows. Am I the only person in the world who would treat their dog this way? Please tell me I'm not crazy.