Pit Smarts

In today's edition of "my dog is too smart for his own good" - THE CRATE.

Anyone who has ever crate-trained a puppy knows that your typical dog will respond well to treats or his favorite toys. He will follow said treat/toy into the crate, he'll lay down, you'll say "good crate!" and soon enough the puppy will love his crate as though it is his own little private paradise. Maybe he'll even go in on command!

Unfortunately, Mr. Smarty Pants (a.ka. Bruce) learned that Crate = Rachel and Adam leaving. As I hold his favorite treat towards the crate, you can almost see his little wheels turning: If I take that treat it will taste yummy but then I will be in the crate which means I will be alone sooooo screw the treat, I'm hiding under the table! This is all fine and dandy for now while he's still small enough for me to pick him up, but about 10 pounds from now we're going to have a serious problem.

Yesterday I tossed a bunch of treats in there and walked away, and he actually went in by himself! I was very excited, until this morning when he was back to hiding under the table. Sigh.

Pit Smarts

Everything I read says that pit bulls are some of the smartest dogs around. Bruce is proving this to be true, but sometimes I wonder whether this is a blessing or a curse.

Blessing: Bruce was almost entirely potty trained in three days and he can learn a command in about 5 minutes (we just perfected "off" the other day)

Curse: Since Bruce is growing by the minute, we got him a great big new bed. I was so excited to show him where he could now sleep and relax comfortably. Wrong. Instead, he smelled the cedar inside and spent an entire evening trying to dig a hole in the bed to reach it. Unfortunately for Bruce (and thankfully for his parents), Costco makes some tough beds, so the digging effort failed. Not one to give up easily, Bruce figures out that a zipper keeps the cover closed, and if only he could unzip it then he could reach the smelly insides! 20 minutes later he has successfully chewed through the zip-tie that's holding the zipper closed (not to mention swallowed it - eek) and opened up the bed!

Add this to his first bed which he dug the insides out of in a week, the score is now:
Bruce -2; Doggy beds - 0

Needless to say, Bruce is back to napping on the floor....