The Morning Routine

The morning routine in this house doesn’t get deviated from, even on weekends. This is why I was up at 6:30 am this morning. Mugen must be let out, must have breakfast and must have a play time while I read my forums and drink my coffee.

It will take me 20 or 30 minutes to write this post in between sips of coffee and finding where Mugen’s lost his wubba this time and tossing it for him, but it wears him down so he will take a short nap in his crate while I shower… and then the fun begins.

We come downstairs and make breakfast. Mugen is all over the counters, trying desperately to counter surf and he’s just about tall enough to get his paws up there now. Hubby gets very angry with this, but the trick I used with Reilly will not work here. Shake cans have no effect on Mugen because he’s not gunshy. I think he’s the only dog I’ve ever owned that is not afraid of thunderstorms or loud noises and I know that this is his breeder’s fault because of the way her puppies were housed… and I am grateful for this.

Reilly used to be so terrified of thunderstorms when he was young that he would try to pack all 90 pounds of himself underneath my legs. They sent him into these horrible fits. I’m glad they happen so rarely here and that hubby and I never chose to move back to the midwest. As he got older, I ignored the freak outs and he gained more confidence and by the time he was ten, he would sit calmly at my side while a thunder storm passed, he would whine maybe once or twice, but not the freakouts of old.

This is how I know that acting like nothing is wrong and exuding confidence in scary situations works but there is a different problem in my house now. One that everyone who has owned a Lab puppy has experienced.

I have to play with Mugen like this in the mornings because if I don’t… he will eat my house. Thankfully, hubby and I understood this would happen before he came home and opted not to buy new furniture. Our family room is actually in the worst need of having new furniture AND new carpet. So, while we are correcting him when he digs at our carpet and furniture… we are not freaking out and getting horrendously angry about it… and I think this is actually why the behavior isn’t stopping.

We do, and every puppy owner does I’m sure, care more about Mugen than this stuff, but we have less of a vested interest in this stuff because we planned to get rid of it before he even came along. I wonder if that attitude isn’t having an impact on the effectiveness of training him not to destroy it. I do see progress, but not as quick as the progress we had with Reilly, which was… he came home and didn’t chew at all.

There is one thing that I do get super serious about. Electrical cables. There are two macbooks in this house. Replacing those power adapters is 80$ each and hubby and I both earn our incomes through these laptops, his is more monetary than mine, but you get the point. If we didn’t have access to our technology and our nerdery… I think that Mugen would be in grave danger of never eating another piece of furniture again…

Hey… wait…

I think I’ve stumbled onto a great idea.

Gotta go. Mugen just dumped the wii fit board onto himself.

Good morning everyone!