In Which the LoveBunny becomes Hell Dog... Momentarily

Ryan and I don't like to cook on Mondays. No matter now hard we try, it just never seems to happen. It's the first day of the week, we're depressed, tired, and unmotivated. We usually end up running out to grab something.

Such was the case last night, so we decided to hit our fave local cheap Mexican place, Los Dos Amigos in Hamilton. When we left the house, Rusty was not too happy to go in the crate, he had been in for a while briefly earlier, and wanted to play and see us, not sleep. He hesitated at the bottom of the stairs when we were calling him up, as he's starting to figure us out. But he did come up and go in, after looking at my like I must be crazy for a few seconds (I tricked him with a sock).

We had a lovely dinner and came home relaxed and unwound. When we got home, Russ yelped like a fool to get out, we took him to the bathroom, and all seemed well. He ate and went outside by himself to go to the bathroom again. We thought, "Wow, we really have the best dog ever." Then he pissed on the floor. Then he pooped on the floor. Then he pissed on the floor. Again.

I don't know if it was anger -- that's probably anthropomorphizing it too much and channeling our guilt onto him -- or if he just held it during a time of day when he's not used to doing so. I was quite annoyed, especially when I stepped in the second round of pee.

He was quite hyper as well, and totally in our face. We usually have about 10 - 20 minutes of that after each meal, but since we didn't take him for a walk last night, I think he had some excess energy. He didn't want to cuddle and growled at me when I tried to take his rawhide away. I won't have that. We need to figure out how to get him to be a little less food/mouth obsessed. He will occasionally growl when we try to take a treat (i.e., leaf, rawhide, dead bug) out of his mouth and still acts like he's in a litter of seven pups when eating. I make sure he sits, as patiently as possible, before I give him his food, but he still sucks it down like it's the first meal of his life.

It really is amazing how the dog you have is a reflection of your actions, not his or hers. So our lessons learned from the Hell Dog are:

1. He needs to go for a walk every day now, even if he doesn't want to.
2. We need to get him in the crate a little more often, so he is used to us being gone.
3. When he has been in the crate, we need to be more vigilant about letting him out frequently to go, not watch that crazy vampire show.
4. Figure out how to get him a little less food/mouth obsessed.

I'll let you know how that all turns out.