no crate finally!!!

[brandy]

yippie.. after a year spot is finally out of his crate and hasnt chewed anything! thats two days now.. and nights that he has been left on his own in the living room and nothing has been chewed!
he has decided that the couch is his new bed.. but i can live with that.. its leather so the hair just needs a cloth to take it off!
fingers crossed that will be him now completly out of his crate for good!
bless, i took it down while he was outside and he came running back in, and the look of shock on his face.. its one of those moments when you go out and cant find your car .. or in this case house days. that oh crap.. where is it looks.
but as soon as he found his food and water he was happy!
now what he dosent realise is that the vet is next on my list as hes turning a year old.. poor mannie.. hes loosing all kinds of things at the moment! *G*
and here is spot from baby to year old.. *G*
http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e346/brandy28655/bubbles/DSCF5650.jpg
http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e346/brandy28655/july%202010/20100702_86.jpg

[_Ju_]

That is one happy dog with boys the exact right age for him!
I wish I could give my little boy that right now, but it wouldn't be fair on the dog.

Brandy, something that works for most dogs is tabasco sauce, if he ever has a chewing relapse. Just paint potential areas with dabs of tabasco sauce(first test for staining in an unconspicuos area!). it lasts a long time, and works unless your dog is one of the few that likes hot tastes!

[Liz]

That's good news and he is lovely now he's all growed up.:D It would be a good idea though to keep his crate as a 'refuge' and resting place for him.
Benjy really loves his crate and runs into for nap times and bedtime!

How are he and Bubbles getting on together?

[brandy]

sadly we had to rehome bubbles, but they got on great.
it was one of the hardest decisions of my life.
after 3 years she decided that she was higher in the pack than Ben,
and would radomly want to bite him.
for 3 months we worked on trying to get around this, but it was to the point that she could not even be let out in the room with him.
it was completly random as well. she would be her normal self 99 percent of the time, and then she would growl and snap at him out of the blue.
it was nothing he did, and we were told that it was jealousy, and that possibly was because that she sensed something was wrong with ben and lesser in the pack structure.
it came to the point i just did not feel it was safe to have her in the house anymore,
and Ben just could not understand to stay away from her.
she had reached the point of i really want to bite you but im still not quite brave enough to latch on stage. and we had done everything talked to everyone and basically got to the point i was crying myself to sleep at night.
in the end we talked to labradoodle rescue several times before i finally made the decision to find her a new home.
we all still miss her so much and the kids talk about her all the time. Ben has a picture he drew of her over his bed. we talk about her being a member of our family and how even though she cant live with us any more that it dosnt mean that we still dont love her and miss her.
wow, sorry for writing a book.. but its still really hard.. and even now i question the choice that i made. i keep myself sane by telling myself that it was for the best that if she had eventually worked up the nerve to go after Ben she could have done a lot of damage to him or killed him, and she would have been put down as well.
its so hard though, as she is such a wonderful dog, and the most loving ball of fluff ive ever had the pleasure to know. I know that she is happy where she is now, and i have her picture above me right now on the wall.. but i dont have her at my feet.. and well.. its just hard you know..

[Liz]

Oh Brandy I am so very sorry to hear that!:~(

Was she behaving like that before you got Spot?

[brandy]

she was always jealous .. and would push ben out of the way and get between us when i would go to cuddle him. going so far as to knock him down to get between us. one of the reasons we got spot was to try to take her attention away from me. which it did to a point, as she had another dog to play with and wasnt so dependant on me for everything. we even tried seperating her from me.. ie having other people walk her, ignoring her, everything we could think of to no joy. The strange thing was it was only ben and not anyone else in the family.