Dear dog, your toys are not supposed to be under the couch
Why are dogs so obsessed with leaving pet toys in the middle of the room?
I knew Junee was going to be a wise guy when I met her. As soon as I arrived at the adoption center to do a test walk around the block and pay to take her home, I’d barely been inside for more than five minutes before she walked over, looked at me, turned her butt toward me and pooped in the middle of the floor. I groaned at how nonchalant the adoption care lady was about her doing it instead of getting up to scoot paper underneath her.
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I knew crate training was going to be top priority. While Junee strolled around the neighborhood easily pre-adoption, as soon as I signed the paperwork and the two of us rounded the corner — a block away from the adoption agency — she decided to flop down on the sidewalk and not move. Initially, I wondered if she just didn’t like me much. But I couldn’t just leave her there so I picked her up. She licked my hands and neck immediately. And then she crawled onto my neck like a scarf and wouldn’t get down. What a character.
This time, I was not a 9-year-old full of energy or away at college and only popping in for quick visits. Unlike with my first two dogs, there was no backyard for her to run around in or a mudroom for her to wipe her paws before climbing onto my couch. Her dog room was going to be my entire condo, and she knew it.
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Although crate training was easy enough once I realized her obsession with carrots, one of our biggest rivalries in the first of three years was with her toys. This dog absolutely loved to take toys out of her toy bins and do two things: 1) roll them under my couches so I had to army crawl to get them, 2) sit them in the middle of the floor, where I constantly tripped over them. I’d already twisted my ankle in multi-inch heels and hobbled my way to a Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) concert. This dog was not going to send me back to physical therapy for another five weeks.