I think my dog, Midnight, believes our living room is her private playground. All she wants to do is play and the living room is where most of her play takes place.
She’ll run back and forth dropping her chewed up Nylabone and pushing it around with her feet – making her own game of it. Or she’ll drop it at her feet in the hopes that we’ll pick it up and throw it for her or kick it along the hardwood floor. I call that one Dog Hockey. She does make a good goalie.
Unfortunately with all this play our furniture is taking a beating! Our leather couches don’t look so nice anymore and she’s always banging into the tv stand and accidentally turning on the CD player. Lucky for her our home entertainment system isn’t working or else she’d probably be blasted by the music whenever she turns on the cd player!
When we have some extra money maybe we’ll look at different styles of tv stands, perhaps getting one with doors to hide all the electrical equiptment behind will help.
Actually I can’t wait until Midnight settles down. She’s only 17 months old so she’s really still just a big puppy. I’m told Labs start to calm down when they are three or so. I like the playfulness, but I think we (and our furniture) could do with a little less of it.
If you have a dog or cat do they have one room that they seem to think of as “their” playroom?
Well I can tell you one thing….try and take your dog out more…Labradors need to move a lot and that is one of the reasons why your house and TV stand is being demolished….it is true that after they get older they calm a bit down but not entirely. Anyway you can try taking Midnight out 2 times a day for 1 hour each time and just let him loose or run along side him. Hope it helps.
Cheers
If our dog wasn’t exercised your advice would be right on … but Midnight gets three long walks a day. Like two and a half hours walking or more. She’s just playful. It’s her games that have the potential to be destructive.
However I never said our TV stand and house was being demolished. I said she hits the TV stand and turns on the CD player inside it. That’s why I’m thinking of getting a stand with doors on it (plus that will keep the dog hair out of it too!). She’s allowed on the couches and yes they don’t look quite as nice as they did pre-dog but they are not ruined.
I know about big dogs in the house. At the time my mother passed away she had 6 dobbies in the house—a small house in the country. We had a big house in town, but she choose to live her last days in the country at Penny Patch. Later I got a St Bernard (Barney) he is gone now and I have a small shihshu. All the kids are gone now and its just myself and my wife and Professor(the shihshu) of course he is the cock of the walk—spoiled rotten. Midnight will outgrow her bad habits–I’m sure.