Bad Boy Puppy

Levi is turning into a bad boy puppy making me as proud as an alley cat that just found a plate of fried chicken sitting on a picnic table. That goodie two shoes act he had going there for so long must have been him making sure Mom and Dad fell in love with him until he was positive the ink had dried on his adoption papers.

He's had quite a week. He discovered the joy of pulling threads in a throw rug. The floor is minus the rug now. He figured out that decorative couch cushions are just stuffies without eyes and lips to kiss. The cushions are lined up like soldiers on the back of the couch now where he can't reach them. Yet. He also made his Houdini escape from the dog yard that I wrote about the last time I blogged, and Levi learned to chew paper and pull house plants apart. But the biggest bad boy stunt of all happened the day before yesterday when he peed in the house for the first time in two weeks.

Well, what did Mom expect with the peeing on the carpet. She'd completely forgotten to let him out at 10 PM and by midnight my baby brother was tired and he had forgotten to try working on his canine-to-human mental telepathy. Mom caught him in the act and made the same mistake she did the last time she caught him. She called him a 'bad boy' in a loud, angry voice and he paid her back in the same way he did the other two times she did that. He didn't peeing again for over twelve hours, making her feel really bad for his tiny little bladder. But three times is the charm and I'm hoping Mom knows by now that Levi's a lot different than me and Jason were at his age. We could let the scolding go in one ear and it was forgotten ten minutes later when it came out the other ear. Baby Levi keeps it in his brain and truly gets his feelings hurt. He wants Mom to always be syrupy sweet, full of praise and wiggly all over the way humans get when they are using that positive reinforcement stuff. So he's trying really hard to learn the house rules...unlike me who always thought that rules were best when you broke them and could then watch Mom and Dad get all puffed up about it.

The next day after the soiling the carpet caper, like clock work Mom took Levi outside every two hours and stayed long enough to read a whole chapter in Whistling in the Dark and when she'd come in Dad would use one of the few words at his post-stroke disposal and would ask, "Pee?" and Mom would have to report "No" and feel bad all over again for yelling. ©
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