Cooper-Duper

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Cooper and Mallory and how they will hopefully grow up to be the best of friends. It then got me thinking about Cooper’s behavior of late.

For the first 1.5 years, he earned full run of the house. We carefully did this in stages: crate all day & night; crate all day, with us at night; blocked off in the entryway all day, full run of the house at night; allowed in entryway & upstairs during the day, full run at night; then full run all day every day. The only things he ever ate as a puppy were part of my flipflop (the HORROR!), part of Rick’s sandal, and some tufts of carpet. He has always had an interest in napkins and paper towels, but we never had to deal with him eating shoes, furniture, belts, etc. He even knew to not get on our bed during the day when we weren’t home – which was amazing to me.

Then Mallory came along. All was fine for 2 months. Cooper still had full run of the house and we had no issues.

And then, I went back to work.

Here is a recap of what we know the dog has eaten in the past 6+ months:
*countless socks – Mallory’s
*countless socks – mine
*one (1) pair of Mallory’s pink bunny slippers (which came out in a big fluffy pile of poop 5 days later)
*one (1) pair of my underwear
*started chewing on the nipple of a pacifier
*one (1) lid/adaptor set for her bottles (which came out in big fluffy pile of throw up 5 days later…he was acting strangely for a few days and I was afraid of another seizure, but it was just chunks of plastic in his tummy causing him some problems)
*a bajillion facial cleansing clothes
*a used diaper (only #1, not #2)

We started with making sure Mallory’s bedroom door was shut at all times. That stinker of a dog would go in at night and sniff and hunt through her laundry basket and SELECTIVELY pull out baby socks. And then eat them. And then I’d see baby socks in his poop the next couple of days. The laundry basket is now in the closet. We also have lids on all of our garbage cans now, so that he doesn’t get to diapers or baby wipes.

We never shut the door to our walk-in closet. Well, we never used to but we have to now. That is how he was getting my socks & underwear – they are in a little chest and because I’m lazy and don’t shut the drawers when I’m done, he had a buffett available to him.

He is currently back on lockdown during the day – blocked in the entryway. This is a large area, he has water & a big bed and we make sure he has his toys. We thought we were safe.

We have a table in our entryway that is the catch-all for our “stuff” when we walk in the door – sunglasses, mail, what have you. This table also has wicker baskets underneath it. Cooper has never ever ever touched that table or anything on the table ~ wait, I guess he did pull her pacifier off that table back in January ~ but other than that, he has never ever touched anything on that table.

Now we come home to papers scattered on the ground, a bib pulled off the table, sunglasses not where we left them. The simple solution would be to keep that table clean all the time but I am not a good enough housekeeper to have that happen.

Because all of this started happening in January, literally the day I went back to work, I can’t help but worry that Cooper is mad about Mallory. He has never once done anything to her and I am completely comfortable leaving them together in the same room. Maybe he just takes it out on me by eating all that stuff and leaves us with a mess that we have to clean up when he “passes” it?

I think I just need to work harder about spending time with the Coopster and letting him know how much we love him. Poor puppy.

I should add that Cooper has not ONCE eaten anything of Rick’s. Those socks must smell too bad.