Vindicating Cooper

I feel Cooper deserves a fair post showing off what an unbelievably cool dog he is. He is clingy and drives me CRAZY almost all of the time, but he is pretty awesome in a lot of ways. Here is a little list of the funny things he does:

*Every night before bed, I put Vaseline on my lips. Starting from when Cooper was a little puppy sleeping on our bed, I’d put a little on his nose or whatever. To this day, no matter where Cooper is in the house, if I am in bed and pop the top off the Vaseline jar – he hightails it to my bedside for his share. It has become a game to see how quietly I can remove the top and have him still come. I’d say he is winning about 600-0.
*Cooper gets a Kong with peanut butter whenever we leave the house; we can tell him to go find his Kong and give him hints if it’s upstairs, and he’ll bring it to the kitchen and drop it in front of the peanut butter cabinet. Then he watches us fill it and very impatiently waits for us to leave the house so he can dig in. Sometimes the peanut butter dries way inside the Kong, which then turns into another game – he runs through the house and “tosses” the Kong so it slams to the floor and hopefully dislodges some peanut butter for him.
*Sleeping on the bed with us is a treat and he knows when we break out the dog sheet to cover the comforter that it means he gets to join us. But he also knows to wait until we say “OK Cooper” and then he jumps up. He was at our friend’s house playing one day and they were trying to get the dogs all on the bed and Cooper wouldn’t jump up there. We got there and they were showing us how he wouldn’t get on the bed – we said “OK Cooper” and up he jumped. LOL.
*He has started helping us clean Mallory up after dinner when there are dried-up pieces of food stuck to her clothes or hair. We lay her down on the bathroom floor and he picks her clean. She just laughs at him.
*We always forget to close our gate in the backyard – meaning that anytime we let him out he has full access to the lake, the two black labs down the street, the family of rabbits living under our neighbor’s house, the yip-yap-sorry-excuse-for-a-dog Jack Russell two houses down, etc. But because he’s such a nerd, we can open the door and he will run and go potty and will be back to the door in a second. I know we should be more careful but he has never once left the backyard when we are inside. (This is where his clingyness is a good trait!)
*And we can’t forget about his “Would you rather go to Ohio State or be dead” and “HAIL TO THE VICTORS” tricks. He is one smart puppy. Literally.

These are the good stories I have to remember when I get beyond frustrated with him lately. He is our “Marley” – preparing Rick & me for parenthood pre-Mallory – and is a wonderful (sock-eating) pet. Love ya Coops.