Toys

Since coming here, Alex has been having fun playing with the toys I had for Lady Jane and the girls. In general, the toys were from McDonalds (mini beanie babies), the March of Dimes (full size beanie babies) and Kohl's department store. Neither Jane nor the girls had ever destroyed any of the toys from these sources, though they sometimes got pretty dirty. Alex has decided to make it his mission to, not only play with them, but to beat them into submission. As the photo below illustrates, there is a definate progression in the submission process. First he removes the clothes, and the nose, in the case of the white March of Dimes beanie baby. Next he removes the eyes as in the case of the Kohl's elephant and bunny. As a last step, he then removes their brains (stuffing) as in the case of the McDonalds duck and Kohl's mama sheep. Its kind of creepy to find them so disfigured when I try to tidy up after him. Maybe this is the difference between boy and girl dogs. Girls think about playing tomorrow, boys just go for the thrill of the kill today.




Other happenings on a very wet and rainy Saturday:


Between thunderstorms, I ran out to Target to see if I could find some nice pre-made tea towels to embellish for a swap I am doing. Didn't find tea towels that I loved but I had a sepctacular time in the Target spot area, at the front of the store, where everything is $1.00. They had garden kneelers (can also be heated and pressed into various surfaces to make your own, unique rubber stamps), card making kits with great black, red and white embellisments, a wonderful 36" plus double sided ribbon D-ring belt also black, white and red (great for purse handles) and a sack of eight dead tennis balls for doggy play. I also bought, not for a dollar, a seersucker sundress from the Isaac Mizrathi line. I hope it works well for me because I love seersucker.


I think Alex has learned that biting is not a good thing. He's still so young that he really has little self control. The other night he and the girls were playing their dominance games on me while I was trying to take a nap. The little blankety blank actually bit my butt - ouch! he didn't break the skin but it stung. Because of this I have decided that I needed to start some serious training. Both yesterday and today when he seemed to be getting out of control with the biting I would firmly say no and try to keep his jaw closed. If he persisted, I would then say 'Alex, do you want to go to bed?". If he still wasn't listening, I then picked him and put him to bed in the master bathroom. We have now done this 15 times for varying periods of time from 10 minutes to an hour. Just moments ago he was getting out of control and I asked "Alex, do you want to go to bed?" and miracles of miracles he stopped biting me. I think a couple of more corrections will be needed but I think we have made a breakthrough.


I hope Sunday will be this quiet.