Naughty Puppy Thursday: Climbing & Shoes

Lately Chester has fancied himself to be a little explorer and mountain climber. When I was getting ready this morning, he was out in the living room getting a toy out of his toy box - or so I thought. I heard him make a little noise, so I went to check on him. I came out to see him standing on the couch armrest. As soon as he saw me he jumped right down and off the couch and hid under the dining room table. I went back to getting ready, and heard a crashing sound. I went to investigate and found one of the coasters, normally on the side table, on the floor. Chester was right next to it on the floor looking at the coaster innocently like "how did that get there??" By a naughty puppy climbing on top of the couch and side table of course!

The last straw was when he was supposed to be eating, but I caught him in the act - standing on the side table with his 2 front legs and 2 back legs on the couch armrest. He was just standing their sniffing, dangerously close to the lamp on the side table. As a result, Chester has lost all of his unsupervised time in the mornings. Granted, he's not usually out of my sight because he likes to be by me ALL THE TIME, but if he wandered into the living room for a few minutes I didn't think much of it. He usually would return with a toy or his bone. Now I don't trust him to not get into mischief and climb onto things he's not supposed to. He could hurt himself or break something quite easily. Though I must admit he looked pretty darn cute standing there on the armrest and side table.

Another bad habit of his lately is shoes, in particular MY shoes. When we first got him he loved shoes, but he finally got over that obsession in the late fall. However, the past few weeks he's been really into them again. I thought we were past the stage of having to put them up out of his reach, but apparently not. He usually doesn't chew on them much, just has the shoe in his mouth until you notice and then runs around and tries to hide with it (under the dining room table where we can't get him of course). I know he knows he shouldn't do it, and he does it for attention, but we can't just ignore him when he has a shoe or he'll destroy it.

Today at work I thought I had a smudge on my shoe, but no, it was a HOLE. Thanks a lot Chester. He's such a naughty little ball of fur at times! But so cute he's impossible to ever be mad at.