free-range sophie 2013 - day 1
In a little over a month, Sophie will turn 3 years old. I still have to blog about Jinx's 8th birthday from Feb 28, and my husband's more-than-8th birthday from yesterday, but Sophie's getting the spotlight right now because, well, that's how I roll.We have been blessed with well-behaved and easy to train Finnish Lapphunds in our life. Jinx went through his chewing phase while we lived in my in-laws' basement for a year, so by the time we bought this house, he was easy to leave alone with Annie. We honestly thought Sophie wouldn't be too much trouble after her 2nd birthday, but you all know how that turned out.
Table corners and shoes are SO MUCH FUN and DELICIOUS!
We've been crating Sophie since shortly after her 2nd birthday, once we realized that she just wasn't to be trusted. Of course we always started out small - a 30 minute run to the store and then building up to a couple of hours and then the full work-day - but inevitably, this dog would remodel our coffee table and destroy my shoes.
Our dear, sweet Sophacleese Lappie has begun to mellow out considerably. I can leave the dogs free on the main floor while I take a nap upstairs and nothing happens. (I learned this while I was really sick in February and couldn't call the dogs upstairs when I needed to lie down and then ended up giving up and just dying a slow death for an afternoon by myself.)
So this morning when we went out for breakfast and then to run a couple of errands, I removed any chewable item I could think of (computer, books, electrical wires, tissue box, SHOES) from the living room and we closed the door to the basement, blocked off the stairs to the second floor and*....
Nothing was destroyed!
It's a small victory, but I know that Jinx and Sophie like to nap together and now that Old Man Jinx naps a lot more, it's sort of nice to have Sophie on patrol.
I see you.
We are very proud of our little Sophie and I thought I'd keep track of our successes AND failures this time so we have something to refer to when things possibly go wrong.
So Day 1 of Operation Free-Range Sophie 2013 has gone well!
*Shawn even took a photo of the corner of the coffee table that was re-chewed after his father fixed it for us (so we'd have a reference point). We're still not sure which dog did the nibbling, but it was only once and when we first got the table back. Table seems to be extra-nibbled-free!