The Dog Diaries: Bad Dog

Well, it's been 4 weeks now and I have less and less to blog about.  Chevy has either stopped misbehaving as much or we are learning how to care for him better.  We've gotten into the habit of being gone for an hour or two during the day and Chevy goes into his crate.  He goes in there willingly (which is a major improvement from when we first got him) and we think he spends the time in his crate fairly quietly...without barking or whining.  Of course, we're not home to know if that is really the case, but we think he is good. 

Today the kids are home in honor of President's Day, so I put Chevy in the crate about noon and took them to the mall for some ice cream and errands.  When we returned at 2:30pm, Chevy met us at the front door.  How does he do that?  He opened the top latch of the crate again and squeezed himself through.  It cannot be comfortable to squeeze yourself through the half-unlatched door of a wire dog crate. Immediately I started looking around to see what mischief he got into while I was gone.  This is what I found:

In case you can't tell what that is, it is the remains of a box of Girl Scout Samoa cookies.  The dang dog found the cookies that I need to deliver and helped himself to a box.  Grrr.  It would have been better if I had ordered myself a box that I could use to replace it, but I blew all my girl scout money on Thin Mints.  So now I'll have to order a new box of Samoas to deliver.  Add $4 to the cost of the dog. 

Of course, Chevy knows he's been bad, so he stays glued to my side for the next 15 minutes as I try to clean up his mess and move the rest of the cookies to higher ground.  I don't know about you but when my kids are bad, I wouldn't recommend that they hang out underfoot for the next 15 minutes.  It is like he is waiting for me to pat his head and say "good dog".  Well., he can just keep waiting.  Why can't he go hide in a corner until I'm ready to forgive him? 

Another little "bad dog" issue that we are dealing with is that the dog doesn't seem to have good bladder control.  He's excellently house broken.  He has NEVER peed or poo'd in the house on purpose, but he gets so excited when we come home that he almost always leaves a piddle trail on the floor as he leaps out of the crate to say hello.   We can't seem to get him out of the house fast enough to keep it from happening.  And he is able to hold his pee for much longer than 2.5 hours when he isn't excited.  All you experienced dog people out there, any thoughts on that one?