My wife is out of town this weekend so I am flying solo watching the kids and managing the dog. Yesterday I got to dole out some advice and wisdom to both kiddos relating to our dog.

On Friday night while the kids were in the living room playing Mario Party on Nintendo Switch I walked passed my son's bedroom and noticed a trail of wrappers from his bedroom down the hall towards our bedroom where the dog's bed is. Granola bar wrappers, gum wrappers, plastic yogurt tube wrappers. Clearly the dog had gotten into his garbage can. This is not the first time this has occurred. My son is supposed to make sure his garbage can is covered (not that that matters the dog just knocks it over and the top falls off), his chair is tucked into his desk so she can't reach the garbage and his door is closed so she doesn't go into his room. Well, none of these things occurred and needless to say the poop that came out of that dog yesterday was quite remarkable. I am just glad she didn't get a blockage from the paper and plastic she digested.

So, after getting over my shock and amazement at the dog's remarkable poop. Plastic does not break down in a dog's digestive system. It does not. Anyways, I am off track thinking about that poop again. I had to have words with my son. Before I did I prefaced it by taking some responsibility and telling him there is an obvious problem with this garbage can, so let's get him a new one the dog cannot get the lid off. I went on Amazon and ordered a new can that hopefully she can't get into. Once we had hopefully solved the problem, I talked to him about the fact that when you have a dog as part of your family you need to be responsible for caring for the dog and part of that is doing your part to ensure she doesn't get into things. I explained we would have been in a very bad situation if the dog had gotten a blockage in her colon due to all the packaging she ate and we didn't have a car (wife took it to go out of town) to get her to the vet. I told him, "I get it, you are 14, I kind of remember being 14- you just do stuff without thinking" but we need to take responsibility for our actions, habits and think before doing things. He was pleased I didn't get mad about it. I offered to show him the remarkable poop I had bagged and thrown into our outdoor garbage bin but he declined.

Later in the day my daughter and I took the dog for a walk to park and back. This is the regular walk that my daughter and I go on with the dog and she loves it because I usually let her sneak in a couple minutes on the swings or 5 slides down the slide when we get to the park. As we were walking back on the trail from the park a couple was walking towards us with their dog. Now my dog loves people, but she is very inconsistent with other dogs. Some dogs she really likes, others she just ignores but some dogs she does not like and barks and growls at. Usually when we pass dogs we don't know I just say hello and decline a dog greeting saying "she isn't always good with other dogs". However, my daughter being a 6 year old, despite knowing we are not supposed to pet unknown dogs without the owner's permission and mom or dad petting them first just runs towards the dog yelling with glee "Can I pet the doggy, can I pet the doggy". I knew this was not going to be good. My dog not only is inconsistent with other dogs but is fiercely protective of my daughter. The couple says "sure you can pet our dog, he is very friendly". My dog is already getting agitated and as soon and my daughter pets the other dog she growls and tries to lunge at him. I kneel down and hold my dog, putting my hand on her chest to calm her and tell my daughter "that's enough, say thank you, and let's go". I also apologize to the couple for my dog lashing out, which they were cool about, understanding she was just being protective of my daughter. As we continued our walk home my daughter had a moment of reflection that surprised me and made me proud. She said "I should not have pet that other doggy". I told her it is good that she recognized her mistake and part of having a pet as part of your family is making sacrifices. If we know our dog doesn't like it when we pet other dogs, we need to sacrifice our desire to pet them in order to keep our dog calm and not turn it into a bad situation. She understood and said "yes daddy, I love our puppy, I don't want to make her upset".

Thanks for reading!

Sats for all, GR