Couch Potatoes -- The Sequel

Okay, so we have established that the dogs have claimed the couches as their own personal dog beds and the rest of us will just have to sit on the floor.  I wonder what's next with them?



Oh, great.........



Couch Potatoes

Cesar Millan would hate me.

If you ever have watched Cesar's dog training show, you'd know that he is very adamant about YOU being the "pack leader" and YOU calling the shots.  YOU tell the dog what to do, when to eat, where to go, and how to get there.  The dog should be submissive, very well trained, and do your bidding completely and without hesitation.

Cesar has obviously never been to my house.

When Jack was here, and Misha before him, we wanted to have well-trained dogs that would walk off the leash and fetch the ball and all that.  It just never seemed to end up that way.  Jack definitely marched to his own drummer and we just all sort of worked our lives around his.  Jack pooped where he wanted to in the yard, slept on the couch when he chose, and ate on his own schedule.   Granted, we never really pushed the issue so why should he change?  This lifestyle was working perfectly for him, thank you very much!

We decided that this time around, we would have well-trained dogs that did not take advantage of us the way Jack did.  They were going to grow up to be big strong dogs so we had to get the chain of command established early and no deviating from it!  We all had to be on the same page, consistent and enforce the rules.  The first order of business: no dogs on the couch!

Yeah.....how's that going?

At first it was easy, they were too short to be able to pull themselves up on the couch.  They would put their little paws up and stare at us, begging for attention and not understanding why we were so high up and they could not reach us.  It was hard, but we had to remain a united front against the invasion of puppies-on-the-couch if we were going to make this training stick.  And by training I mean us, not the dogs.   Leila, of course, saw right through our devious plan and put all her energy into learning how to jump up on that couch.  When she finally did it, she came armed with her deadly arsenal of cute-puppy-face and lo and behold, we all went "Awwww, isn't she sweet?" and she knew at that moment she had won the couch battle.  It was diabolical.

When the pups were small and weighed less than twenty pounds, it was hard to resist them scrambling up on the couch and curling into our laps.  Leila had a way of lying in such a manner that her head was leaning on your knee or in your lap and she would look up at you with those liquid brown eyes and there was no way we were going to push her off (she was right).  Sometimes both of them would get up there together and curl up and we would think it was just the cutest thing ever. We would enforce the off-the-couch training later.

At sixty-five pounds today, it ain't so cute.  It's downright intrusive!

Sure enough, the family is paying for the sins of the past as the dogs still go on the couch at every moment possible.  If one of us is currently sitting there first, that's too bad...be prepared to be shoved off.  Want to curl up with the red velvet blanket?  Sorry, dogs claimed it first!  The chain of couch command has definitely turned in their favor.  They will happily stretch out on two-thirds of the couch and leave you to squish onto half a cushion.  If you are taking up too much room than they are comfortable with, they will just lie on top of you.  Even when the grandparents came to visit they too were fair game and found themselves buried in dog bodies within moments of sitting down.  Always a crowd-pleaser when trying to balance a cup of tea while sitting at the couch.

So, I guess we need a bit more work as far as stay-off-the-cough training goes.  Yes, there have been times when one (or both) stubborn dogs refuse to move and it's ME that ends up lying on the floor using a rolled-up jacket as a pillow.  But one thing is very sure:

If Cesar Millan unexpectedly knocks at the door, I'm not answering it!