Puppy Problems

Our younger hound, Rutledge, has an annoying habit of not wanting to go to bed and then waking up well before 7am in a PANIC each morning. It is pretty annoying, especially when he throws in the 3 or 4am panic attack just for kicks.

He is still crated at night and when we're not home, and this is for the sake of our possessions. We left him uncrated a few nights ago and woke up to a total mess in the basement. He had chewed on everything he could get his little paws on, from paper to a gatorade bottle and a CD case. Basically, he proved to us that he isn't ready to sleep out in the open with Hamilton.

So, tonight I devised a plan. It is too cold and windy for Frank to take them for a walk, and keeping him awake is pretty labor intensive for us, so we've turned to raw hide.

For some reason, Rutledge takes hours to chew down a raw hide. Many, many, many hours, like days. So, here we sit enjoying some Monday Night Football while our little hound chews away at the raw hide that I gave to him 2 hours ago - he's barely made a dent. We're really hoping that this solution will help him to stay awake until bed time, and wear him out just enough that he'll both fall asleep quickly and stay asleep for the night.

Hamilton had a raw hide, too, but he is a big boy and therefore his treat was gone within an hour of giving it to him. Now he is just pacing the living room trying to figure out how to swindle Rutledge's raw hide away from him. Good luck, H, but since it is our precious sleep on the line I don't think you'll be very successful.

If this plan works, we should be able to use one raw hide for at least a week with R and hopefully we'll all sleep better for it.