Abby trials – part 3 = fail

What can I say? Derrick & I are softies.
And we love our puppy.

When we adopted Abby, her former owner told us that she always left Abby in a crate when she left her alone at home. So, we simply followed suit. She was still a baby puppy at the time and we soon learned that she loved to nibble soft things like socks and pillows.

After a few months of religiously putting her in the crate when we left, we felt bad leaving her there all day, so we began running little experiments: could we leave her home alone and free for an hour, how about 2 hours? And we’d come home every time with apprehension: was she good? Did she eat anything? She was good?! Fantastic! We started leaving her out all the time.

Until we left for a dinner/date one night and came home to find the front of our “brand new” [“new-to-us” as it given to us by Derrick’s parents] couch completely destroyed and ripped to shreds by our one and only.

That was it. No more freedom. Crate every day, all the time, no matter what.

What can I say? We are softies and we feel bad putting our puppy in her crate. So about a year later we ran a similar experiment: Abby trials – part 2. We had similar results. She was great for a few days and then we came home to find that she had decided she needed to eat a corner of our couch cushion. So, part 2 was a fail.

She’s almost 3 years old now and she really hasn’t nibbled anything in recent months – she’s been leaving our socks and pillows alone like a good lil girl. So, we decided to run another trial to see if she would be good or not. All week she has done fabulous – she’s been good and had no “accidents”, until today when we came home to find this:

And this …

And this …

Our very penitent puppy must have gotten nervous while we were at church & at the Arts Fest this afternoon and decided she needed to nibble on something. And could she have chewed up the couch that has already been chewed on? No! Of course not! Chew on our other couch!!
UGH – so, it’s back in the crate for Abby-girl. Hopefully someday she’ll have enough self-control to have her freedom!