Barry's Bored

I still can't believe you changed the floors without my approval first.

Now that we officially have the solid hardwood floors in our bedrooms, a new dresser ordered and soon to be shipped, and a new bed frame for the spare bedroom that will be picked up this Saturday we have been feeling like everything is coming together.

Barry is, of course, always coming up with new challenges for us. He keeps us on our toes constantly. It actually is like having a child. A very strong, curious, high energy, and fearless child.

Last week (our first full week with hardwood throughout) Barry did well. By did well I mean he had no accidents. We did have to deal with a new preference of his, though. He has decided he doesn't want to eat first thing in the morning anymore. He'd prefer to lay in bed. We've been bringing the food into the bedroom to him to sniff and give him a piece or two - thinking maybe that would encourage him to get up and eat. Nope. Didn't work. Not really. He wants to lay around for about 30 minutes before eating. I can't really blame him for that. Who wants to wake up early just to eat? While Mom and Dad lie in the comfy bed...

I'm just gonna lie here a little longer, okay?

Our reason, initially, for feeding him right away was to give him time to digest so that by the time we took him out on his morning walk he'd go poo and wouldn't have any accidents in the back room. So now, we have him refusing to eat right away. He just won't get out of bed to eat first thing anymore. We thought perhaps we were beyond the accidents. Especially since there were none for a few weeks. I came home Monday to find husband cleaning up Barry's pee. No poo, just pee, but pee can be almost worse than poo on wood floors. He cleaned it up and sprinkled with baking soda and the areas look fine now. We also had to deal with him eating the spare bedroom mattress. The foam inside. Just part of it. My answer for the short term is to cover the mattress with a zip-over cover, flip it over and put the chewed up part at the bottom toward the foot of the bed. So no one will really notice. It looks fine actually. You can't tell.

See? Nothin' to worry about.

There was also the couch cushion he removed, unzipped, and then pulled out some of the foam from the inside and chewed it. He didn't chew the outer couch material, just the foam inside. So maybe he has a new thing with foam? Buttons and foam. I'm guessing he used his precision teeth to unzip the couch cushion cover as well. Our couch cushion looks fine. You'd never know part of the inside was missing. However, our couch no longer has any decorative buttons on the back like it did when we first bought it. Thank you, Barry.

The couch doesn't need buttons when I'm laying on it. I make it more beautiful just
by being near it.

Also, a new thing of his is to not be excited or interested in the KONG stuffed full of goodies when I leave for work in the morning. The KONG was a great tool to distract Barry and keep him occupied for hours after we left for work. Now, he just looks at me, looks at the KONG, and then back to me again. He eventually does get to the KONG because it's typically empty and cleaned out by the time we get home from work. It's just a different routine that I'm not quite used to yet. Rather than Barry picking up his beloved KONG and going to eat it in the back room he just sits there looking at me while I leave. Overall he seems okay when I leave. It's just strange that he's changed it up some.

I like to keep things interesting.

After coming home to all of the things Barry had left for us Monday Husband decided that maybe it would be a good idea to go running with him in the mornings. Perhaps Barry isn't getting enough exercise. Perhaps Barry is bored. One way to help these things is to give him more exercise so he's relaxed and less like a crazy caged animal. We've also resorted to blocking off the back room so he can no longer have access when we're not home. He is allowed back there only when we're home from now on. Otherwise he has access to all other parts of the house. We just can't have him peeing back there. We can't afford to replace our brand new floors that are less than two weeks old! Currently we are using our heavy wooden bar slid in front of the doorway to block the back room. Living in a loft with no doors (except for the bathrooms) is sort of annoying. I don't mind no doors on the bedrooms but this is an example of how having doors would be really helpful.

Our non-permanent solution so Barry cannot enter the back room while we're gone
during the day.

So Husband ran with Barry yesterday morning and again this morning and wore him out. He is still not terribly interested in his KONG when I leave but I'm sure he'll get to it. He doesn't seem to be bothered by not having access to the back room so far. I wonder if that will continue or if he'll start to be upset by it.

We'll see!

Nope, not bothered. I'm super chill...