It's beginning to look alot like Christmas

One of the joys of being a pet owner is dressing my pet up for all major holidays. Usually when I do this Mack looks as if he is saying curse words to me. Tonight was no exception. This should be our Christmas card.

Sweet little furbaby

I thought I would talk about Mack. Over the course of time he has turned from something I wanted to return to the pound to someone I can't wait to snuggle with at night. But some days I love him and some days I still want to make him sit on the patio.

Mark and I adopted Mack the summer before we got married. We were buying a house and decided we needed a dog to go into said house. Well we went to the shelter and picked out this little, jumping, hairy thing. (I wish I had a picture of him. He looked HORRIBLE. He was so matted he had hair falling off of him. He had to be shaved and start over once we got him home.)

So after getting Mack from the shelter of course the lady we were buying the house from backed out on our deal. This left us without a house and Mack homeless again. At this time in our life, Mark worked at the car place and didn't get home until 4:30 a.m. I brought Mack home with me to my mom and dad's house. Upon meeting my family and my mom and dad's wonderful Shiz tu, Mack tried to pee on him. Yes that's right. Mack hiked his leg on my beloved little Shiz tu that I helped raise and train. He did this not just one time but EVERY time he came near our beloved Max.

Mack was banished to the garage for the night.

After crying all night long (on both mine an Mack's part) I told Mark we had to find somewhere for him to live. So Mark rented our lovely (not) duplex that we live in now and took Mack with him.

Our first cue that something was amiss should have been when we were trying to get Mack to come tous, we found him crouched under our kitchen table snarling at us. We just thought he was adjusting to the situation. NOPE.

Pretty soon Mack had bitten most of our friends and a few relatives. I invested in a Beware of Dog sign to hang in our living room. We had a monster on our hands here. And we also realized our dog had been mistreated in his past life before us. Not only would he bite at the least notice, he was so protective Mark couldn't even touch me when I was laying on the floor or throwing up in the toilet as was the case when our duplex became filled with carbon monoxide (that's definitely another post!) Mack literally jumped on top of me and growled and snarled at Mark while I was hunched over the toliet. He has also climbed on my back while I was doing push ups on my exercise ball and Mark got a little too close. The things someone can do to a little animal just infuriates me.

The worse part was this little monster who I had to knock across the living room because he was ravaging my friend's arm would then punish himself by growling all the way to his kennel where he would stay for a while. He is always so remorseful after being bad.

It's been 3 years now since we adopted Mack. I will admit he is 20 times better than he was when we brought him into our lives. Mark can now come near me. And we can have people over again. Now he will give a warning growl before he clamps down on your hand, arm or foot. But he will also climb in your lap and try to hug you when you sit on our couch. That's right even though Mack has bitten ALL of our friends, he also loves those same friends with all his heart. Mack just wants to be your friend but he DOESN'T want you to touch the person you are sitting next to!

Now if we could just stop him from Hungry Hungry Hippoing out from under our bed with the intent of snatching our toes off our feet when he's mad.

Potty training stinks

Our precious dog Mack came to us from the shelter. He brought with him MANY issues. One of them would be his lack of being able to tell us when he needs to go to the bathroom. If we don't take him out on a schedule he'll just go find a nice piece of carpet and turn it into his urinal. Well I guess he's been proud of himself this week because he found the ultimate urinal. Last night while Mark and I were getting ready for bed we discovered Mack found the potty and must have figured out how to use it. Most days he likes to spy on us while we are using said potty. But he must have been observing and plotting. Because last night while Mark was getting out of the shower he noticed it. Mack has been hiking his leg on our toilet!!! Yes that's right there was dried pee all over the base and the rug was definitely soaked with pee and from the looks of the mess he had done this more than once. So while I was spraying down the toilet last night it occured to me 'My gosh my dog is smart, he knows what a toilet is for!'

Problem solving

My dog, Mack, likes to follow us around. When we are cleaning and moving from room to room he won't stop following us. And he doesn't just follow at a distance, he has to follow so closely he runs into you when you stop. So today I decided I would fix that. I put him in my purse and carried him like a kangaroo. He seemed to like it once I got him in there.