A few years ago, while on a visit from California we visited with my cousin Joanne. She had just gotten a new chocolate lab puppy named Ginger, who was eating all of her family's new shoes (not the old ones, for some reason). She told us of the advice the local veterinarian had given her:
"You take a newspaper, and roll it up tight," she started, and Brandie & I probably both visibly winced. We lived in Marin County at the time, notorious for its animal-loving ways: legislation was being proposed there so that you couldn't call yourself a pet "owner", instead you were its guardian. We weren't quite that extreme, but had grown up in more practical areas where people just didn't spend $4,000 on surgery for their pets and thought we knew what Joanne was going to say next.
"..and whack yourself in the head for leaving the shoes out," Joanne finished, and we both burst out laughing. Good advice, and ironically one of the most consistently recurring feelings with parenting I've had: it seems there's always something out or in the way that the girls are getting into (often they've put it there themselves to trip over), and you can't blame them. It's fun! It's exciting! It's dangerous! Wheee!!!
Miss Josephine finds it all especially thrilling, and will chortle gleefully as she gets into the most dangerous stuff. Hopefully Sunday deliveries will be enough.
I love that one! Being the animal lover that I am (as you guys know me and dogs are very tight) and having taught positive reinforcement training methods at the Marin Humane Society for over a year, we were constantly struggling with those owners set in their old ways of training. Marin HS is one of the top in the country and I loved volunteering there and think of it often. I sure wish I could have opened up a training session with that quote...they would have loved it!