Rainy Day Death of a Dog

I have read time and again in various dog training books and in forums online that around 9 months of age puppies tend to enter their rebellious, naughty and destructive "teenage" phase. All I can say to this right now is... YES. They do. If you ever saw an ABC after school special about a teenager who went completely off his nut after smoking some PCP (anyone ever see "The Death of Richie" ? It's my favorite in this ridiculous genre of film) then you can imagine what we are dealing with in our trailer household with Rudy. He does not listen to reason, he sulks in his crate during hours he should be out and active, he's hanging up psychedelic black light posters, and he is systematically destroying every single one if HIS possessions. Don't get me wrong... I mean, we have always had at least a weekly gutting of an animal or two, it's nothing new for him to chew a toy up. But we now have an almost hourly clean up of stuffing, guts, eyeballs and squeakers in here.




Such violence! I am at a loss as to how to get through this phase. I keep on giving him more toys from the back stock to give him something appropriate to work on rather than him de-stuffing the sofa. But good gravy people... we will end up broke and living in a ditch if we have to keep on buying new squeeky hot dogs every few days. Yesterday I gave him a brand new raw hide bone (I know... these are not the best thing to give him but desperate times call for desperate measures) and one of these usually lasts 4 or 5 days. He DEMOLISHED almost the entire thing in one sitting. I now have this visual of his guts being all plugged up with half digested raw hide the size of a baseball for the next 6 months. Nice.




Part of the problem here these past few days is THE RAIN.




I cannot begin to express to you my loathing for the rain. If it was NICE out we could get out and go hiking and tire that dirty little dog out walking in the woods! But it continues to rain and rain and rain. Bleh. As I said before... even though the town of Hot Springs is not really floatin' my boat the area surrounding it looks like it would provide some great hiking. Here's our view from our campsite (please excuse the oppressive chain link fence, I guess the campground owners are worried we will fall to our death without proper restraint.)




We are leaving for Texas in the morning ending our time in Arkansas. I have roots here... this is where my Grandma was born and raised... but people, I am not feeling any affinity with the place. I'm ready to go, go, go!