Welcome all!
For the first blog post, Bumi and I thought it would be great to give brief timeline of Bumi's life thus far, how he became labeled as the Golden Monster, and how I've attempted (key word: attempted) to tame him up to this point.
A Small Monster is Adopted
Bumi became a member of the Hill family in June, 2014. The first week we had him, we called him Jango (Fett) because I was expecting him to become intergalactic bounty hunter. But after we became more acquainted, he was given the name Bumi based on a character from the Avatar televison series. He was a cute, but crazy pup. Bumi was discovering the world and making his own rules. There may be a sceen door to go outside, but that doesn't mean he can't just run through it. Sure, he is afraid of the pool, but that doesn't mean he can't love playing with water. He may have grown to 85 pounds, but doesn't mean he can't jump on you to give you kisses.
The Small Monster Becomes A Big Monster
Now, I know what you're thinking looking at that last picture of Bumi and I together, "Wow, the author of this blog has grown so much over the past year." But if you look closely, you just might notice than Bumi grew just a lil' bit too. In all seriousness, Bumi grew fast. His head after 6 months was the size of his body at 6 weeks. He became more active and we started running together, but even running 3-5 miles a day he still acted like the Energizer Bunny. He was the... Energizer Puppy! (If you just happen to be reading this, Energizer, please feel free to contact me for using Bumi as your new mascot.) This excess energy is what lead him to be labeled the Golden Monster.
Monster Discovers Digging
Like most puppies, Bumi has managed to make a mess out of anything, but his absolute favorite hobby is digging. Or as Bumi likes to call it, landscaping duty! He would come inside the house with a brown nose and I knew exactly what happened. The back yard would look like a landscape shot in the movie Holes.
Luckily, I managed to figure out the best way to prevent him from digging..... hot sauce! That's right, just pour a little bit of hot sauce in the holes and on various spots around the back yard. Now, hot sauce definitely wasn't my first instinct to stop him from digging. Before resorting to hot sauce, I read that dogs won't dig where they've pooped. It seemed like a reasonable idea, so I put Bumi's wondeful gifts of nature in the holes he's dug... His nose wasn't brown just from dirt anymore. I was imagining how great it must've been for Bumi to have the constant scent of his own poop in his nose at all times when I realized hot sauce might be the answer.
Burying the poop was supposed to detract him from digging because of the scent. Poop didn't work, but maybe something with an equally strong scent might. I thought maybe smelly sock would work, but then I realized Bumi loves socks (see image below) and didn't even try it. I tested lemon juice, store-bought digging prevention odor, and finally, hot sauce. I poured about a teaspoon or two in each hole and covered them up. Bumi would check out his old digging spots, notice the strong scent, and then walk away. His poop didn't work, but hot sauce did! Best of all? It's safe, as long as you don't directly feed it to your dog.
One Mess Down, A Thousand More To Go
Great news! I managed to tame his digging problem, now I just need figure out how to stop him from chewing on the walls, stairs, socks, hands, pillows, bibles, silverware, the list goes on and on... everything besides his toys and tail! Sorry for the lack of messes in the slide show below, it's never been my priority to document the mess before cleaning it, but for the sake of this blog, I will start.
Do you guys have any tales of puppy messes? How'd you solve them? Leave a comment below to let me know!