We don’t — we’ve got Liam instead. He needs to be walked, fed, played with, and he certainly isn’t housebroken (although I do think that paper training has got to be easier than potty training — but I’ve never paper trained, so who knows). His main issue right now though, is that he’s eating the furniture. He’s worse than a lab.
He started with his crib. We tried putting crib rail protectors on all sides but he’s figured out how to remove them and his new favorite game is a tie between throwing the rails across the room and banging them against the wall. The good thing (for him, anyway) is that when he accidentally drops them (or intentionally throws them) there are 7 more to go and so on and so forth. His crib is ruined and I’m not sure what to do about keeping him from ingesting varnish and wood.
Today though, he moved on to his toy box. Before today he didn’t have any idea that the thing opened at all and I intended to keep it that way for as long as possible. Unfortunately the cat’s outta the bag on that one. He’s spent the better part of today opening and closing, opening and closing, opening and closing, lather, rinse, repeat. At some point during the day he’s also learned that because the toy box is wood like his crib it creates what must be the same wonderful crunching sensation that occurs when he destroys his crib night after night and nap after nap.
When I was growing up we only had one dog with chewing issues and unfortunately smacking my child with a rolled-up newspaper is not an option so has anyone got any creative suggestions on how to keep him from destroying all my furniture and poisoning himself at the same time?
Shannon – We have some old furniture we want to get rid of. Maybe we could just get Liam to eat it.
Have you ever bitten into wood furniture? Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.
At least by the time the energy crisis reaches a boiling point, so to speak, we’ll have enough kindling to keep us warm. There may not be winter anymore, but still — silver lining and all…