Wright - 150 Activities For Bored Dogs: Surefire Ways to Keep Your Dog Active and Happy

Here's a public service announcement you probably haven't heard on TV: Do you know where your dog is right now? Do you know what he's doing? While he's probably not out street racing or hanging with Snoop Dogg, he may still be getting into his own special brand of doggie mischief when you aren't around. If Fido's an outdoor dog, you probably don't need to aerate your lawn or plow the gardenyour bored dog will do it for you. If you have an indoor dog, Habitat for Humanity might have to rebuild your home in the wake of Hurricane Hound.

Why does your dog sometimes morph into a Tasmanian devil in your absence? It's because he's lonely and bored, bored, bored. This book explores why it's important to keep a dog happy when he can't have your full attention and offers suggestions on how to do it, many of them from dog owners like you. You might come up with some ideas of your own along the way.

You might wonder why your dog should be bored. He may have the whole backyard to himself; he may have an entire acre to himself. The problem is that you aren't in it. I know of one such dog that chewed the siding off a house, and stories like that aren't unusual. If a dog is left on his own for long stretches of time, he'll find inventive and often destructive ways to entertain himself.

Compared to the offspring of some other species, puppies stay with their dams for a very short timesometimes as little as six weeks. We separate them from their mothers and the companionship of their littermates, and once the cuteness of puppyhood is past, too often the dog is relegated to a lonely life.

Dogs are pack animalsthey like to be with other dogs. If you only have one dog, you and your family are the other members of your dog's pack. He looks to you for companionship and attention. If he doesn't get it, that drives him a little crazy. If you were in solitary confinement day in and day out, you'd go crazy, too.

Sure, someone has to work to bring home the Bacon Beggin' Strips. But unless you work part-time or out of your home, your dog has to handle a lot of alone time: eight hours a day, five days a week. I won't get on my doggie soapbox and lecture about why people who work full-time jobs shouldn't have dogs unless every day at the workplace is Bring Your Dog to Work Day. Suffice to say that this could be the origin of the saying It's a dog's life.

You've no doubt seen one of the most common remnants of Lonely Dog dcorthe shredded sofa. You may even have owned one of these Shaggy Chic items yourself. My parents sacrificed their designer leather sofa to two rescued Scottish terriers that mistook it for a very expensive chew toy. As with many rescues, Laddie and Duffy needed time to settle into their cushy new life with my parents. Lots of time! Unfortunately, every time Mom and Dad left the house, even for a little while, their two holy terriers began to tear into the sofa with a vengeance.

Sofas aren't the only victims of the frustrated, lonely dog. Anything in the house is fair game, and the more expensive, the better. Among other highly prized targets of demolition doggies are fashion accessories like purses and shoes; necessities like socks and underwear; electronics such as phones, computers, and vacuum cleaner cords; and that classic snack, the sampler tray (otherwise known as the kitty litter box).

Diamonds Aren't a Dog's Best Friend

Left to their own devices, lonely dogs have been known to gnaw furniture legs, shred pillows, or, if all else fails, chase their tails until they're too dizzy to care. My dog was a little different. Daisy was a jewel thief.

My earrings began to disappear soon after I adopted my basset hound Daisy, but I didn't make the connection right away. At first, I suspected the housekeeper. But when the jewelry continued to disappear long after she stopped cleaning my house, I was stumped.

Then one morning I made a discovery in Daisy's dog basket: one of my diamond earrings, slightly gnawed, with the other nowhere in sight. Since she wasn't wearing the earrings, I concluded she was eating them and took her to the vet. The X-rays looked normal, no diamond earrings or tiaras in sight, and that left but one conclusionone so nasty that even Sherlock Holmes would have hesitated to investigate it.

Sure enough, one sunny morning I noticed that Daisy's lawn fertilizer was glinting in an unnatural manner. I'll spare you the details involved in retrieving my booty. Let's just say that after my jewelry was cleaned and thoroughly sanitized, it was as good as new. Once again, I had all my pairs of earrings matched and displayed in my jewelry chest, and until now no one has been the wiser.