The Honeymoon is OVER!

Not with me and Daniel, we're still great! :)

It's Atticus, our beloved Pound Puppy. We spent a few blissful weeks where the trials were nothing terrible! And then HE LOST HIS EVER LOVING MIND!

For the past two mornings little Atti has thought it was OK to jump on the bed when Daniel leaves the room. He has NEVER done that before.

We leave him in the backyard while we're gone. He has a nice big backyard to play in with a fantastic screened in porch for shelter. And up until yesterday, he was happy with that. But when I got home last night he had torn apart my umbrella - shredded the poor thing! - and dumped over potted plants, spilling potting soil all over the back porch. More sadness.

Today we leave him for a little over one hour to come home to a SHREDDED door mat, more spilled plants and his crate all ajar. Argh! And now he thinks it's OK to chew on the carpet. What?! Excuse me! What happened to our sweet little Pound Puppy?! I'm pretty sure he's been possessed by the Devil.

Somewhere we've lost control. He thinks he's the boss. He's not the boss of me! How do we get it back? How do we get back the control we didn't realize we lost?! Do we crate him? Who wants to be in a cage for 8 hours a day?! He has an ENTIRE backyard! And we ALWAYS come home, why doesn't he realize that?

This has me concerned about our parenting skills. If in only the span of one month we've lost the control of our DOG how on earth are we going to handle CHILDREN?!

Now I'm searching the Internet for helpful tips on training a dog, hoping to channel Cesar Millan and magically have all the right answers to make our dog a calm, submissive member of the family. Argh.