Petey Moves In

When Petey came to live with us he had a lot of bad habits.
1. He got on the furniture whenever he wanted
2. He barked a lot - at every thing - a vicious rip your head off kind of bark
3. He shook like he had swallowed a vibrator
4. He licked his paws constantly
5. He pooped & peed in the house, mostly when he was mad at us. He had what we began to call The Petey Rules and when we broke a rule the house became his personal toilet.

These bad habits were a little embarrassing to us, particularly when we had company. The shaking thing was just annoying. Being good pet owners, we set out to break some of these habits and explained to our guests that he had recently come to live with us and we were working on the problems. We also discussed changing his name, but Petey just seemed to fit. His previous owners, however spelled his name "Peetie". We went with a more traditional spelling.

Petey has been with us seven years now, and I'm happy to report that:
1. Petey gets on the furniture whenever he wants, plus he has 'beds' in every room of the house.
2. Petey painstakingly patrols the house and lawn and reports to us immediately if there is any danger perceived or real by lots of loud, vicious barking.
3. Petey shakes only when he is cold or upset, which is anytime the temperature falls below 75, or there is loud noise, one of us is out of the room...stuff like that
4. Petey only licks his paws when he is excited or upset - see above
5. Petey only poops or pees in the house when he's mad at us, or when we break a Petey Rule, or he just can't hold it anymore. I'll have to do another post on the rules. There are a lot of them and often we are unaware of a rule until it is broken.

Overall Petey's behavior is much improved, wouldn't you agree? I think changing the spelling of his name and the time we painstakingly devoted to training him has really paid off!! BTW, Petey can spell - that too is another post!!

Thanks for reading!!