Recycling Puppy Tricks

When I was growing up we had the best family dog. Her name was Mitzi and she was a poodle and shih tzu mix. I loved her so much, she was just another member of the family.

When we first got her and she was a very active puppy. Whenever the back door opened she had a habit of running out and running away as fast as she could.

Part of me thinks she was running for fun and to get her active puppy energy out, and the other part of me thinks she was running for her flipping life from my sister who was three at the time and treated our new puppy like it was her personal baby doll.

Poor Mitzi.

We lived in St. Louis at the time of the great (multiple) puppy escape and we had this giant backyard. She would bolt out running up the hill and we would take her box of dog treats and shake it, shake it and pretty soon here would come Mitzi BOLTING out of nowhere. She could hear those puppy treats miles away and it was her call to come back home. It worked every single time.

Fast forward many years later. I am now married and don't have a dog but instead have an active 18 month old who has lots of energy to burn and enjoys the great outdoors. Almost as much as Mitzi did.

Tonight I was having so much trouble getting my active boy inside. We were in the garage and he was going insane. He was screaming, {fake} crying and doing everything in his power to stay outside. I needed to go inside to get dinner in the oven and instead of just picking up the screaming kid and taking him inside I came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea.

I ran inside, found a box of Cheez-It's went to the door and shook that box of wonderfully yummy, addicting cheese squares.

Eli quit crying and looked up at me. There was a small moment when I stood shaking the box and Eli stood staring at me that I had an outer body experience and realized that my grand idea was not so grand but was something that worked for my dog, not my CHILD.

Lesson learned. Just because it worked for a puppy does not in fact mean it will work for a child. They are not interchangeable.

Although it did make him stop long enough that I was able to scoop him up and take him inside and give him a graham cracker to keep him distracted, and he stayed quiet long enough to gnaw on it like a bone.

So maybe there are some similarities between a dog and a child...