The Not-So-Silent Puppy

The ways in which living with an older puppy are like living with a teenager are myriad. Today, the one that stands out the most is his tendency to backchat me when I tell him he's in trouble. For instance, yesterday, we had to move the baby gate that keeps him out of our bedrooms to keep him out of the kitchen instead, because he's tall enough and athletic enough to get onto the counters. That meant that I had to discipline him to keep him off the stairs instead, since he has a tendency to thunder up and down them and try to trip people by eating their feet. A few hearty NOs kept him off for a while, but then I went upstairs and he started to follow me.

I turned around and said, "NO." He waited about ten seconds, staring at me, and then yowled, clearly a "that's what you say!" sort of a noise.

Today, I was cooking dinner and had taken down the gate temporarily. He disappeared for a few minutes and I found him in the kitchen, licking the outside of a pan that was on the counter. He knows much better than that, and had already been disciplined once for trying to get into food that wasn't his. I said "NO" and dragged him out of the kitchen and set up the baby gate again. He submitted for a few minutes and then got in my face and yowled some more.

It's all very exciting around here. It's funny, because in general, he's quite submissive: he rolls on his back if anyone looks at him funny, and he nuzzles under the chins of dogs eight times smaller than he is. It isn't as if we don't feed him - since we're still trying to get him to a healthy weight for his size, he gets three meals a day. He just wants more food, and he wants attention, but I've never had a dog who went about it quite that way, or responded the same way to verbal discipline. I've certainly had dogs bark at me before, but not in a "Oh yeah? Well, I can say that too!"

Not the way I can say it, buster.