Good Morning, Mouth!

Brady's Ever-Present Puppy Mouth: 6:30 a.m.
Thursday, January 28, 2010

Puppies, like babies, are all about their mouths. They use their mouths to explore and to get questions answered (such as, how does electricity work or what happens when you chew on the laptop cord while it's plugged in?!)

Crack 'o' dawn, I'm greeted with Brady's mouth. Sometimes, it's his tongue that greets me face first in the form of wet puppy kisses. Other times, I am reacquainted with his little pearly white milk teeth in the form of surprisingly sharp nips on my fingers. When I was kid, my dad taught me to hold the puppy's mouth shut til she squeaked to get the point across that I was not a human chew-toy.

Currently, the theory goes that if you put something, like a plastic bone in its mouth in lieu of your hand, the puppy will think to himself, "Oh, I'm supposed to chew this bone, not the hand that feeds me..."
Right.
Remember, it's a puppy. It will chew whatever you put in its mouth today, tomorrow and next week. Hence, I'm not totally sold on the exchange theory.

I once hired a trainer who suggested I clamp down on the puppy's muzzle with my mouth the way the mother dog would. She suggested adding a convincing growl in a low register for effect.

Whenever I try that with Brady, he looks genuinely surprised as if he's saying,
"What?! You're supposed to be a canine that once ran in packs across the prairies? Hmmm, your lack of fur makes this a difficult story to swallow.
Let me chew on your nose and see what that tells me about your ancestral past."

In truth, Brady seems to genuinely want to please me most of the time and he is intent on reading my expressions. If he absent-mindedly gnaws on my ring finger, or moves toward an electrical cord, he gets the message quickly by my furrowed brow, narrowing eyes and high volume response, "BRADY! Drop it!!"

On that note, if you consider that a puppy is just a mouth with a body attached, you will appreciate one of my favorite commands, "(Dog's Name), DROP IT!"
We practice this one at least 10 times a day. I hand him Aloysius, his favorite stuffed animal dog. As he is swinging the poor, hapless pseudo-Sharpei, I tip-toe over with a liver nib snack (his favorite, reconstituted meat) and give the puppy-mouth release command. "Blip", down to the floor goes Aloysius.
This is magic compared to the alternative, tug-of-war with a dog.

I will say this about Brady's mandible: it's a wonder of a recycling mechanism. I've been giving him thick plastic bottles to mouth while I'm in the studio working. The rule is, he can't have thin plastics that are easily shredded and he must be closely monitored by someone other than his elderly dog-sister, Sophie.
He's pretty good with seltzer bottles and preserved mandarin orange slice jars. The giant soda bottles present more of a challenge...

As a former elementary school teacher, I'm a firm believer in channeling potentially negative energies. Oh, and the recycling of plastics...
After all, a mouth is a terrible thing to waste.

Brady, the recycler mouth, after preparing a soda bottle for the dump.