April 28, 2016
Mugsy grabs gently at my arm with his mouth. “No” I tell him and remove my arm. He grabs at my shirt. Exasperated I repeat the word “No”. He grabs at my shoe. “No knock it off Mugsy.” I gently push him away.
At this point I am starting to get frustrated. Mugsy hasn’t been this mouthy since he was loosing his puppy teeth and growing his adult teeth at around 5 to 6months old.
Then I look into his mouth. He is grinning at me so it doesn’t take any effort to notice he still has teeth growing in. My immediate reaction is “Oh puppy!”
At nine months old Mugsy is still teething. This realization made handling the reemergence of his mouthing easier to handle. Instead of saying flat out “No” and pushing him away. I told him “No”, waited about thirty seconds and then dug out one of Mugsy’s teething toys from the drawer.
I held the toy out for him and he eagerly excepted it. He crawled into my lap as I held the toy for him to chew on just like he did when he was ten pounds.
The lesson learned. At nine months old my sixty pound Mugsy is still without a doubt a puppy.
