Winter is chewing on my slipper.  "Nooooooo," I say, as annoyingly as possible, hoping to elicit some sort of response.  He looks at me, drops the slipper, and walks slowly over to the water bottle by the couch.

Before I have a chance to respond, the water bottle is in his mouth and he is across the room.  "Drop it," I say in my most stern voice which, to be perfectly honest, isn't that stern.

He looks at me again, knowing full well he is faster than I am.   I get up, prepared for the inevitable.  He gets ready.  As I start to walk towards him, he sprints with the water bottle down the hall.

Winter is a 2 year old pomapoo.  He weighs 11.6 pounds, and is generally fairly well behaved.  However, when we (my husband and I) aren't good owners, he acts out by chewing things.  We learned early on if we wanted to save our flip-flops, he needed to get out regularly.  

This particular day, we had just gotten back from a weekend trip.  I mistakenly thought Winter would be as tired as we were, and decided not to do anything with him after work.  It wasn't working out very well.

The rest of the evening was spent chasing him down the hall with various items that didn't belong to him (Uggs, socks, underwear...).  Eventually, it was time for bed and he reluctantly stopped trying to get us to chase him.

The next day, he and I went for an hour run.  The look on his face as he loped along next to me was priceless.  I know dogs don't show emotion in their faces, but his mouth was open wide and his tongue was hanging out as though he was grinning from ear to ear.  Once we got back, he drank some water and curled up in a ball to take a nap.

We all need to get out of the house and get some fresh ear to keep us sane.  It's easy to forget, and even easier to ignore, but it improves attitude and reduces stress.  It might even keep us from destroying things.