Paper Poops

I warned Kevin about chocolate labs, didn't I? Yes I did. Chocolate labs are an interesting breed. They are labs, yes, but they have a genetic combination that gives them their coat color and also makes their temperament different from yellow and black labs. As a consequence, along with the coat color can come some strange behavioral traits that are not typical of the good old Labrador Retriever. In short, chocolate labs are a gamble.
So when my loving husband sulked for a couple of years because he didn't have his very own chocolate lab with an orange collar, I continued to remind him that chocolate labs are not always what they seem. I had gotten him a beautiful pure-bred black lab for Valentine's Day, but Cooper quickly became my little angel and mama's boy to the extreme. Kevin wanted his own dog, and it had to be brown with an orange collar.
After doing a little research, I learned that Cooper's father was a chocolate lab. Because Cooper is such a dream, I agreed that we could get a chocolate lab from Darling Hill Labs, as long as his sire was Maestro's Canto Della Terra! Almost immediately it seemed, we had Mr. Cabot.

Here he is, 12 weeks old and cute as can be

In a year, Cabot has proven that chocolate labs are indeed a gamble. We have gotten the best traits: a loving, loyal, fun-loving and obedient dog, who desperately wants to please his master (although, because his master is very lazy with the training, I must admit that Cabot is often confused about who his master is!). In addition, we've gotten some pretty bad traits: slow learner, INSANE desire to chew everything to pieces, including Sapphie's beautiful rattles, my boots, any and all pieces of wood furniture, Liz's rugs and plants, oh and of course loo paper. He has gotten better with age, but not much. Needless to say, he has learned to love his crate, since he's always in there when we aren't home.
On March 10th, our middle child turned 1. I said to myself "Happy Birthday Cabot! Let's see if you can manage yourself outside of the crate today..."
The results of my experiment are summarized in the pictures below. Like I said, chocolates are a gamble.

The first thing Sapphie and I found when we arrived home from Church Street

A summary of the damage. Eaten: 1 Williams-Sonoma hard cover cook book, several issues of Eating Well magazine, and a year's worth of bills from Fletcher Allen Hospital. Chewed: multiple docoments from our office, my breast pump equipment, part of Sapphie's bottle, and an ink pen (the ink was spread all over the floor).

The result of Cabot's insane chewing spree: paper poops for 2 days.