Doggie Don't...

We've had our 2 year old black lab for around a month now. I love him. He's a sweet, affectionate dog who has tons of energy. He's playful and cute. He thinks he lap dog, despite the fact that he weighs 80 lbs and is the size a two month old foal. He's everything you want in a dog, except he's driving AJ and I insane!

We adopted him from the Animal Shelter not far from our apartment, so everything we know about him comes from the little they knew. Apparently he was found in the streets and brought in. He didn't do well in the kennels at the shelter, and on our trip home while reading over his record  I discovered he had been recommended for euthanasia.

In time we've had him, we've also come to believe that his previous owner's were cruel. He has several scars on his legs and inside his ears, and when we light a cigarette he cowers and runs away. Our best guess is his previous owners burned him either as punishment or because they thought is was funny.

I'm still happy we adopted him, he's definitely found a way into my heart, but his training is severely lacking. He'll sit for a treat or if he wants to, but other than that, he doesn't seem to have any training. He pulls on the leash, won't use the restroom on the leash, and we're sure if he's off the leash he'll take off. He isn't house broken, and we've found the only place he'll do his business that bothers us the least is the patio. Our patio is constantly covered with urine, feces, and black hair.

On top of that, when he's indoors, he's bounding from place to place, following us around with his nose all but up our rears, and when we sit his head is constantly in our laps. We don't have a dinner table so we eat on the couch. He begs and gets super close to our food. When we're on our laptops or the computer in the living room his face is on our lap. He lays his head down on the keyboard so if I'm typing I end up with 'alskdjf;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;faseoainaek         sad' and when I play WoW, my character is the one you see yelling 'AEAIdfaearu', jumping several times then moving back and forth like its having a seizure.

We've tried everything can think of, we don't know how to fix him. Not that he's broken, he's just untrained and stubborn. We're frustrated. He doesn't understand what he's doing wrong. He needs to be trained... we need to be trained as well. Now we just have to find an inexpensive trainer who fits into our schedule, if you can call it a schedule. We also need a yard he call his own. The search is on... hope I can find at least one of the two.

On a less frustrated note, toasted PB&J's are great!

Now I'm off to pick up poop. I'm bribing myself to clean the icky patio, and vacuum... what is my bribe? I have WoW running on our gaming computer, and I can't play til I get it done... I such a nerd!