Life With Koko – A Chocolate Labrador’s Life

So we are trying to crate train Koko now. We made the mistake as rookie dog owners to kinda giving in to his whimpering and complaints, when we first started trying to crate train him.

It was a different crate, it was your normal dog crate but he gave us those puppy eyes and then we started making the excuses that he had his own room and that he could consider the room to be his domain and essentially his crate.

Well he peed in his wee wee pads about 50% off the time and the poo although in the general vicinity was in an assortment of areas in that room (our former sunroom). Pretty soon the steam mop was our best friend and we just began to contend with it, until our last trip to upstate NY.

We have a an upstate house in the mountains and it’s our weekend getaway from New York City. Well, Koko doesn’t have his own room there. My son offered to have him stay in his room but that meant Koko had to stay in his travel kennel (crate).

The first night after a 4 hour drive up there it took us about 2 hours to get him to go in and stay in his crate.  We soon began to realize our former training mistake.

A crate is essential to getting not only a puppy properly potty trained but also to give the puppy a place of his immediate domain.

Well he did well that first night after eventually calming down. The second night was even better, where he voiced an initial protest and grumbled (really) about bedtime but he did sleep through the night.

Next morning he was happy to do his business outside of the house and that was when I fully appreciated the value of the crate.

We drove back down in 3 hours on Sunday,  and Koko, as a new puppy,  handled the ride splendidly. He seems to like the motion of the car and (knock in wood), seems to not get carsick.

Anyway it’s now Wednesday and Koko seems to now like the ritual of going to bed inside his kennel. 

This morning however,  I was greeted with a bit of a surprise. Koko somehow figured out how to unzip his kennel form the inside and then flipped it over to presumably get out of the opening which began on the top of his kennel but by flipping it over (while still inside) figured out it would now be on the bottom which EJ could simply walk through.

Here is a picture of him this morning looking somewhat apologetic. I gues he thought I would be upset. I was not, I was pretty darn happy that he was smart enough, to figure out how to get out. 

For information on that awesome travel kennel click here: http://amzn.to/2t27JSn 

About two years ago on Christmas Eve, my wife and I decided we were going to take the leap. We were going to give our daughter the gift of all gifts… a puppy.

We basically gift wrapped a card that when opened revealed to our 6th grade daughter a coupon eligible for one puppy.

Well, we had full intentions of getting her that puppy that very same Christmas holiday, but I think we all realized that we were not ready just yet.

So we regrouped, told our daughter that she would in fact be getting a puppy, but that it might take a little longer than we first thought. She surprisingly took the news well. She did however remind us through the next couple of years of our promise. I was baffled by how understanding she was about the whole thing.

Anyway, earlier this year on one of our visits to our new weekend getaway in the Catskills mountains of upstate NY we stopped for ice cream. The place was called the “Bun-n-cone” and was located in Margaretville NY. On my way out with my ice cream ( Perry’s Ice Cream, an upstate NY brand) I spied a flyer of a lady selling Labrador puppies.

That lady ended up being the owner of a farm called “Breezy Acres” and she didn’t have any puppies from that litter but she did have another litter due from her Labrador named “Maggy” due in about a month from the time I called.

Well to make a long story a bit shorter, we called her about a month later and found out that we had several puppies to pick from….

We went up the following weekend and found our Koko:

We named Koko after the Hawaiian word for chocolate, which is Koko-leka. As a former Army officer, my last duty station was in Hawaii and my family now calls that paradise a second home hence our affinity for all things Hawaiian.

We would then come back two weeks later to breezy Acres to pick up Koko and bring him to his new home.

This blog is intended to be a record of Koko’s life. 

Be warned though, I like to write, take pictures, AND I’m an ecommerce guy, so this blog will be a hopefully a nice mix of all of those interests.

Thanks for joining us, as our family welcomes Koko into our lives.

(This particular post is always a work in progress, so always to be continued…)