Loud and clear

There's a lot of dogs in our neighborhood, and unfortunately, not just a few stray cats. Consequence: The dogs love to go crazy at the stray cats (how cliche, right? I've tried explaining this to Cody, but he remains unmoved).

This was never much of a problem with Cody until recently, for whatever reason. He actually got so bad that more than once he's woken up Ethan, and Ethan is a champion sleeper. We tried everything from distraction to asserting our alphaness by making him come to wherever we were and sit quietly.

Finally, this past week, I gave Noah an ultimatum: Buy a bark collar to train him, or prepare to make a defense for me in my caninicide case. So we got a citronella bark collar. And you know what? It's been working out great. Cody is much more calm and collected, and he definitely gets the picture when he finds himself in a cloud of lemon after barking at a rogue leaf fluttering across the yard.

At long last our relationship has been restored!, I thought to myself last night, as we cuddled on the couch. And then I found this, this afternoon:


You can click on that photo to enlarge it, but on the feet of the headless bear is written "#1 Mom."

Perhaps we're not quite there yet.