Ben never bothered the tree or ornaments. Tucker was adopted at 1 1/2 yrs of age (last September). He was a handful. Instead of my full-sized tree, I put up a much smaller version that stood on a small table last year. He is much calmer & has better manners a year later. I think I'm going to chance the real (actually artificial) tree this year - put it up with lights first & see what he does before ornamenting it.
Mason delicately plucks my ornaments off and figured out mommy will give a treat if he drops the ornament, my mistake, his new game last year was chase the boxer around the dining room table with my ornament in his mouth.... We do 2 trees , one in formal dining room that is a real tree with green lights, and red ornaments, one in the family room artificial tree with multi lights and all the ornaments have specail meaning, they all are the ones you write on at the mall with our names, plus doggie ones, and my dad Xmas from heaven, plus some from my childhood.... He never bothers that tree just the red ornaments.... Mack has never seen a tree yet so I am worried.. He is my little devil dog, I actually peek in the door window before I come in to see what he destroyed...
I put up a big real tree last year with lights and ornaments. Cora didn't even bat an eye. I just couldn't put any ornaments at her height because she liked to do a brush by lol.
Max was 5 1/2 months old his first Christmas, he would steal the ornaments off the lower branches and lay under the tree so all the lower ornaments were removed from the first 3 feet of the tree (it was a huge tree) and we had a rather large puppy under the tree during the day, did I mention no presents under the tree? They were all stacked on the sideboard in the entryway After that year he was fine. This year we come to Zoe currently 10 months old, I'm afraid it will be a different story. We do have a smaller tree that we can put in a corner of the living room and surround by side chairs (blocking the pathway under the chairs) and using a crate divider in front of the tree between the chairs to block access. This arrangement worked last year with Molly the puppy we lost. My concern with Zoe this year is that she'll just jump up on the chairs when I'm not look and either jump on the tree on steal ornaments. I don't think the tree is going to be up very long this year. As I write this Zoe just came running out of our bedroom with my comb in her mouth, time to lock the bedroom door. I just bought locking door knobs for our spare bedrooms yesterday to keep her out of them. The handles are levered and she stands up and opens the doors. She is quite a handful at times.
Echo tried to climb the tree last year, and she loved to play with her toys under it. She also thought it was a great hiding spot...even though she left her back half hanging out.
I am not worried about her so much. I am more worried about the cat. So the more precious oraments will go on the top of the tree and the cheap wally world ones will go on the bottom.
Wyatt was 7 months his first Christmas and was actually afraid of the tree! It's an artificial tree with the lifelike branches on the tip. He backed into it and it poked him and he was freaked the heck out! He would slowly go up to it and sniff it then walk away. Last year he could care less it was up, however he does love laying beside/underneath it on the soft cuddly tree skirt!
We taught the command leave it beforehand and then put them on a leash when we first put the tree up (real tree) and re-enforced "leave it" with treats. First year or so we used plastic ornaments and didn't hang the lights down too low.
Now they just leave it alone- they don't even bother with the presents under the tree - although the first time we left the gifts under the tree and went to bed we were worried what we might wake up to. lol
George is five months and was making laps around our tree when I first put it up! He had a guilty look and red glitter on his nose a couple of times also. Lol I wrapped some medium size boxes and placed them around the tree. The real presents are safe behind the fake ones! It has worked out great so far.
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