A New Twist on Halloween Costumes for Dogs

It's gettin' to be that spookin' time of year. On walks I hear the crunch crunching of the fallen deadened leaves; the Hunter's Moon was just upon us and I can almost hear the werewolves howling off in the distance.

It seemed appropriate to play around with some of the options for Bosco to figure out his Halloween Costume this year. Last week I had him wear what I call the "lumpy pumpkin" and he seemed to like it -- certainly more than Trip!

The pumpkin costume is rather lumpy!If looks could kill..

(I don't think Trip's forgiven me for the adventure we had last year doing a modeling gig for Joanne's Fabrics in Columbus, OH...)

But it was after I put on the ladybug outfit and started making observations of the border mix pup I've been fostering/training for nearly 4 weeks that I had an epiphany.

Like the sedating benefits of Har-Vest,

so too does this little red and black outfit sedate the boy, and look cozy and smashing to boot.

Could he be any more relaxed as a bug?

And I realized that when stressed and restricted (crated during day when I'm out; tethered to a stationary object in my bedroom at night when I sleep) Bosco acts out by spewing forth not quite solid poop at least 75% of the time. It's clearly a tangible manifestation of stress and my biggest challenge with the boy. It makes me wonder what happened to him early on in his short little life. At least I've learned to manage the situation by having easy to clean up surfaces if he does spew forth, but I'm trying to crack the code as I need him to learn how to be alone (or alone without another person -- he always has at least a dog or two and cats around him even if I'm not) a bit more gracefully.

So I thought, well, let's let him stay a ladybug. And so I put on the costume for 3 solid days/nights and  NO EXPLOSIONS. Coincidence? I think not. I took it off for a couple days, still NO EXPLOSIONS. But he looked naked so now he's wearing it most of the time. I really think he likes it! And did I mention that ever since, NO MORE EXPLOSIONS.

Stay tuned for more adventures of Bosco and other epiphanies that come about as he matures and we figure out what sort of working life he's going to have -- hearing alert? Medical alert? TBA!

Happy Halloween!