Tassie's Bad Habits

She doesn't have many, but Tassie showed us two of her bad habits yesterday. The first: she loves to chew up paper - typically a coupon or a napkin. She tears it neatly and leaves it in a close pile. When I see it I do the typical, "Tassie, what did you do?!" and she will then lower her head and slink out of the room. But seriously, how can I be mad at something like this? Marty is convinced that someday she's going to leave us a message with the scraps.

Her other bad habit is begging - for beer. She doesn't beg for food, I guess because we've never given her people food before, but she is also one of the few dogs who isn't food motivated. We make her sit while we put her food into her bowl and once we're done we'll say, "Okay, Tassie, you can eat now," and she'll often times continue sitting and just look at us. The other day Marty left half a pizza on the stove while we went out, and the entire thing was sitting there when we got back. It just doesn't occur to her that she could've easily eaten that. Or maybe she doesn't like pizza? Anyways, we all know Marty is a beer-lover and he gives her a finger of foam from a poured beer. And okay, the end of the bottle sometimes, too. Now what she does is lay her head down on the couch and stare into his eyes. Once he makes eye contact with her, she'll then look at his beer. He can't resist her cute, wiley ways.