Who Wants to Hear About My Puppy? Again.

I know I’m getting a little puppy-heavy over here, but that’s my life right now.  When she sleeps I try to make just the right amount of noise – enough that she’ll get used to sleeping in a not-completely silent atmosphere, but not enough that she wakes up.  Sometimes she is out cold and I can do all sorts of activities, but sometimes she wakes up at the smallest shift in the room (like when I un-cross and re-cross my legs.

So anyway, I’ve been spending a lot of time home alone with Tusnami.  During that time I watch a lot of bad television and scour the internet for How to Raise a Puppy.  Everything is contradictory and I keep wondering what is the best approach.  I wonder if we’re doing everything correctly or if we’re going to raise a monster of a dog.  I’m constantly asking dog owners how they trained their puppy and trying to incorporate their bits of wisdom into what we’re doing without throwing out the whole routine.  What we’ve been doing has, mostly, been working.  A few changes have been made to make things easier, and they worked.  Well, they worked as well as one could expect with a 10-week old puppy.

The thing that I most hear when complaining or asking questions about a puppy is this: “Oh, puppies will have accidents.  That’s to be expected.”  But no matter how many times I hear that, it never calms me down or makes me feel better.  I want Tsunami to be housebroken and stop biting and sleeping through the night right now.  I want their to be no more accidents and less yelling and more walks and all around fun time.

Which, yeah, that won’t happen for a while.  I know.  But I can hope, right?

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Yesterday evening, after Wes got home I went with our neighbor down to our development’s dog park (well, actually, the baseball field that isn’t landscaped because the dog park is ridiculously tiny and full of other dogs’ poop.  Not a fun place to run around, really).  I needed some time away from Tsunami.  Away from worrying about what piece of furniture she was putting her paws on and whether or not she was chewing on her toys or the coffee table and, above all, whether or not she needed to outside and pee or poop.  Whenever I’m out of the house she’s in her kennel and I’m in charge of whatever happens in their, or Wes and I are out together.  In the almost 3-weeks since we got Tsunami, Wes hasn’t spent much time alone with her (completely alone with her awake).  when I got home after 20 or 30 minutes, he looked like I have felt since she bounced through that door: exhausted.  Honestly, I felt vindicated.  Justified in getting snippy in having to wake up early with her or be the one in charge of getting her to poop before bed.  Justified in being so tired that all I want to do at night is go to sleep and make Wes entertain her.

I imagine this is what new mothers feel like the first time the new fathers stay home with their kid alone.

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But honestly, when she does this to me or Wes, it sort of makes up for all of the ways she sucks.

One is Enough

Even though Tsunami is getting easier to handle, she’s still a handful.  And because of the puppy rules in Hawaii, we are housebound.  Meaning I haven’t left the house for more than two hours at a time in nearly three weeks.  Instead of tackling my Life List or exploring the island, I’m working my way through every episode of Las Vegas, Cold Case Files, Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, and Bones. And that’s just the shows on through noon.  HGTV takes up the evenings.

Don’t worry, I see the irony here: the first thing I cross of my Life List is going to keep me from crossing anything else off for a really long time.  Obviously I didn’t think through the puppy thing very carefully.

I’m feeling a little cabin fever lately.  Trips to the grocery store are the highlight of my day and when Wes is home I look forward to not having to entertain her constantly.  This weekend I woke up with Tsunami early both Saturday and Sunday.  And by Sunday afternoon I was feeling bitter that I was always in charge of her.  That I couldn’t get some peace for even an hour while someone else entertains her and feeds her and makes sure she gets outside to go to the bathroom instead of finding a tile that strikes her fancy.

I imagine this is what new mothers feel like.  Sure the husband has to work, but they at least get away from the chaos that being a new parent brings (whether a puppy or a baby).  Sure there is stress at Wes’ work, but at least he doesn’t have to clean up urine or make sure that his office-mates get to the bathroom every hour.  He doesn’t have to lock them in a room and force them to cry themselves to sleep.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is this: I think it’s going to be a long time until we add kids to this house.

Change of Heart

For the past two weeks I’ve wavered on the dog.  A little part of me would like to send her back or go back in time and tell three-weeks-ago-me that a puppy is the last thing I want.  A larger part has been looking forward to when she stops acting like such a terror and is fun to be around.  One of my best friends, Ashley, has a four-month old puppy that she got when he was 8-weeks old, and our neighbors also have a four-month old that they got when she was 13-weeks old and they love their puppies.  They are attached and in love and would be devastated if anything happened to them.

Honestly, I haven’t felt like that.  Obviously I would be sad if something serious happened to her (serious disease, death, etc.), but I would have felt relieved that we didn’t have to go through puppy-hood again.  I would probably never get another dog, truth be told.

The problem is that we’ve been getting so many conflicting points of view and, as new puppy parents, we are pretty much clueless.  As a result, we’ve been doing a lot of things wrong.  Like keeping her kennel downstairs instead of upstairs where we sleep.  Every night for the past two weeks has been full of barking, crying, yelping and cleaning up pee.  Every day has been a struggle to get through after getting such a horrible night’s sleep.  And Wes and I weren’t the only ones feeling it.  Tsunami wasn’t sleeping well either.  She cried herself to sleep and would wake up frequently and when she was out of the kennel for the day she would sleep constantly.  And then we would repeat.

I’ve been thinking that it’s separation anxiety and started putting her in the kennel when we were around so that she could see us and feel safe.  During the day she was fine while in the kennel.  She would sleep for 3 hours at a time and, though she cried a little, she never barked.  In the advice of a hunting dog trainer, we took out all absorbent materials from her kennel so that if she did pee, she would have to sit in it, which dogs don’t like at all.  The only thing that succeeded in doing was getting her to pee in their and then bark wildly until we came down to get her.

I’m not sure why we didn’t think of it sooner, but yesterday (after a particularly bad night’s sleep in which she peed in her kennel three times in as many hours) I was at my rope’s end.  I looked around everywhere for some advice on housebreaking and crate training.  And the one thing that kept coming up was this: put the kennel in your bedroom.  So last night, we moved the kennel from downstairs to upstairs, next to our bed.  We put the blankets and towels back in and draped the kennel with a sheet to make it more den-like.  We put a kong full of peanut butter in their with her as a treat.

And she cried.  Of course she did.  After a week of sleeping in a crate with no blankets, underneath an open window who wouldn’t cry a little bit?  So we left the light on and spoke quietly about our day, to let her know that we were there.  And then we turned the light off and continued talking.  And then we stopped talking and went to sleep.  And so did Tsunami.  She didn’t bark or cry or whine at all last night.  She slept for 2 – 2 1/2 hours at a time and even stayed in the kennel until 6:30 this morning, when she let us know that it was time to wake up.

Today she has been a completely different puppy than the one that we’ve seen for the past two weeks.  She doesn’t go straight from the kennel to the mat to get some well-needed rest.  She plays with us and listens better.  She doesn’t get crazy with energy and start running in circles.

And I finally get what all these dog owners are raving about.  Dogs are awesome.  And even when she’s not, I know she’ll get better.

154 Days

Before we got engaged, I had visions of a completely do it yourself wedding. I was reading wedding blogs – well, blogs that focused on weddings once they writer got engaged – and so much of what they were doing was diy and I loved just about everything they were doing. I was convinced that once the engagement and wedding planning actually began I would scour the same websites to find things that would make my wedding absolutely perfect.

In truth, none of that happened. Once we started planning we were in the middle of a move to Hawaii and the last thing on my mind was a thousand small projects that only I would care about, notice or remember. We picked a place that handled everything: catering, tables, linens, centerpieces. We’re getting the alcohol from a local brewery in Portland and the wine from Costco instead of using the same wine that’s marked up. Our wedding invitations are being made by Wes’ sister as our wedding gift (something I could not be more happy about, seeing as how I was completely lost in the paper store and just wanted to pick something and get out). Our save-the-date cards were post cards that I printed through Apple’s iPhoto. All in all, we picked easy things to plan and do. Partly because we live over 2,000 miles from the wedding location, but also because neither of us are too crafty.

But all that doesn’t matter. The thing that’s important is that we are getting married. In 154 days we are getting married. I will walk down the aisle and we will say our (traditional) vows. And then we will eat and drink and dance. In 20 years I won’t care that I didn’t make the invitations or that we didn’t have a lot of diy projects to really  make the wedding.  I will remember that I married my best friend and danced the night away.  And that’s all I need from our wedding.

Questioning

I spent much of last week on the verge of tears, my chest heavy with anxiety.  I kept wondering, with every jump on the furniture, every puddle of pee I had to clean up, Did we make the right decision? Puppies, it seems, are a lot of work.  There’s a lot of yelling and training and making sure that she gets outside before she makes whatever corner she happens to be in her new bathroom.  And it’s been exhausting, both mentally and emotionally.  Wes definitely came home to me crying two nights and when I brought her to the vet for her check-up they remarked that I looked like a new mom.

The problem hasn’t so much been Tsunami, but with me.  I thought I would handle this completely differently.  I thought that I would love her instantly and love this step that Wes and I were taking.  I thought I was ready to have a puppy who basically has no control over anything, including her limbs most of the time.  Instead, I was a mess.  I resented her for taking up so much (all) of my day.  I had an excuse to stay at home all day, but I couldn’t spend it in bed or on the couch reading or checking blogs.  I had to make sure that Tsunami was fed and played with and not ruining every piece of furniture we own.

Part of it is that, in Hawaii, puppies aren’t allowed outside until they have all of their shots, which means we still have two months before we can take her to the park and play fetch with her, or we can go running together.  She can’t do anything but sleep, pee and poop, eat and play a type of fetch (we’re still working on the drop part, but she’s getting better).  She is just 9 weeks old yesterday and she’s always underfoot.  The first day home alone with her Wes offered to make dinner to give me a break, but I quickly learned that it wasn’t a break for me as I still had to entertain the puppy.  So lately I’ve taken to letting him entertain her while I relax by cooking dinner.  And it helps.  I go out for longer hours during the day, both so that I can get some time away from her and so that she can get used to being in the kennel and realizing that it’s not a punishment to be in there.  I take naps and go to the store and Friday I even made it back to the gym.

But I still feel a bit inadequate.  My friend Ashley has a dog and got an 8-week old puppy over Christmas and our reactions to these small creatures are radically different.  Now at 16(ish) weeks, her dog is still peeing on the floors and even managed to ruin the heel to one of her shoes, but instead of becoming frustrated and crying and wondering if getting a puppy was a good idea, she just brushed it off as another thing that puppies do.  Put in the same situation I would definitely be crying.  I’m having a hard time seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, even though I know there is one out there.

Already we’ve taught her to sit and stay.  We’re working on getting her to know where her bathroom is and as I write this, Wes is trying to get her to understand the game of fetch.  She is a good puppy, but she’s still a puppy.  She loves to fall asleep in our laps and we give in for a few moments before transferring her to her mat because she’s just so cute and it won’t be too long before she’s too big to curl up in our laps.  She thinks Wes is pretty tasty and has taken to the throw blankets we leave on the couch.  She runs around a lot and gets thirsty and when she drinks drips water all over the kitchen.  She’s afraid of the broom, but not the vacuum.  She’s only 10 pounds 2 ounces, on her way to close to 50 pounds.

I will probably continue to have moments of anxiety and wonder what the hell we were thinking by getting a dog.  Why we would tie ourselves down with a pet while living in Hawaii.  But then she’ll look at us with her puppy-dog eyes, or we’ll spend a day at the dog park or on a hike and it will no longer feel like she’s something that’s holding us back.  Soon enough she’ll be something propelling us forward.

A Dog’s Life

So.  We got a puppy.  After letting the subject drop and deciding not to get a puppy right now, I kept thinking about it.  About how this is the perfect time to get a puppy.  About how cute those puppies were.  About how much we both wanted one.  When I approached Wes about it again and I broke him down.  We decided to go ahead and get the puppy.  Thursday night we had one last discussion about it and Friday morning Wes bought tickets to Hilo to pick the puppy up.  It was a quick four-hour trip there and back with a new puppy.

Tsunami

She’s adorable, of course.  What puppy isn’t?  But she’s a handful.  I’ve never had a puppy before, so this is my first experience with just how much work and attention they require.  I’m hoping that I’ll be better prepared for kids after this fiasco, but something tells me that they’ll be 100 times harder, and if I cried on the third day of dog parenting, what is it going to be like with actual kids?

We’re getting a lot of suggestions from other dog owners. She’ll get older and less puppy-cute, but that also means she’ll stop being such a puppy.  And I’m really looking for that.

Life List, Part II

Okay, I sat down to look at the list and found that a lot of things can still remain there.  Some needed to be modified or scrapped, but mostly I didn’t do a bad job.  I added some more smaller things.  Well, not smaller, but things that can be worked on regularly and don’t require large amounts of money.

And what am I going to work on this month?  Learning to surf, swimming with dolphins and planning a trip from start to finish.  Learning to surf has been at the top of my list since hearing that we were moving to Hawaii.  We should have learned this while we were living in Orange County, but it just never seemed to pan out, what with traveling, cold water temperatures and large waves.

The swimming with dolphins came up last weekend when our neighbors were talking about it so I added it to the list because how cool is that to swim with the dolphins?  We swam near them while we were in Belize, but actually getting in the water with the sole intent to swim with them is something completely different.

And planning a trip?  Well, it’s for our honeymoon.  I usually leave all the planning to someone else – whoever knows more or wants to see more – so I’ve never actually planned a full trip before.  How did I make it to 27 without planning any sort of trip?  It’s amazing.  So the first one I dive into will be for our honeymoon to Thailand.  How hard can it be?

So, without further ado, the list:

· brew my own beer · make my own wine · take a picture a day for a year · host a cocktail part · host christmas · host thanksgiving · drive on the autobahn · dive the great barrier reef in australia · learn to surf · stay in a 4-star hotel · run a marathon · compete in a triathlon · publish a piece of my writing · publish a photo · marry wes · see a presidential inauguration · see a broadway play in nyc  · learn sign language · become conversant in spanish · dive the hawaiian islands · swim with dolphins · have a pet dog · stay/drink in the ice hotel · write a book · hide easter eggs for my kids · go one day – at home – without turning on the tv · go heliskiing · go on a multi-day backpacking trip · take a month-long trip through europe · visit the 7 wonders of the world · plant an herb garden in my backyard · host a fancy dinner party · take a cooking class · take a photography class · have a career · do 1,000 things that scare me · make exercise a priority · see a pro football game live · see a pro basketball game live · watch the olympics live · plan a trip start to finish · take a cycling trip · attend sxsw · attend a blogher conference · golf the course in coeur d’alene , id · frame my photographs and hang up in my house · go on a retreat with my girlfriends · do 100 grand gestures · see 1,000 concerts · institute a game night · go a week without watching tv · take a weekend trip and leave my phone at home · give only homemade gifts for christmas one year · send thank you notes to restaurants for good service · see the mona lisa · see the david · serve on a jury · host a new year’s eve party · eat sushi and drink sake in japan · sky dive · bunjee jump · attend mardi gras in nola · win a trivia night at a pub ·ride in a hot air balloon · donate my hair to locks of love ·

March is Going to Be a Busy Month

When I was eight my family took a trip to visit extended family in San Diego and my gift from that trip was a locking diary.  The pages were gilt-edged and each page was dated.  Sometimes I had enough going on in my 8-year-old life to take up the entire page, and sometimes I didn’t.  Sometimes I would remember to write and sometimes I would go weeks without even looking in the thing, though my brother didn’t hesitate to pick the lock and take a look at my innermost thoughts (which I’m sure were super deep and not at all concerned with my crush that week, which happened to be a co-worker of my dad’s and I so wish that I had a picture to show you because I am laughing just remembering it).   When I would finally realize that I had forgotten to record anything for days in a row, I would quickly scribble something – anything – on those blank pages just to say that I had written something for that day.  As a result, a lot of those pages were filled with things like, “Today was fine.  Nothing big happened” and “Today was pretty much the same as yesterday.”  I was determined to write something down, regardless of whether it meant something or not.

I keep saying that I want to write more, and I absolutely do.  But when I sit down to start writing I find myself searching for something – anything – to say.  If I was 20 years younger I might write, “Today was pretty boring” and be done with it.  Obviously that’s not the type of writing that I want to do.  I want to not only write more, but also to have more substance to my writing.  So I’m back to taking notes about everything and reading anything that I can get my hands on and doing things – exploring my new home and writing about it.

And to jump-start this I am doing the 750 words challenge.  750 words everyday.  That writing doesn’t have to be anything fancy, but I’m hoping that as the month progresses, I’ll start getting the hang of this writing thing.  That it will be less stream of consciousness/journaling and more story-telling.

On top of that, I looked back at my Life List and am sorely disappointed in my imagination and ambition.  The world at my fingertips and I can’t come up with more than 33 things that I MUST do before I die.  Maggie over at Mighty Girl got her Life List sponsored for second time and is committing to crossing three things off her list this month, and she’s urging everyone else to do the same with their list as well.  Well, in order to do that, I need to take a serious look at what I want to do if I could do anything in the world.  I suppose Number One item will be to totally recreate the List with more creativity and ambition.  And from there I’ll look for two other items that I can cross off my list this month.

Puppy Love

For as long as I can remember (read: the past four years), Wes and I have been talking about dogs.  How much we love them and would like one some day.  Of course, for so long we were living in cramped apartment complexes and working long hours, so getting a puppy just wasn’t an option.  We watched as friends had to hurry home or cancel plans or not even make plans because of their dog. We’re young and wild and free we told ourselves.  Like Sally and her boyfriend, we could pick up and leave at a moment’s notice, which we have done frequently in the past two years.

And then we moved to Hawaii and even though it’s still technically an apartment, our house has something that we have never had before:

We have a backyard!  And not just any backyard, but a fenced-in backyard.  It’s not the biggest thing, but it’s big enough and when we signed the lease papers Wes whispered in my ear, “We might be able to get a puppy.”  Which, I then translated to, We’re Getting a Puppy!!!!!!!  Because the thing I forgot about Wes is that he isn’t quick to make Big Decisions.  The quickest decision he ever made was to buy the Audi, and that was forced after his car was stole (twice), but even that took months.  Everything else is a years-long process of Should I? or Shouldn’t I?  So when he says, “Maybe we can get a puppy” What he really means is, “Let’s do some homework for the next couple of years and decide if we can handle a dog in our life.”  Me, on the other hand, I make quick decisions and when I start thinking about getting something, it’s because I want it, not because I need to be swayed in one direction or the other.  So I’m swayed and Wes is still doing research.

Two weeks after we moved in our neighbors got a puppy.  A Rhodesian Ridgeback they named Whiskey who is so cute and cuddly.  And looks adorable playing in the backyard.  Seriously, how cute is this puppy?  Well, less cute when you factor in how many times she’s pooped in her crate, but cute enough.  Especially when I’m not the one cleaning up said poop.

We both want a German Shorthair Pointer and Wes happened to find some puppies in Hilo for sale.  And the reason he found them was because he was looking, so even though he says he’s leaning towards no, I think he’s leaning towards yes.  Otherwise, why would he be searching for a puppy?  My job tonight is to convince him that we really need a puppy.  That right now, while I’m not working, is the perfect time for it.  I don’t think it should be too difficult, considering he’s already picked a name out for the pup.

Update: No puppy for us.  And, yes, I am super sad about that.  Growing up, I never had a dog.  My brother had two – one that ran away and one that we had to get rid of when it was clear that he wasn’t going to take care of the dog.  My parents were trying to teach him a lesson or something.  I’m not sure it worked, though, because he ended up with two dogs.  Anyway, right now a dog isn’t a good idea.  And while I 60% agree with, I also 40% just don’t give a shit about all the (very valid) reasons to not get a dog because I just want one so badly.  So I’m trying focus on the fact that I will (hopefully – fingers crossed) find a job soon and leaving a puppy at home for 8-12 hours per day just isn’t fair for anyone – the puppy who will be locked in a crate or for me and Wes who will have to clean out said crate.  So those adorable little puppies (the one that Wes had named, even!) will hopefully find a good home elsewhere.  And we (by which I mean, Wes) will stop trying to find our dream breed for sale, thus getting our (by which I mean, my) hopes up.  And anytime Wes doesn’t want to just pack up and go, I will remind him that we didn’t get a dog so we could do exactly that.   I will rest my case and he will be forced to take me on the trip.  Or buy me a dog.  It’s his choice, really.  I won’t be picky about it.