Tuesday, 17 July 2012

Poppy the land shark

Having a puppy is harder work than you might imagine. I expected a certain amount, but it is more and she restricts what we can do more than I thought about (won't walk on the lead so hard to go places, gets tired if out too long, can't go in to the supermarket - giving Doug cast iron excuse not to go either, can't be left alone too long), some of that will improve with age, but some not.I think I mentioned once before that we get up once in the night to take her to the toilet (3 month old puppies can apparently last 4 hours) and she has been waking up at 6am (this is now 7.30 which is an improvement). You will know that we need a lot of sleep and we are both rather knackered under this regime which means we are both tetchy and are not getting as much done in as day as we used to. I don't know how people manage with children. They can't be crate trained I believe.
'Some people' have told me I have read the internet too much about what we could do or should do but I want to do it right as I don't want an unruly badly behaved dog for the next 10-12 year. From this reading it seems that quite a lot of people find them harder work than expected, particularly when they have taken them on when they already have young children. Apparently it gets easier after the first 6 months or so, I might be finished before then.

She isn't properly difficult, just puppy naughty, but I find it very upsetting when she bites me (she does this when over tired and over excited, for some reason I don't understand does it much more to me than Doug). Internet says puppies do bite, but we need to work on her bite inhibition. It is also very tiring the way she wimpers and howls when she doesn't get her own way, for example on the lead or increasingly when put in her crate. It makes me feel like a cruel puppy whipper who is scarring her for life, when in fact limits are being set FOR HER OWN GOOD. A few days have ended in tears (mine not hers)

Look how cute she looks though!


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