My dreamy puppy is gorgeous and fluffy. Her large black-brown eyes gaze at me because she adores me. Although from a different earthly species, my dog is aligned to my way of thinking and totally in sync with my moods.

Therefore:

• When I need to work the dog is quiet. Content in her playpen for hours on end, she will simply sleep or play with her adorable squeaky toys…
• When I want to give her attention she is right there, ready to go. She settles peacefully on my lap as I read a book or take in a movie.
• When I’m ready for a spot of fresh air, she’s waiting at the door holding onto her bladder until we get outside.
• Once a day as the sun shines despite the season, we stroll in the leafy forest. Even the children are eager to come outside for walks and beg – beg I tell you – to take the dog out by themselves. This is amazing, because getting them out of the house BP (Before Puppy) was difficult. Now, AP, it’s no problem whatsoever. The family all get out more now we have a dog. This has led to an increase in overall fitness, happiness and general life improvement.
• Oh, the hilarity and, somehow also, comfort, this cute wee doggy provides for all of us. She completes our family.

Preparation for Puppy

I am most certainly prepared for this. Even though Miniature Schnauzers and Poodles are the only dogs I am not allergic to, do I let that stop me? No way:

• I do multiple doggy quizzes online.
• We visit a breeder.
• I read 2.5 books to prepare for becoming a dog owner.
• For goodness sake, we even visit the Discover Dogs show and personally investigate 214 species as possibilities for our new family member.

We do not rush into this decision.

Plus I watch YouTube videos so I know how to do it properly. Be a leader and alpha for my dog. Surely that qualifies me as the new Dog-Whisperer!…

Let’s just say:

Puppy Invasion

CRASH. Meteors strike the earth, leaving massive craters. Here I come, earth.

It’s possible reading 2.5 books on being a dog owner and thinking I’ve got it sorted may well be the same as reading 2.5 books on parenting and thinking I’ll instantly have the perfect child… This may be another case of experience counting for more than mere reading. What’s that all about then?

What No-one Tells You…

Dogs have magical powers which slowly exert their influence over time. These powers give dog-owners amnesia. Unless our dog is totally unique, these statements must be true because:

Not one dog-owner pre-warned us about the mega-hard work and huge time-commitment involved. None of them alerted us to the suffering of being an owner of a new puppy.

A mere selection:

• The pieces of skin flaking away from wee-soaked hands. (There are still daily pools of wee on the kitchen floor despite taking her outside and standing in the freezing garden for 10 minutes every hour and a half).
• The bitten ankles. (Did you know all puppies bite before you teach them No? Hm. Me neither.)
• The ruined stair carpet. (Darling puppies. It’s not their fault they destroy valuable items. They explore with the world with their mouths.)

Sleep VS. Puppies…

Occasionally, I’ve met a fellow dog-owner with empathy for my Puppy Plight….

I wait with my dog for my daughter to finish a music lesson, sneakily sheltering our rain-shy puppy under the porch and trying to stop her from jumping on passer-by with her filthy wet paws. A woman sidles up to me: “Are you getting any sleep?”

She explains her puppy had cried so loudly all through the night they researched and purchased every sleep-inducing external device they could think of to settle him. Nothing worked. Eventually, they gave up…

For 18 months, the puppy slept on the woman’s stomach.

Another woman told me her puppy cried non-stop through the night every night and so she had:

4 months with no sleep.

Now read that again…Hello 4 months. I get how it may have been for her now…

There is crying: And when a puppy cries it sounds very much like a baby crying…Except louder. Much louder. You’ve got your head on your pillow but there is someone else’s torture taking place beneath it.

Our puppy cried for one whole night. Pretty much non-stop. We wondered what we had brought into our lives. The books said to bring her crate into our bedroom…

Call me cold-hearted. Call me steely. Whatever. We refused to do what the books told us to do. I do what I need to function as a human being. I need to sleep and I factor my need highly:

So we “Gina Forded” our dog. Gina is the nanny who wrote “The Contented Little Baby Book” which I loosely applied to my parenting of babies. Gina says babies need to be taught when to sleep and how to settle themselves. She recommends that babies sleep alone in darkened rooms. She says to show babies it’s sleep-time by keeping very quiet even when you’re checking on them.

We found an appropriate corner for the dog’s crate. We closed her in and quietly left her there.

Success! Puppy hasn’t cried much to speak of since Night 1. Since she was 8 weeks old she’s managed to wait 6-8 hours to go to the toilet. She prefers not to go in her crate.

She quite likes the kitchen floor however…

Dogs Are Gross:

You have to clean up lots of wees and poos. All the time. Plus, occasionally, vomit. The dog is not a baby therefore I figure nappies are not a suitable option. There are Nappy pads (Puppy pads) which you can harness to the ground and seem like a great idea. We discovered our dog likes to eat them. Yummy.

• Latest call-out from our youngest daughter when she has to clean up a pooey mess from the kitchen floor:”Muummmm….Do you have any gas masks?”
• Latest test from husband who is meant to be at Puppy Training classes: “I’m at home. Poppy did a massive wet poo in the crate and we couldn’t continue driving… I had to stop to clean it out as best I could. What’s the best way to wash the black soft crate insert?” Husband tells me Puppy Training Classes now sadly on hold until said dog learns to speak English. Or something like that.
• You have to clean the poo bits off your puppy’s bum.
• Our puppy will eat pretty much anything no matter if it will make her vomit later. In fact, pretty much ANYTHING left on the floor even for a second is immediately lunch. Plastic pull-top drink-closing thingies, plastic wrap, chocolate which is toxic to dogs. Though actually covered in muddy footprints and wee, your floor will never look quite as tidy. It’s all fair game, never mind the trips to the vet.
• Our puppy LOVES smelly things. In fact, poo fascinates her so much she will even stick her nose in it. Then sniff and lick you….Lovely. Tell that to the kids when they’re hounding you for a puppy.

Pet insurance VS. World Poverty:

Everyone recommends you get pet insurance that covers you for any condition for the dog’s lifetime as vets are super-expensive. Based on the premium we’re paying I reckon the pet insurance industry itself could solve some poverty issues… if there were no vet bills I guess.

All this is not even to mention how flipping expensive it is to pay for the dog and all the dog stuff in the first instance.

I just did a bit of online research and the average cost of owning and keeping a dog over it’s lifetime is reckoned to be around £16,000. That’s not to mention here’s the continuing cost of :

The Time previously known as MY OWN…

Having a puppy means you have to rush home!

We can no longer stay out when we want. Children are another thing again but at least you can more or less take them with you wherever you go. Puppies, not so much.

Remember those days when you could go out in the morning and stay out all day?… Remember sleeping in in the morning? Get a puppy and say goodbye to those days.

• Your puppy must be walked and the recommended walk times are more than you would think. Apparently, our dog is going to need to walk for an hour and a half a day when she’s fully grown. Even before a puppy is allowed out of the house at 13 weeks after injections, it still needs exercise somehow. You must take the initiative. Put the collar on the dog. Put on your shoes. No excuses.
• You have to groom your dog. Every day for ages. The puppy doesn’t like it and tries to bite you. You even need to clean her eye bogies.
• What about my holiday? You can have one…as long as you’ve catered for the dog…Where’s she going to stay? Who’s going to feed her and take her out for walks and pick up her poos? Sort it out or forget about a holiday.

The Puppy and Your Children:

Your children will say they love the puppy and that she is the best thing ever. They will say this BEFORE AND AFTER you get the puppy.

Your children will say they will do the work. They will say this BEFORE you get the puppy.

Your children will not want to do any of the puppy work and they will do anything to get out of it. I’m pretty sure this is not just my kids.Reality bites just like the wind:

My dog barks at the wind. It is a windy day.

Here’s a video link of her barking at a single pigeon in the garden:

Puppy Barks.

Our neighbour keeps homing pigeons. Hooray!

Puppy Love:

Jesus instructs and empowers us to LOVE OTHERS and I reckon that can include dogs… This puppy gig continues to be a MAJOR learning curve for me. I have been challenged EVERY DAY and I totally need God’s grace and strength to get through this and I’m not even joking. I need these qualities:

…the fruit of the Spirit [the result of His presence within us] is love [unselfish concern for others], joy, [inner] peace, patience [not the ability to wait, but how we act while waiting], kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23, AMP)

After all this, do I love her now? Is it Puppy Love?

Um. Okay I’ll admit it. Even though this confession is no longer in the spirit of the PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT which I intended.

I love my poopy puppy Poppy.

I really do. You’d really like her. She’s lovely. She brings a lot of joy into our family.

For those of you still thinking you want a puppy: please bear in mind, in order that I was able to truthfully write the above statement, I waited until our puppy was 5 1/2 months old to finish and post this article.

Hooyah!