Growing Into Those Paws: Puppy Diary 1

If you had told me months ago that having a new puppy was like having a new baby in the house, I probably would have replied, "How hard could it really be?" Well, to my surprise, bringing in a new puppy to an already two dog household was chaos. Even though it seemed to only have darkness at the end of the tunnel in the beginning, that was some light that started to peak through. I hope to try and document those rough times and the fulfilling, happy moments of raising a new puppy in this series. I'm not sure how often I'll get to writing but I hope to keep you updated on as much as I can. If throughout this reading, you find yourself having some advice from having the breed or just having puppies in general, please comment it down below and let me know your thoughts. I can use all the help I can get.

When we first brought Bandit home, we didn't know much about his breed or the energy level we were dealing with. After talking to a few people about him, I came to find that he was, in fact, a high energy breed that needed lots of running and activity to keep him from going whacky. We immediately began, what I like to call, 'The Baby Phase.' This is where we kept him in close contact with one of us, us being my mom and myself, for a majority of the time. If he played, we kept him with us, if he needed to use the bathroom, we carried him and helped encourage a potty break outside. Numerous treats, praise and belly rubs later, we were practically melting in the big paws of this very small puppy. Commence stage two of, 'The Baby Phase,' 'Part 2: Attack of the Baby Piranha.' They don't warn you, when you get a new puppy that their teeth can be like razors. My mom and I both suffered many cuts, scrapes, ankle grabs and finger pricks from those little teeth. Even to this day, we've caught him when he's, what we call, 'hangry' and have gotten the repercussions of that. We've learned though that this is called, 'mouthing,' a method puppies use to get others attention. The problem with that is he had almost all of our attention and still does to this day. With a couple of helpful internet forums, we've learned some good training techniques. So far, he knows how to sit on command. The rest will follow suit but at his pace, at least that what we hope.

To wrap this first entry up, we did have a huge milestone last night. After a few hours, lots of barking and a few little stumbles, Remi, our terrier mix and Bandit have finally become comfortable playing and hanging out with each other. We were very nervous about this but they each caught a wiff of each other and found that they really had no other choice but to get along after all. Remi also taught Bandit to go up and down the stairs which is HUGE. I'm sure there will be more to come and I'll document it all here. Thanks for reading if you made it this far.