Whelp!

I'm too busy being bitten to blog again tonite!  Plus I have to wake up extra early to go to work at 7 am tomorrow for our first day of brunch.  Yay (insert sarcastic tone)!

Friday The 13th

It feels like Friday the 13th.  Weirdness.  Stress.  Exhaustion.  I have to eat and shower.  Can't think to write anything funny.

Maybe tomorrow?  I sure hope so!

I Had Something Good To Write About, But I Forgot

It must not have been that good.  I don't really want to write about the dog.  I don't want to write about the house.  I don't want to write about work.  So, what was it?

We got chinese take out last night.  So, I randomly broke open a fortune cookie today.  The fortune cookie said "You are due for a short vacation."

It's true!

I've only been working like a month, and we've only had the puppy two and a half weeks.  I'm ready for a little break - it's true.  I think going from not working to working 5 days in a week and not having 2 consecutive days off in a row is a lot for me.

But, you know, it takes longer to slowly ease into the pool than it takes to just dive in!

Speaking of, well the pool isn't deep enough to dive in, but I sure enjoy swimming around in it with Robby the Robot (the automatic pool skimmer) and Sal the Salamander (the inflatable pool lounger).  It's like the two inanimate objects have personalities.  They play tag and they push each other around the pool.  It's cute.  Really, it is.  Yes, I am weird.

Anyway, I've talked about the dog, the house, and work.  Those are the things that consume my life currently.  It won't always be like that, will it?  I've always tried to not be one of those annoying parents that talks about her kids (cats, fish for a short time, and now dog).  It's like, most people, if they don't have a cat, dog or kid, they don't want to hear someone else go on and on about their cat, dog or kid.

So, the FP is getting some dental work done tomorrow, and I am working a few busy, probably stressful days in a row.  So, yeah.... It's taken me about an hour to write this blog because of all the "distractions".  So, I'm going to finish my one beer and eat my indulgent dinner - sushi!

All Hope Is Lost

Ok, not really.  But those times when Rudy is on a full tear and attacking me relentlessly, I do feel hopeless.  It's like what I always picked a rabid dog to be like.

And as cute as he is, when he's got all those teeth out, it is anything but cute.  It's scary as fuck.

But, he's my scary as fuck puppy and I love him, so all I can do is figure out what works with him and what doesn't without being abusive and hopefully without using negative reinforcement.

All I know, is that I'm worn out, and so is he.  But he ate dinner a while ago, so he will have to go out to go poo poo pee pee soon... so it's just a waiting game now.

Full Moon Decline

So, weird stuff happened today.

We took Rudy to the vet in the neighborhood.  We hoped this would be our family vet since it's down the street.  When we walked into the office, the FP commented on how the place looked like it was in the 80s.  Which, yeah, it did.  There were shelves with lots of file folders there.  And other stuff...

When the veterinary assistant did the initial exam, she was a little judgy, as people who work at veterinary offices can be.  And she didn't use gloves.

Then the doctor came in.  He was nice enough.  But he didn't use gloves.  Rudy got a little bitey when they started giving him vaccinations in his ass.  So, the doctor tried to show us how to calm him down - which it took a while for him to calm down.

And then he found an abscess right on Rudy's pee pee.  I saw it the night before, and I thought it was maybe one of his balls dropping.  So, I googled it.  There were other cases in which puppy owners discovered the bulbus glandis - which helps the dog stay in the bitch long enough to impregnate her.  I thought, it looks like a big swollen bug bite, but maybe that's what it is.

It wasn't.  It was an abscess.  The vet thought it was weird that a young puppy would have this.  He squeezed it.  And bloody pus squirted out.

He squeezed it with his bare hands!  Gross!

So, he gave us antibiotics to give to Rudy starting tomorrow.  But he didn't seem too worried.  He just said to contact him if it doesn't clear up after a while.

So, anyway, we took Rudy home.  And he was sleepy.  So we put him in his crate and went to lunch.  When we came back and fed him lunch, he was fine.  But then, all of a sudden, he was lethargic.  I put his leash on to take him to go potty, but he didn't want to go.  He just laid there.  So, I picked him up.  When we got by the pool, he started whining.  So, he struggled and kind of jumped from my arms and he limped over to the shady patch and just plunked down and whined some more.

We got him to get up and show us his limp.  Sure enough, it was there.  So I wondered if he had landed weird on his foot.  I was concerned.  The FP was concerned.  I wondered if we would have to take him back to the vet.

So, the FP did the only rational thing to do.
He googled it.  And, sometimes puppies react badly to vaccinations.  The site gets sore and they limp.  So, that's what we were hoping it would be.  So, he slept for a long time.  When he woke up, he limped a little, and after a while he stopped limping.

But he definitely was low energy all day.

Shots suck.

It's a Walk In The Park

So, our precious little angel puppy was being a little frisky.  He was biting and nipping and following and barking at the cat.  So, we thought it would be good to take him to the park.

He was restless when we were trying to get him in the car, which is nothing new.

But when we got to the park, that was a different story.  So, he always gets stuck at the first patch of dirt or grass next to the parking lot.  I'm sure there are a lot of smells, right.  And it's always a few inches thick with leaves, so it's hard for him to walk on.  But today, he was like a blood hound on a scent.  He had his nose to the ground intently following a trail.  And he picked up a twig and was gnawing hungrily on it.  Gnawing crazily.  Like it was a bone.  Because it was a bone.

When we realized it, we tried to get it away from him.  And that's when he growled.  And then he some more, and then he snapped.  This was the FP's first experience with this, and he didn't like it.  Eventually, he somehow dropped the bone when he was growling or something, and we dragged him away from it.  But then he kept finding more bones.

I think eating of pork ribs and chicken on the bone should be banned from state parks.  There were bones everywhere.  So, we were trying to drag him away from a bone, he was growling and snapping, and we were running across the paved walkway to get to the lake.

And then I slid in wet, smooth, light brown shit.  In my flip flop.  I scraped as much as I could on the walkway (sorry pedestrians!)  and I ran down to the lake and stuck my foot in with my flip flop on.  It was terrible.

What a horrible walk in the park.

But we had to turn it around.  We walked around the lake (and woke up in the rain) and then we tried to get him to get back on the walkway.  A woman with a little dog was approaching.  Rudy was excited and bounded ahead to meet the dog.  When Rudy got close, the other dog turned and trotted off to get away from him.  The dog could sense his crazy energy and wanted nothing to do with him.

Up until that moment, every dog that he encountered wanted to play with him!  This was an outing with lots of firsts.

Finally we got him on the walkway running.  And we ran him.  And ran him.  We might have ran him more than you should run a puppy.  But we needed to shed his bad energy.  And it seemed to be working.  He focused on running with us.  But, then, we got back to the leaf pile by the car, and he was sniffing.  And sniffing.  But, we got him back in the car and headed home.

He wasn't much settled down.  But what would he have been like if we had not taken him to the park?  Maybe better?  Maybe worse?  Who knows.

Anyway, now he's safe and sound in his crate.  Not before a big crazy chase.  I know that being freaked out by my  puppy feeds his crazy energy, but when he's chasing me and biting with those sharp little teeth, I can't help it!

But, he's asleep for now.

I realize there's a lot going on with him:
We had house guests for the first time this weekend.
We didn't keep to his schedule.
I bought him a rawhide that he goes crazy for and is very possessive of, and he probably has too much access to use whenever he wants.
We bought a new bag of puppy food, and I got a different kind.

Tomorrow I will try better show him that he's crossing the boundary when he bites and barks.  Let's see how much watching the Dog Whisperer and googling stuff will help me!

Regression

I know that you need to have structure and routine when training a new puppy.
I know that you need to monitor him and not let him have too much free reign.
I know that no matter how good and intelligent a puppy is, he's still a puppy.

We took several steps back today.
He stayed up late last night.
He slept the whole night through and got up late.
We took him to the beach before breakfast.
We gave him breakfast when we got home and it wasn't enough food.
He slept for several hours this morning in the house while we were out back.
We let him go in and out of the house all day.

As soon as my sister left, he pissed in the house 3 times, and he shat in the lanai.

He was unruly and cranky.
When I fed him dinner, he ate it fast like always, and then he was kind of crying for some more.

Back to the basics.
And also puppy school!