Puppies Need Love Too
June 25, 2009 by Lisa Beth
Have I mentioned that we still have two Shelties? Well, we do, the poor things have been a little looked over the past few months, what with Brooklyn staking her claim and all. Chris, of course, still dotes on them just as much as he always has. I, on the other hand, have been feeling more annoyed by them lately.
Maybe it’s a temporary phase I am going through, but every task associated with the puppies feels like a HUGE chore. Plus, Mia wakes me up at least once a night from scratching her ears, which makes her collar jingle-jangel (Have I mentioned I am a light sleeper?) , Sophie incessantly barks at every breath of the wind, and both dogs have become obsessed with eating diapers. The diaper thing bugs me the most. Nothing like cleaning up a shredded dirty diaper after you’ve changed what feels like your 100th diaper of the day since your three year old STILL POTTYS IN HIS DIAPER. They have actually become so good at “diaper stealing” they will do it right in front of you, but are so fast, you don’t even see it happening. Example – I was changing Brooklyn on our bed the other morning, neatly wrapped the diaper up and placed it on my nightstand to finish dressing her. I saw a flash of black a few seconds later, and Chris says, “What was that?” ‘”I’m not sure, hmm…” I reply, looking around, but seeing nothing I go on with my business. When I finished dressing the babe, I turned to grab the diaper to throw it away and it was GONE. “Where did I put that stupid thing?” I asked Chris, standing on my head looking under the bed, in the sheets, and under pillows with no luck. As I wandered through our living room to get out the door for work, there it was. The shredded diaper. They never chew it on the wood floors either, making for an easier clean up. They have a preference for dragging it to the cleanest room in the house and destroying the pee/poop laden diaper on top of my $500 area rug.
As far as adjusting this time around (with baby number two) the dogs have seemed unphased. When Wyatt was born we were so worried about how the pups would react. Chris brought a receiving blanket home for the dogs to sniff the day before we came home from the hospital. I even researched how to make an easy transition for all members of the family (one suggestion I read was to take a doll for a walk in a stroller with the dogs, pretending it was a baby. I was not visiting crazy town anytime soon, so I rejected this idea in full). And when we finally arrived home, we let the dogs thoroughly investigate/sniff the baby for a full 30 minutes. Over the next couple of weeks, both dogs started peeing in the house, crying at night, and being pretty much naughty all the time. Eventually they got over it, with much extra nurturing from Chris and I.
This time, we brought NO blanket home, and when they tried to sniff her as we came in the door, I shooed them away with the flick of my wrist. “Go on, girls – get outta here, give us some room!” Actually, this approach seemed to work better than pretending the dogs were people and trying not to hurt their feelings. I guess we were more concerned with what Wyatt would think of the baby, not the dogs. They have been unphased by the addition of Brooklyn to our family, the more the merrier I guess. I bet they don’t realize quite yet that this child also will be pulling their fur and poking their eyes in the near future. They’ll learn soon enough.
And now after posting this, I feel like I have been bad-talking my children, so I need to go get some love from my puppies…
Comments
Tell us what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!