So, on our way to go float the river, one of our weekend rituals, our friends, the Poyser's mentioned seeing a family selling puppies in a parking lot. Michael and I have been talking about getting a dog for a while we just weren't sure exactly when we would get one and we wanted to educate ourselves ahead of time to be ready for when we actually brought one home. Well, that is until we went on a detour to see these puppies that were the cutest balls of fur I have seen, gorgeous Golden Retriever pups and I knew once I held one I couldn't just leave it. I have always said that if I could choose what dog I could have it would be a golden. I was just hoping Michael felt the same way. He's never owned a dog and I really wanted the one we got to be the perfect dog for his new experience. Fast forward to actually bringing "our" dog home that same day, we went to get all the necessities to get us through the next few days, including a book on how to potty train puppies and info on Goldens.
I must say, that first week made me question, "What was I thinking?!" and "Is it too late to find a new home for him?" This is partly where raising a child is different cause you can't just give the child back! A lot had to do with the lack of prior planning (not having the 9 months to prepare yourself mentally for the changes). I also tend to get stressed out easily and I don't know how to raise a puppy. I'm expecting him to know that after I say "no" about nipping my fingers or going for my face a few times that he's going to just know what I'm expecting of him and do it. I didn't really realize the amount of patience and diligence it takes in training a dog. You actually have to work pretty hard with them in the beginning so they turn into that enjoyable, well trained dog who listens to you on your first word and is pleasant to be around. What a concept I'm learning!
It's been a learning curve. But all in all, we love him dearly. We get SO many complements on how cute he is and how smart these types of dogs are. He is learning fairly quickly and is close to being fully potty trained in just 3 weeks! Watching him and Miley interact has been quite entertaining. I do feel slightly bad that she was queen of the house until he got there. But she's a little instigator! He'll be happily chewing on his toy or falling asleep and she'll come meow right near him to get him to chase her which he also happily does but then she turns around and hisses and swats him on the nose and then we tell him to stop barking at her. I think she secretly enjoys when we intervene and he gets the brunt of our commands :)
He started puppy training this last week which was more training for us than for him. I do appreciate learning more positive ways to train him instead of just falling to instinct of losing my patience and trying to force him to obey (which just leads to him being afraid of me rather than joyfully obeying because it pleases him to please us). It also helps Michael and I get on the same page of how we want to train him so he doesn't become confused by our different methods. And it helps Michael because he hasn't had too much interaction with dogs in the past to know how to be with them. Again, just in the first one hour session, he is learning at lighting speed and I'm pretty excited because once we're done with this class I'm hoping we'll have a fully compliant dog...here's for hoping!
I could go on and on about him but don't want make this post a book. So that's our little guy in a nutshell and our first adventures of being new puppy owners!
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