One Week In And I Still Have My Fingers

Well today marks one week since we bought our little dynamo home. Don't be fooled by the picture above - these are the sweet moments of having a puppy. What you can't see are the continual battles to provide and outlet for puppy mouthing. Now I don't mean he talks back, but I'm convinced that if he could talk, he would talk back. Puppies have some alien need to bite everything at this age. I'd forgotten all about this but it's all coming back now. After one week, we've both become pretty good at providing a toy for his ravenous biting appetite. Nothing is off limits. Your limbs, your face, your ears. your kitchen cabinets, the floor, the wall, basically everything. Tonight  he was doing his damnedest to chew on the concrete outside.

I've been told that this will all soon pass and to not worry so much. My wife and I deem ourselves lucky that we have our fingers intact and able to type and work on our computers. It can be overwhelming at times when you'd just like to have a puppy lick your face instead of a little demon trying to rip off your earlobes. But just when you think he's gone mad, he turns into the little angel above. Now who's going to argue with this? It's all worth it when he's like that.

Now having a puppy makes you pretty much worry about all sorts of stuff you'd not normally think much about. We worry about if he's going to chew the wrong thing. We worry about him getting stuck in his crate or his x-pen. We worry if he's got worms. We worry about hawks. Yes, hawks. We hadn't added hawks to our list of worries until our breeder warned us to be careful of hawks. Little JR puppies look wonderfully like rabbits at Gumbo's age. Now we were worried! We do have 2 or 3 neighborhood hawks that we watch almost on a nightly basis. We always thought how beautiful and graceful they were. Now it was war. We came up with this poor man's hawk proof x-pen to keep him safe while on his bathroom breaks.

It's not exotic but damn if it doesn't do the job. If you look close, you'll see the edges to his grassy area. In this drought stricken area of Southern California, we're pretty conscious of our water use so we've narrowed our backyard down to an 8 x 8 piece of real estate just for Gumbo. 

So onward and upward to our next Gumbo adventure. Next time we'll speak of the challenge we face with his bathroom breaks and the correct timing. Just like having a baby. Stay tuned!