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This is the way I’m feeling this morning. I slept fine, but our new regimen of getting up at 7:30 to take the new puppy out is taking some getting used to, since we stay up until about midnight. My husband is covered up with a throw, a towel over his eyes, snorking in his recliner, trying to rest now.
We’re making good progress with Amber, but she IS quite a handful. It’s basically non-stop all day until we put Amber in her crate for the night. My husband, who is now cleared for any and all activity from his cataract surgeries, is helping a LOT. We take her on walks 6 or 8 times per day, go out on the porch to play with her, go out to sit with her and hug her, feed her, clean up the porch….
We have had new puppies before, but it was quite a long time ago and the puppy wasn’t this large (I think about 20 lbs now) and not nearly this active. She has a gazillion things to chew on, but is a typical puppy with nothing holding her attention for long.
One thing that has REALLLLLLY helped us is the Carlson Pet Gate With People Door from Chewy.com that our friend Cathy suggested. (I think of you, Cathy, with gratitude, 80 times a day when I can simply open the gate and go onto or off the porch, not having to scramble over the other gate we had, worrying about losing my balance and falling.) Amber was already able to climb the gate and get over and would suddenly show up in the kitchen. If we put the gate up higher, she could slither under it, and it was all I could do to get over it. We were thinking of modifications to it, but now we don’t have to!
Amber is modifying her behavior for the better daily. She is a very active, exuberantly happy puppy who makes the Energizer Bunny look like a slug. Even with my husband and I trading off on ‘Amber Duty,’ we are pretty exhausted in this good cause.
We’re lucky that she wants to be with her people. It’s the least we can do to be there for her, teaching her how to act, what’s acceptable and what is not, making our interactions fun and interesting so that she will be able to spend the most time possible with us as she grows.
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