Notes From The Far Edge of Nowhere

Today I tried eating my breakfast before Cody got his. It seems to have been successful - I got to eat without being interrupted to go out. That should help us get through the morning a bit more efficiently. Now we'll go for a bit of a walk.

This is what you get when you say, "Cody! Come!" and he knows you have hot dog bits.

I don't think I did a proper puppy update, last week.
There wasn't much change. We had a few days with some piddle accidents, but none for a while.
I was supposed to do vaccinations last Friday, but I was confused by having 2 syringes with 4 needles for 3 vials, one of which seemed to contain a solid rather than a liquid. And there was no information about how much to give. And then I was avoidy about calling the vet.
I finally called and actually giving the vaccines wasn't bad. The first one was hard (for me). I almost wimped out when I was trying to get the angle right on the needle before jabbing the pup. Once I got over that, it wasn't bad at all. Cody didn't seem to mind at all.

Teething has really started, now. He lost two front teeth, yesterday, and I can already see the grown-up teeth coming in.

Oh, and - I swapped out the small collar we started with for his real collar, today. The small one was just on the verge of too tight, and it couldn't expand any more.

( And now: Pictures )

The puppy just destroyed a square inch of the carpet.

I moved the puppy gate so that he had a few feet of carpet to lie on, and he went and got two toys and a nylabone and lay down where he could be on the carpet and see me, and started chewing. And I checked, and he was chewing the Nylabone. And then there was some squeaking (from the moose toy), and then he was chewing the bone again, and then... and then, in maybe 10 minutes, probably less, he completely destroyed, down to the floor, a half-dollar sized section of carpet.

Sigh.

Needless to say, the puppy gate has been returned to the kitchen only.

Cody now weighs 30 pounds. I weighed him, yesterday.
Three weeks ago, including his kennel, his blanket, and a gallon ziplock bag of food, he weighed 23 pounds. Given the kennel weighed about 11 pounds, I think it's safe to estimate Cody's weight on arrival at a bit over 10 pounds. Holy moly.

And he doesn't look chubby. He's actually looking sleeker. There's definitely a shift from puppy-build to dog-build happening.

The last accident we had was the day of my last post, so just about a week. I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm also getting about 6 hours of sleep a night, most nights. (That would probably be more, but the plumber has been working on my boiler all week, and he starts nice and early in the morning.)

I'm going to post some pictures, now, and hopefully get this posted before we need to go out.





(There are ducks in that water. Really. I'm not posting the picture of the eagle that even I can't see... but there was one!)

As promised!

Also - It's been 48+ hours, and no accidents.










And, because TK shouldn't be left out:

I have all the toys!


And I'm not afraid to use them.


Even when the kennel is half-closed.

Tuesday had a couple accidents.
Yesterday had 1 in the evening.
Today, so far, we're at 0. Were at 0. /While/ he was eating his lunch, he piddled. Ah, well.

My biggest frustration is with the pica. Every walk is a struggle. It's less bad early in the morning or late at night (because there aren't 10,000 unleashed children around), but even then it's a constant stream of, "Cody - Leave it. Cody - Give." With kids around, it's so much worse, because I can't just watch the puppy and so he gets ahold of three times as many things that he shouldn't.

If Cody were reliable with "Leave It", it'd be easier, but he's really not, which means then we get to "Give", which he's also not reliable about. And enough of what he's trying to eat is dangerous for him, that I end up having to physically remove it from him, which isn't fun for either of us. Especially when it's rotten wood that has already started to splinter in his mouth.

I'm hoping that when the worms are resolved and his stomach has gotten used to the new food, a lot of it will resolve itself. Otherwise... Well. If I can make it through the summer, it'll be easier once the snow is here.

Meanwhile, I can totally see why so many of the people on It's Me or the Dog don't walk their dogs enough.

Two accidents, today. Both were my fault.

We were over at the school, and we hadn't been inside very long, but I'd forgotten that it had been quite a while since Cody had piddled outside before we went in. And we'd lost his squirrel somewhere, so I mistook his looking around the room as looking for the squirrel rather than *sniff*, *sniff*, *piddle*.

Oops.

Then, after all the school-work stuff was over, we came inside. The plan had been to come get the squirrel and go for our walk, but the squirrel wasn't here, and I was going to just sit down for a minute. And then it was two hours later.

That was okay. Cody was asleep for most of it, too, and it was his small whine that woke me up. We went outside. He piddled. It was drizzling, so we came back in pretty quickly. We played a little bit and I decided to go back to the school and get the rest of our stuff and hopefully find the squirrel. I could hear him WHINE*BARK*WHINE from outside when I got back. This was the first time I'd left him alone when he was awake. And when I got inside, I found our first, big, stinky, pile of poo accident.

He hadn't stepped in it, or gotten anything else in it, but, oops.

I definitely need more sleep, because I don't have the energy to be energetic and patient about the things I need to be energetic and patient about.

We didn't do any real training, today, and it's going to take a lot for us to be able to manage a long walk. We had two short walks and some run-around-the-gym time, but I'll be lucky if, between the rain, and the kids, and my general exhaustion, we manage a walk of any real length at all before bed.

Last night there were no mistakes.

We ended our last walk just a bit after midnight, and were in bed right around 1.

I planned to get up at 4 to take Cody out to piddle.
That was the plan...

At 1:45 there was the most pitiful whining from the puppy-jail. I turned the light on in my room and the whining stopped. I got up, went out to the kitchen, and there was the puppy at the gate looking pitiful.

So I decided I didn't want to take chances. I put the leash on him and we went outside. I said, "Go potty." He looked at me. And then he piddled. There were kids on the other side of the boardwalk from my house (teenagers, rather than little ones), so he was a little distracted, and I walked him around the grassy area a bit. Then we went inside.

I debated how much attention I wanted to give him when we went inside. I gave him lots of kudos for piddling, which rather amused the teenagers, but I didn't want him to think that whining in the middle of the night was a good way to get attention from me. But I also didn't want him to associate piddling outside with being left alone. I ended up splitting the difference. After I took the leash off, I went over to his bed and sat down and when he came over I petted him and gave him his chewy. Once he was flopped over and chewing, I went to the other side of puppy-jail and waited. He was fine. So I got up and went to bed.

It was no more than 10 minutes before the whining started, again. I waited. The whining got louder. I waited. It got louder still, and interspersed with barks, and the sound of a puppy attempting to climb the puppy gate. I called to him. He was silent for about half a second, and then it was all whining all the time. It started to get a bit more frantic, and I didn't want that, so I turned on the light and went out to the kitchen. As soon as he saw me, he was calm. When he'd been calm for a couple seconds, I praised him and then went inside to him. I went to his bed and he came over and I stayed until he started to drift off. Then I slowly extricated myself.

I reset my alarm for 6, instead of 4, and went back to sleep.

Just before 4:30 there was puppy whining again. This time, I didn't hesitate. I got up, went to him, put the leash on, and out we went. He piddled and pooed. And in we went again. This time I stayed until he was falling asleep, and all was fine.

I reset my alarm for 7.

At just about 6:30, we repeated the process. Only there was very little pee and no poo, and when we went inside, he wasn't falling asleep. I tried going to bed, but there was whining. Lots of whining.

So I dragged the blanket to the living room, just on the other side of the gate. I called him over and petted him through the bars and then lay down.

I managed to sleep until just after nine.

He has eaten breakfast, and when I am done posting, we will have a brief outing, come in so that I can eat my own breakfast, and then we will have a LOOOOONG WALK. And hopefully some play/work time at the school. Then we will come back here and he will be tuckered enough that I can do something.