A Little Monster After Nine

Indigo Barking at the Potatoes

The longer we have our puppy, the more stuff it is that we seem to learn about her behavior and her personality. Like we know she is going to be an excellent family dog, because she gets upset when one of us leaves the room and super excited when that person returns again. She loves licking and kissing, she loves lying on our feet, and she loves being around us. So her being a loving family dog is not the issue.

Instead, we are learning interesting little personality traits about the puppy that we never expected. Like for such an adventurous dog, and I mean adventurous, she is afraid of a bag of potatoes that we left in the middle of the kitchen floor. Seriously, my Mom and I watched as the puppy would circle back and forth, watching the bag with a keen eye and as if at any moment it might get up and attack her. All of this from the same dog that is not scared of thunder, lightning, rain, the dark, cats, other dogs, or just about anything else that normal dogs are scared of.

Here's another strange one that she is scared of (in comparison), the broom. I was sweeping the backyard porch with the broom, getting all the dirt off of there that she had brought up, when suddenly I see she is standing at the very edge of the porch watching. She gets interested and steps up on the porch, but I don't stop sweeping because it was obvious which direction I was going. Well, she would jump about a foot in front of the broom and then ten feet back as I swept it across the wood. Indigo would bark a few times at the broom, then try to get close again. And sometimes she would even scurry off far away in fright that it was coming after her. Truly a funny sight to watch.

Nap Time Angel

But even beyond just the weird things that the dog is scared of, we are also learning how she starts acting when she gets energetic. Now, my Mom will say that she is getting cranky right before a nap, but I think it is just the dog's way of saying I am bursting with energy and ready to run around. Anyway, we were eating dinner and the dog was being a menace, grabbing things with her teeth and chewing things up. We ended up putting her outside since we all had to eat dinner and could not afford to keep pulling her off of things. Once outside, the pup started running around the yard and keeping herself busy. She drags a stick from one side to the other, munches on it a bit, and then is off again. And for all the love I have in the world for her, I do not have the type of energy she has.

Still, after prancing around the yard and tearing things off of trees and really running around untamed, she finally calms down. Getting up on the porch, she plops right down in her toboggan and goes to sleep. So by the time we got outside to watch here, finished with our own meals and quite satisfied, she is just laying dead in the toboggan. That's when my Mom picked her up and was able to hold her like a little angel in her lap.

And then she wakes up and has all the energy in the world again, which brings me to the main point of my post and the reason for it's inevitable title. At around nine at night (sometimes a little bit later), she starts getting rough again and nippy. This is where my Dad came in and started calling her the devil dog. I do not think that this is a devil dog, but more a puppy that has bursts of energy and just needs to use them. But it does feel like the devil has possessed her the way that this personality of being nippy and starts biting comes out every day around the same time.

After This: A Loving Dog at Eleven

Even right now as I am writing this blog, she is getting extremely violent with the milk jug again. From the sound of her growls and yips, you would think that she was in an epic struggle here to kill the piece of plastic. And it is strange that she gets this way with the plastic, but at least it is not human flesh. She does seem to identify the difference, which we know because she never attacks the milk jug or other pieces of plastic until we place them on the ground and let go.

Finally, after rough housing and (usually) being thrown back outside to go run around like a nut, she calms down and plops asleep again. At least we have a lot of pictures to remember her as a puppy like this!