To Talk About A Puppy

Yesterday I was supposed to meet up with my friend for some coffee at our favorite place, Caribou Coffee. Unfortunately she did not wake up. And so no matter how many times I called or text messaged her, she was not going to be able to make it. Five hours after I first sent her a message she replied and then three hours after that she finally got back to me. The fact was we were not going to get our coffee no matter what.

Now I want to say before I continue that I know my friend can read this and a part of me sort of hopes that she does. Maybe then she'll understand why what she said upset me, bugged me so much that after a night of sleeping on it I still did not feel at ease about it. I know that I should try and let things roll off my shoulder, I know I should probably take words for the dime they are worth, and I have had some time to think this all over. Hopefully this will sort of bring up the issue a bit better or more clearly.

Anyway, she called me up later that night and we started talking like we always do about how our day was and all the stuff that got in the way. My friend and I naturally have the chemistry that lets us talk for hours on end without ever realizing that time has passed. Then she asks if we can meet up for coffee tomorrow, to which I at first reminded her that the plan was to meet up for coffee today and she slept through it. She informs me she will set her alarm and will be there this time, but I have to refuse her offer. See, my little Brother's 21st birthday is today and my parents are going up to Boulder to see him and to buy him his first drink. It is a family tradition. But with them up in Boulder, that means I have to stay home with Indigo and take care of her.

The Ideas

To say that my friend is stubborn when it comes to an idea getting in her head is like saying water is wet, it is an obvious fact and I've come to accept it. I think I find people that have this stubborn tendency easy to accept because I have a lot of friends like that in my life. For example, another friend got the idea of getting an iPhone stuck in his head the minute after he played with mine. I told him that he should wait for the next one that comes out in October or November (whenever they come out yearly), but it was too late. The idea was in his head and before a month was up from when he said he was getting one, he had one without a second thought. It was at this point that she suddenly got a few ideas in her head and all of them started to push my nerves. Side note, people that get ideas in their head and stick to them are not bad people at all and I have a bunch of friends like this. In fact, many of the greatest pieces of artwork are from ideas getting stuck in someones head. This is just a type of person and not a flaw, and I suspect all my friends like this will make something great one day because they are this type of person.

The idea that got into her head was that I should throw my puppy into the bathroom and shut the door, then leave the dog there while I go out for an hour and have coffee with her. The problem with that plan is that this dog likes to chew right now, mainly because she is teething and needs something on her teeth to relieve the pain. So if I left her in the bathroom, she would start chewing on wood, the toilet, the rugs, the toilet paper, and just about anything else that she could get her mouth around. And of course there are pipes in the bathroom, so those would probably be in her mouth immediately, and we are afraid that the pup might break one. Yet even beyond just chewing on things, bathrooms are where we store the dangerous cleaning chemicals and this dog is also at the age where she licks up everything. She does not care if it smells good or bad, she is just going to lick it up. The simple conclusion, we cannot leave this puppy in a bathroom.

The next thought is to let the puppy run wild in the main parts of the house she already runs around. Okay, except there is also still the problem with her chewing on things which we do not want her to bite down on. And then there is the problem that we are trying to train her not to get up on the furniture. If we leave her alone, there is the possibility that she will decide that she can get up on furniture and then she will learn it is alright to be on the chairs and tables as long as we are not here. We already had that with one dog, we do not want it with this one. But that is a pitiful and small reason compared to the third one why we will not let her be alone. We have two cats. We have a girl black and white that has accepted the puppy and is willing to play nice as long as the puppy does not bite. I cannot say for a fact that this dog will not try to bite, especially since it is in her genes to herd other animals. The other cat, the big boy with orange fur, is vicious to the puppy and hates her. He has already tried to swipe out her eye twice since we brought her home and has also growled and hissed at the dog. We have to make sure the puppy never gets too close to him for now. End conclusion is we cannot leave her inside the house and alone. We will not leave her outside, because the day might get hot and that would be mean.

Before I go on, I want to make it clear that I am not upset with my friend for her ideas, They were decently thought out plans, but I just do not have the means to do them right now and I do not think it is wise. And this is my family's dog, so everything and anything I say is final. But what did get on my nerves is what she said next.

The Picture I took Today

The Puppy's Personalities

So then she said that I was going to make little Indigo have separation anxiety, because we were giving the dog too much attention and she would learn that people will always be around her. Let me start out my counter-argument by first saying that this dog is not scared of anything. She runs out into rainstorms with booming thunder, she walks into darkness without a problem, and she is not scared to test our limits either. So maybe she will whimper once when we leave, but this puppy is not going to have separation anxiety. And beyond that, we also throw her outside in the backyard sometimes when she gets really energetic and uncontrollable, just leaving her out there to do as she pleases for an hour. She never cries because we are not out there with her, but instead runs around like a nut and then lays down in her toboggan to sleep. Still, she kept repeating this idea over and over and telling me it was going to happen.

When I told her my Dog was going to be alright, then she said I was spoiling my puppy. I am sorry, but spoiling the dog? I do not think so. Since the first day we were sure she was old enough to start being trained, we have been throwing her in a kennel and working with her to stop biting and stop jumping on things. We are working constantly to make sure that this is the most well-trained dog our family has ever owned as well as working with her to make sure that we can do things with her that we never were really able to do in the past. For instance, we are training her to ride in the car without a problem and to be on a leash without leading us (a lot of people do not properly leash train their dogs is what we have learned from this). Guess what, she is learning and she is a very smart animal. So to tell me that she is going to be spoiled when we are actually putting her through a lot of loops I felt was out of line.

Like I said before, I am not mad at my friend for suggesting things that we should do with the puppy. In fact, I love when my friends give me ideas because I can then think of ways to train her to be a better puppy. But that does not mean that I want to hear about how I am not training my Dog correctly. I think the end results of how well trained this dog is will be exactly how well I did with training my dog, but to call it this early and say I am doing it wrong is stepping out of the line. In a similar manner, people hate it when others tell them how to raise their children. This is almost the exact same thing and to attack how I am training my dog is to attack me.

Just Some Thoughts

You know, the best argument I have heard for why I should not leave my puppy home alone is that you would not do the same thing with a child. Think of that age when you would find it acceptable for a kid to be home alone with no one watching them, then divide that by seven because that is the guestimated change in dog years to human years. With that said, I would not leave a puppy alone for at least a year, if not longer. And besides that, this is a puppy! After a year, there will be no more puppy for us but rather a dog. So I want to cherish this time I have with her as a small dog before she grows up. People always say it is the time you spend, so why should I cut it out for my pup?