IT FINALLY HAPPENED!

I never thought the day would come when Molly would be potty-trained but just this week I noticed she’s stopped going in the house!  Hooray!!!  She’ll be 5 months old tomorrow and I guess she just felt it was time, we didn’t chide her for her accidents at all, she decided on her own.  This is part of the puppy-hood that I can tell you I won’t miss at all 😉  That being said there are things I do, already, miss.  Molly is growing like a weed and she’s almost (physically) fully grown.  Next month we will be getting her spayed and microchipped…already.  In spite of how many bottles of Pine Sol, etc. I went through it still seems like yesterday we were just picking her up.  I now can understand why many people who have children want to have another one after a year or two 😉  I’m already talking about putting our name on the waiting list for next year…?!  It wouldn’t be anywhere near as expensive since I already have everything we could possibly need to welcome another puppy into the family.  When I tell my husband this he looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind, lol, but I know he’d love another one too.

Molly, at almost 50 pounds, still thinks she’s little and she still likes to jump up on my lap and cuddle.  I have to admit it’s one of my favorite parts of the day when she does that 🙂  I don’t want to miss any chances to cherish our time together so she will be welcome on my lap no matter how big she gets.

New Year’s Resolutions

It’s beyond the middle of the year and I realize that I’ve in no way followed through on my New Year’s resolutions, have you?

Getting my finances in better shape.  Working on my health.  Building our business at the office….  Ok, I do work on our business, all the time, but aside from that…I’ve failed dramatically.  Does anyone ever accomplish what they set out to do in a year?  In 2016 I was working on losing weight and was doing quite well until the Christmas holidays rolled in.  I promised myself that in January I would begin again but that never manifested itself.  I used to be pretty good with my finances but then ‘real life’ set in with it’s myriad of problems and issues and my finances have never been the same  

In 10 years I’ll reach retirement age with little to show for it and when I really think about that I’m not sure how much it matters anyway.  I’m in no worse position than many people my age and better than some.  I have a wonderful husband, my family (for better and worse), an awesome cat who showers me with love and a puppy who, as obnoxious as she is at times, I truly love and enjoy.  I have my faith which sustains me throughout this life I’ve been gifted with.  I have a roof over my head, cool air in the summer and warmth in the winter.  I have a reliable 14 year old car that gets me where I need to be.  I have plenty of food to eat and fresh, clean water to drink.  I have energy to continue working and that’s a good thing since I’m sure I’ll end up being a Wal-Mart greeter when I’m 85, lol!  We struggle, like everyone else, but we have love and that is the greatest blessing of them all.

I will continue to make those New Year’s resolutions as long as I’m able because they help me to focus and I think, in some ways, that has to help at least work towards the goals I’ve set for myself.  What about you, do you accomplish your goals set at the beginning of the year?  Do you even set resolutions?  Everyone’s different but we’re still all so similar too, isn’t it cool?

Oh Wow.

Life with a puppy is one thing but when they hit their ‘juvenile’ time…totally a different time.  Molly is in this stage and still not house-broken  I was talking to a friend yesterday and she recommended we bring someone to our house to work with her.  I don’t know how much that’s going to cost but we need to invest in whatever will work.  She eats everything, she goes to the bathroom everywhere and she bites, in short, she’s a terror.  It’s hard to believe this is the same puppy we had a couple of weeks ago.  I’ve never had a puppy so this was a shock to me.  I can see why more parents say no to getting a puppy for their children and the ones who can’t say no end up bringing their pups to the shelter.  They’re very costly and a lot of work.  Mind you, we will not be bringing Molly to a shelter, but I can see why people do.  It’s an almost overnight change in behavior and not a welcome one.  We’re exceedingly grateful to be able to bring her to doggy day-care when we work now and it’s made life at the office much more palatable because we’re actually able to get things done!

We have 5 days off starting this Friday and I’m hoping to get my house put back in order and cleaned up again.  I bought like one of every cleaning product they had available at the store because I’m so desperate to have my home smell normal again 😉  I’m looking into outdoor kennel options that are easy to install in our backyard so she can go out at will between the porch and her run.

I share these things because they’re real.  No one should take getting a puppy lightly and it’s important to know what you’re getting into when you take that step.  I know all puppies are not the same but I’m imagining they all go through the same stages in one degree or another.  They count on you big-time, you’re their everything and you need to be prepared to do what it takes to help your puppy grow to be the companion you want to spend time with.

The Adventure Seems Endless

My last post was about our first trip with Molly.  We had a second weekend away, planned pre-Molly, and thankfully that went SO much better.  Molly still isn’t potty-trained, she seems hellbent against it in fact, but we were able to keep up with it and didn’t clog the hotel toilet this time

Molly had her 3rd and final puppy vaccines this past week and can you imagine she gained 10 lbs. in 2 weeks?!  She’s been to 2 puppy classes and we work on it at home when we have a chance.  We’ve been bringing her to the office with us since we first brought her home and it’s worked great until this past week.  We couldn’t get anything done at all because she was into everything.  Tomorrow, again thankfully, she will begin puppy day-care where we hope she can burn off some of that excess energy while we work.

Don’t get me wrong…she’s adorable and we love her very, very much but…this is not the fun part of the process and I’m looking forward to her learning better behavior.

Do you have any ideas to pass along???

The Adventure Begins #4

Last weekend we were in Franconia, New Hampshire and, thankfully, the visit went so much smoother than a couple of weeks prior when we were in Rockland, Maine.  That was Molly’s first ‘big’ trip and we all learned so much that weekend 😉

When you travel with a puppy…it’s adventurous for sure, lol.  We took Molly to Maine with us after we’d had her a couple of weeks since it had already been scheduled, she was 11 weeks old at the time.  Not potty trained.  I thought I had prepared for everything:  pee pads, cleaning solution, food, toys, travel crate, her bed, extra towels, etc.  What I hadn’t thought through was the fact that she would need to come everywhere we went because we couldn’t have her disturbing the other guests by barking.  Did I mention that she wasn’t quite used to the car yet??  Eating out…seriously?!  We had our first meal in the room, a pizza  We cleaned carpets, we played with her, we took walks with her and when it was bedtime we put her in her crate bed where she would whine until she fell to sleep.

After the first day I felt that we’d made a mistake by going on this weekend trip.  The next morning the B&B we were staying in provided an amazing breakfast and rather than leave her in the room we decided to go separately to the dining room for it.  When our hostess heard our plans she, angelically, told us that she would bring breakfast to us in the room so we could eat together!  What a blessing she was to us!  That was the first time during the trip I didn’t wonder why we’d bothered.

Later that same day we brought Molly to the marina park so she could run and play which she did enjoy but she still wouldn’t do her business outdoors, she waited for us to get back to the room before unloading her bladder and colon.  Thankful to have brought plenty of paper towels and cleaner we cleaned up after each mess as soon as they were made because I can appreciate the owner’s perspective towards people traveling with their pets.  We found a restaurant where the chef told us we could bring Molly inside as long as she behaved and that really made our day 🙂  Molly was delightful and everyone who saw her just lavished her with so much attention.  During our meal she played down under the table and didn’t beg or disturb any of the other diners.  We ended up eating there twice over the weekend because we were so thankful to find somewhere we could bring her in with us–not to mention that the food was excellent.

It was only a weekend trip so the night before we were going to leave I made sure to go around the room again, cleaning up anything that didn’t look pristine so we could get an early start the next day.  While I was doing this Molly was playing around under the bed. Later, as we were watching television, I could smell a stench but didn’t see where it might be to clean it up…David finally found it-under the bed.  Two distinct BIG poops under the bed  Of course they weren’t reachable without moving the bed and when we did move it my husband had to crawl the rest of the way under to reach the spots.  I was holding Molly back because she tries to ‘help’ whenever we’re cleaning.  Mu husband brought the dirty paper towels into the bathroom and, I thought, put them in the wastebasket.  We went to bed right after that since that had taken a fair amount of time and it was already later than we normally tuck in.

Sometime during the night I had to get up to use the facilities and when I walked into the bathroom I nearly choked to death–the smell was horrible!  Without turning on the light I did my business and went back to sleep.  The next morning when I went in to use the bathroom I could see that rather than putting the dirty paper towels into the wastebasket my husband had put them all in the toilet!  The toilet was completely clogged and un-flushable.  How do we explain this to the B&B?  I went in search of a plunger and David cleaned it out but the whole room just stunk, AC on, fan going full blast and all the windows opened didn’t even seem to touch the stench of the room.  I was mortified when the manager came by to bring us something but she was so sweet about it and told me that she knew the drill because she too, had raised her dog from a pup.  That made me feel better but still…I’m sure they wouldn’t look forward to seeing us again anytime soon 😉

I don’t know who was more thankful to be home after that trip, lol.

The Adventure Begins #3

I’m having a tough time keeping this current, lol!  There’s so much I want to share about being first-time puppy ‘parents’.  The last post I talked about the expense of having a new puppy but now I want to share about the day we brought her home and maybe I can get a little into the first week….

David’s (my husband) birthday was the actual day we went to pick up Molly!  He always gets the funnest birthday presents 🙂  We couldn’t have been more excited and got up early that day so we wouldn’t be late picking her up.

When we were at the breeders they went over Molly’s schedule and stressed that it wouldn’t be good for her digestive system if we changed her brand of food too quickly, we weren’t planning on changing it so no worries there.  I’d already purchased the vitamins she’d been on for her joints so we were set there.  I brought a retractable leash but was told that she’d never been on a leash at all so that probably wasn’t a great idea and they gave us a different one to start off with.  She also had never worn a collar but she was so good about letting me out it on her.  We signed the paperwork, paid the remaining balance and headed to the car.  She seemed up for it but since she’d never been on a leash before we ended up picking her up to bring her to the car.  I’d brought the cat carrier since the big crate we’d purchased for the house was too heavy to bring and popped her into it for the ride home…she’d never been in a car before either so that was traumatic for us all as she cried the entire way, 2 hours, to the house.  She was great once we brought her in the house and it soon became evident that she was not in the slightest potty-trained.  I knew that would be the case though and from my reading understood that she was too young to even try to train since her bladder wasn’t fully formed.  No mind, and I really didn’t mind, running around behind her cleaning up and doing all the extra loads of laundry.  One look at that cute face and you couldn’t help but feel lucky to have that to contend with!

The first week was tough, I’m not going to lie or sugarcoat it.  Molly was new to the crate and being away from her pack so when we put her in it for the night she cried and cried. The first week it was nightly for 45 minutes to an hour and then she’d calm down and sleep for a few hours before waking us up at 4:30 or 5:00 a.m.  We were walking zombies, lol!  Since she wasn’t potty-trained her crate would be a disaster in the mornings so I had laundry to deal with first thing quickly followed by a puppy bath time.  By the time we were done I was generally more wet that her but she was clean and smelled great 🙂  It took her almost a full week to get into the routine of eating, she was more of a finicky eater so I got into the habit of leaving her food down so she could graze at her leisure.

By the second week Molly was going into her crate at night and not crying, we made sure to wear her out before putting her in for the night.  She still wakes up but now it’s between 5:30-6:00.  We weren’t allowed to give her treats or introduce anything new to her diet for the first week so it was fun to finally be able to do that, she loves her treats!  She still slept quite a lot, apparently puppies sleep up to 18 hours a day.  We brought her in to the office, still do, every day and over time she’s gotten more used to being in the car.  She’s too young to leave at home alone for hours a day and the people who come in to our office all just love her.  The delivery men all bring her treats when they come in and she loves them all dearly!

As usual there is so much more to share but that’s all I can do in one setting, lol!  She’s getting bigger by the second though and I want to share these moments.

The Adventure Begins 2

It hasn’t yet been 2 weeks but I can tell you that our lives have already changed, a LOT, and (for the most part) for the better.

The same day we put the downpayment on Molly we went home (elated) and I got busy making sure that we would have everything ready for her when she arrived at her new home.  I ordered a crate, the breeder told me what size to get, and what to look for.  I ordered a lambs wool ‘bed’ for the inside of the crate so she’d have a nice soft place to sleep.  I ordered bowls for her water and food.  I ordered the special puppy vitamins the breeder insisted on.  I got a couple of toys, a leash and a collar.  When I realized that we would be bringing Molly to work with us for the first few months I realized I’d need to double most of the order    The next day, Wednesday, I went to the pet store and purchased the food the breeder had told us to feed her and a couple more toys….  I can tell you that just from the vast amount of money I spent, not counting the puppy, that puppies are quite expensive.

Since my husband’s birthday was on Thursday and there would be little time for us to celebrate it as we normally would I had a cake made by a local bakery.  That was a fun pick-up but it took me quite a bit out of my way to get and I had to leave work early to get it done in time.  When I went home there were a bazillion packages there filled with the products I’d ordered.  I lugged all those in the house and put them in a corner for when David came home.  I figured he could open them as part of his present and then we’d have the cake a bit early, he never objects to cake at any time so I knew this wasn’t going to be an issue 🙂

When David came home he was amazed by all the things a little puppy could need!  It took us awhile to get the first crate together with the divider placed properly and since it was so big (and heavy!) I decided we could just use our cat carrier for awhile until I ordered a bigger carrier for our new ‘kid’.  I returned the second metal carrier but with shipping it still ended up costing me almost $20.

All told just getting ready to bring Molly home cost us almost $500.  Wow!  A few years earlier, when we brought home our cat, Clint, it cost less than $200.  Regardless we are already in love with our puppy and can’t wait to bring her home.  To Be Continued….

 

The Adventure Begins!

My husband has wanted a Labrador Retriever puppy for almost as long as I’ve known him and my dog-sitting has only increased his longing.  His birthday was May 11th and about a week before that I suggested that we visit a couple of breeders and talk with them, maybe see some actual puppies, and he jumped at the idea.  We planned the trip for the Monday before his birthday.

The day of the trip we were both pretty excited and wondering if we were ever really going to get one.  The first breeder on our list (of two) did, indeed, have 2 puppies available.  They were both brought upstairs for us to see and play with and that’s when it happened:  we fell in love.  Apparently someone had put a downpayment on them and never came back with the balance so they were, again, up for adoption.  We asked a lot of questions and then David and I went out to the car to sit and talk about it for awhile….  It’s a big decision and I wasn’t convinced we were ready for it since we’d only just begun the process of looking but David was head over heels in love and the little boy longing was in his face.  I caved.  We went back in with our checkbook but quickly was told that they didn’t accept anything other than cold hard cash.  Wow.  We totally weren’t prepared for that but she told us she would hold the puppy for us with a downpayment of $100.  Incredibly, between the two of us, we actually were able to scrape up the $100.  Since we had to be at the office on Tuesday and Wednesday our next available time to come and pick up the puppy would be Thursday, David’s birthday!  We were only days away from being puppy “parents”!

To be continued….

Dogs I Have Known

I dog-sit quite a lot.  Most of them are rescues but there are a few that were raised by their families from the time they were puppies.  Personally I don’t see a huge difference between the two normally with the exception thatThe difference several of the rescues I care for are on medications.  They’re all well-loved and are loving in return.  That’s part of the beauty of dogs, they really respond and can be so loving.  Today I walked in to one of the houses to pick up a jacket I’d left the last time I was staying there and the dog, a tiny little ball of fur, was SO excited I was there!  It’s the best feeling in the world and I’m so thankful for the trust people have charged me with when caring for their pets.  That leads me to the other side of the coin…dogs who’ve been severely abused.

There is one dog I’ve been working with over the course of several visits just to get him to trust me enough to be able to take care of him when his family goes on vacation.  He’s a BIG dog but he’s scared of his own shadow.  He still hides behind his ‘mom’ when I come over and I long for the day he’ll take a treat from me and let me pet him.  It’s not going to happen for awhile yet.  Why on earth would someone treat an animal so horribly?!  This is a sweet dog but if he were in a kennel he’d probably be put down because of how traumatized he’s been.  I’m so thankful for the young couple who took him in and takes such amazing care of him.  Another dog, a new one I just met today, was also abused.  She was shot in the face when she was a puppy.  She had a litter of puppies before she was even a year old and heaven only knows what happened to them.  This dog, in spite of her early trauma, quickly warmed up to me and took treats from me.  The difference?  She’s on Prozac.  Wow, can you imagine?!

It’s Been Awhile…

I’ve been working on a Family History, mine, and have been absorbed in research these past few months.  No excuse, it’s just what I’ve been up to 😉  I decided to focus on one set of great-grandparents on my paternal line;  John Henry Bross and his wife, Ellen Nora Johnson.  They’re both remarkable to me for different reasons.

John Henry was the first generation to be born here in the United States.  His parents were both from Germany and moved here in the early 1850’s.  It wasn’t easy for them but after a couple of years in Kentucky they eventually settled in Illinois to raise their children.

Ellen Nora (Johnson) Bross was from a long line of patriots.  Several of her family were involved in the American Revolution!  There are a lot of impressive characters in her lineage, I won’t go into it all here because it would take me all day and I’d have to go back and forth between programs to do it.

John and Ellen married when they were in their mid-twenties and eventually had a very large and loving family and the family tree continued to grow.  It’s an honor to be a part of this family and really helps me to realize that we’re all just a part of something much larger than ourselves.  My hope is that by doing good research I can honor my ancestors in a way that would make them proud.  I hope that future generations can come to know them better as a result.