Pupdate

[cleolinda]

Oh my God, I am so tired. Today was my first day alone with Shelby, and I spent it downstairs with her from 7:30 am to 5:00 pm. I had Sister Girl with me for the afternoon, but she had to sleep for class that night--she comes home and sleeps between classes and/or work shifts, and given that she gets up at four in the morning most days, I don't blame her. So basically, I was the one in charge of the food and the poo and the breaking up of dogfights. And Meko was so interested in what was going on--and remember, she can't just sit on her blanket and watch, since she's blind--that she kept following Shelby around to "see" what was up, which meant that 1) she slept a lot less than usual and, in consequence 2) she peed a lot more. And we're housebreaking Shelby, obviously, so there was a lot of racing with dripping puppy to newspaper or front door.

Shelby herself is getting friskier by the day; yesterday we took her to see my grandmother, who was delighted, and Shelby spent an hour romping around her kitchen. There's a lot of romping, generally speaking, followed by a lot of napping, which is somewhat hilarious as Shelby can turn from romp to nap on a dime. There's still a lot of crying at night--we're crate-training her, which is to say that she has a very large, spacious metal cage that used to be Lucky's, and she sleeps there at night. Once she figures out that This Is What We Do at Night, and that Night doesn't last Forever, I think she'll be okay. She can stay in the crate for a few hours at a time if no one can watch her during the day; half the crate is beach towel for her to sleep on, and the other half is newspaper, and there's a water bowl as well. This is how we trained Lucky--my mother would come home from work at lunch to let him out for an hour, and then when Sister Girl came home from school, she'd let him out for good, and meanwhile he'd learn not to just pee wherever he felt like it. But of course, if I'm home anyway, I can either keep Shelby out the whole day or I can listen to her cry. I think you and I both know how that's going to work out, which means that I am now in charge of a three-dog circus. Events at the circus:

1) Wandering into the shower
2) Getting a resultant bath
3) Face chewing ("OW SHELBY NO THAT'S MY CHEEK OW")
4) Hiccups (two cases)
5) Sneezing
6) Romping
7) Napping
8) Pomeranian barking
9) Pomeranian peeing
10) Mopping
11) Pooping (only outside, which is an improvement)
12) Falling over in protest because we do not like the leash ("Oh, cry me a river, Norma Rae")
13) Running across the yard and falling down
14) One viewing of The Prestige
15) Five minutes of griping that the DVD extras suck
16) Fifteen minutes of boggling at Hugh Jackman's assertion that there were more Spiritualists than Christians in the nineteenth-century United States
17) Napping
18) Chewing on Pomeranians ("Okay, look, that tail is attached to someone")
19) Two episodes of Law and Order
20) Falling off the couch (three times)
21) Tennis ball chasing
22) Rope chewing
23) Two small feedings
24) One small vomiting
25) Note to self: only one small feeding tomorrow
26) Hair chewing ("NO SHELBY SPLIT ENDS ARE BAD FOR YOU")
27) Snoring

I have linkspam starred in my Google Reader, but... I'm tired.

Comments

[evilbearhunter.livejournal.com]

Awww and heee.

[claddagh812.livejournal.com]

Ditto.

[soberloki.livejournal.com]

Heee. Total agreement.

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

So that's what a new puppy is like. Now why do people have children?

[morganwolf.livejournal.com]

I am constantly wondering that myself.

[yarha.livejournal.com]

Deep, natural urges. The real question is why do people have a *second* child? I vote for amnesia.

Yarha, Oooo, Shiny

[tess0927.livejournal.com]

This sounds a great deal like the first few weeks with my sister's Yorkie puppy - I was waaaaaay more tired than the dog, for certain.

[it-grrl.livejournal.com]

sounds farmiliar. We just got a new puppy as well. I am mainly amazed at how a puppy will jump off of a higher object(couch, bed, etc.) with what appears to be no regard for the fact that they much eventually land. It's like jumping makes her legs stop working temoporarily.

[morganwolf.livejournal.com]

It's funny-- at the puppy store I was working in, the kennels were in rows three high. The smaller dogs were in the higher kennels, the larger dogs on the bottom. The smaller dogs were the ones who usually ran right out and sometimes attempted to leap straight into the air, but the larger puppies-- all but the Labs, because Labs tend to be bold-- took a few tries before they were comfortable stepping from the kennel to the floor, where there was a height difference of about three inches.

Oh, puppies.

[gannet-guts.livejournal.com]

Awwwwwww. I know I shouldn't laugh, but I'm laughing anyway. Hee. We had a similar thing with housebreaking our kitten, except, it was more like: "ok, I'm done with you puny humans. GO AWAY OR I KEEL YOU."

[bardintraining.livejournal.com]

Och. Sounds like Cleo could do with a piece of the Nap Pie these dogs seem to be sampling repeatedly.

[morganwolf.livejournal.com]

I hope your terriers are better than mine. Don't get me wrong, I have a real soft spot for terriers and my Fergus is second only to my fiance in terms of family members I would die for, but they are headstrong. And energetic. And yappy. And devious. And territorial. And too smart for their own good.

Despite getting my hair and clothes chewed on, getting whacked in the face with paws (often poopy ones) or tails, scratched, bitten, and generally abused, I miss my job at the puppy store. It was painful, tiring, and filthy, but in a real cute way.

[amaelamin.livejournal.com]

Aww. I'd send sympathetic assurances et cetera except that I had to admit last week that my "puppy" is going on twenty-two months and she still has an tragic weakness for pencils (and, on occasion, Old Dog's bed.) Extraordinary empathy, therefore, and the hope that Shelby grows out of it a bit faster than my girl.

[gwei-mui.livejournal.com]

Growing out can be an arbitrary thing. My puppy is going on 13... years... and still has a serious case of facial sock fungus. Never met a sock he wouldn't like to chew, my boy.

[leucocrystal]

Heh, if there's one thing puppies are good at, it's tiring both themselves and you out.  It's funny how it can be adorable for a good long chunk of time, but once you get tired, it's kind of like, "Okay, can we just chill for five seconds now, thnx?"

There's a lot of romping, generally speaking, followed by a lot of napping, which is somewhat hilarious as Shelby can turn from romp to nap on a dime.

I always find that hilariously cute about puppies.  They're just all ROMP ROMP ROMP COLLAPSE.  When my golden was a puppy, he would literally just drop wherever he had been playing, all four legs splayed out akimbo.  Awww.

I wish you luck with the continuation of the Three Dog Circus.  It sounds like, despite getting tired out, you're doing very well. :)

[maliekai.livejournal.com]

Awesome -- and appropriate -- icon.

[leucocrystal]

Hee, thanks!  Love yours as well. :)

[lauramcvey.livejournal.com]

She was chewing your face?
Glad to hear you're fostering good television tastes early on. So, The Prestige isn't worth renting for special features? Darn. I was hoping for a documentary on magicians.

[lauramcvey.livejournal.com]

Last link, I swaer- but this is too funny to pass up. John Gibson is *trying* to interview Eng about why he really does hate everyone, btu Eng won't shut up about his book (which, by the way, has been pulled by the publishers)
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,257020,00.html

[word-herder.livejournal.com]

Firstly, hee! Puppy story!

Secondly, I think Jackman is right. Deism was pretty big among the Founding Fathers; it wouldn't surprise me to find some historian who has built a decent case for moving from Deism to Spiritualism.

[nimlotbradamant.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting question. It's true there was a lot of Deism floating around at the time; last year I was reading a book about it (Political Polytheism, by Gary North) which actually addressed the Deism/spiritualism link. He mentioned the fact that Sir Isaac Newton, a prominent Deist, actually spent a lot of his time and energy (possibly more than he spent on science) on the occult and on spiritualism--there may have been experiments in alchemy if I recall correctly.

Newton, like many others, was also a (nominal, at lest) Christian, and that would have been the case with anyone who in the 1800s or thereabouts who was into Deism and/or spiritualism--it's the kind of thing people would meld into their Christian beliefs, never mind that it was screwy theology.

So in a way, Jackman's right, and shows that he knows about history. But when he says "more Spiritualists than Christians" I think he's wrong, because it's not an either/or thing--unless he meant something along the lines of "more Spiritualists than [orthodox] Christians".

*way too obsessed in interesting points of theology*

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

That's what I was so boggled about, because I didn't think Spiritualism and Christianity were mutually exclusive; in fact, my understanding was that Spiritualism actually shored up a lot of people's conventional faith because it "proved" the existence of the afterlife. Yeah, it was screwy theology, but by the time it had filtered down to the masses, how many people actually knew or cared about the more intellectual points? I think it was a massive phenomenon, but from what I've read about the period (particularly Houdini's attempts to debunk Spiritualism), I got the feeling that full-on Spiritualists were fewer in number than people who latched onto it in a general way, focusing more on the general "life after death" and "contacting loved ones" elements.

[nimlotbradamant.livejournal.com]

Yeah, people were very much into Ouija boards and seances; I think it was more along the lines of a superstition than a full-on belief system like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had, for example.

[word-herder.livejournal.com]

What I find most interesting is that so many of the people considered Giants of the Christian Faith dabbled or believed in the occult--C.S. Lewis (until his conversion to Christianity, but even then, he regarded it as a reality and something to guard against), Charles Williams (the man whom Tolkien mistrusted because of his occult leanings)...

I wonder if it is because they thought that it's way more than Oujia boards and seances, that they sincerely believed in a real Evil Power seeking dominion over the earth?

That book by North sounds interesting. I'm going to add it to my "read after grad school" list.

[nimlotbradamant.livejournal.com]

Oh, I wouldn't call Williams a Giant of the Christian Faith, and I'm not sure I'd call Lewis one, either, though he was brilliant. And I guess they thought the occult was inextricably tied to the real Evil Power seeking dominion, as you say. To quote Lewis himself, some people are way too interested in the Devil, and some simply don't believe he even exists, and neither view is a wise one. I think Lewis was only warning that what, for others, was a harmless superstition (like astrology today) that might or might not be true, could in fact be a channel to dark powers. "Occult" merely means "hidden". Is it superstitious to believe that there's hidden, evil powers in the world? No more, in my opinion, than to believe that there is a God.

[mustang-bex1126.livejournal.com]

I haven't had a new puppy in years (must buy house first), but we have a young cat, aka formerly our kitten, and she is insane. And she fetches and does other generally dog stuff, just with sharper claws. I know it's like "argh" sometimes when they're little, but when they get a little older you suddenly miss the baby stuff. My godfather is convinced that you shouldn't be allowed to have children till you can care for a pet.

[celticwisdom.livejournal.com]

So this isn't so much to do with puppies, though very cute. But, I wasn't sure where to post it. Considering your interest in Marie Antoinette I wondered if you had read Sena Jeter Naslund's book Abundance: A novel of Marie Antoinette? Also, apparently she is working with a screenwriter to turn it into a Broadway musical. This would mean Marie Antoinette on Broadway. I myself have not read the book, but she's been a very successful author so far. I'd provide a link, but I read about it in my alumni magazine (Naslund is a professor at my undergrad) so I figure it's not terribly well publicized yet. I just thought it might interest you a bit. That is all and I'll go back to hiding now.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

No! I need to read that! I've actually met Naslund--she went to the same college I did, and visited for the Writing Today conference while I was still an undergrad there. Our writing professor introduced my best friend and me to her, which was cool. I think this was circa Ahab's Wife, actually. I'd tell you to tell her I said hi, but I only met her for a few minutes, so it's not like she'd remember me.

[laughing-cities.livejournal.com]

wow, i am very impressed. we had my grandparents' yorkie puppy for a week, but three dogs!? That's just insane, I hope you're holding up well. I literally have to chase Pippin around the family room and kitchen for an hour to get him to crash. But when he gets tired, he's out like a light. Oh puppies.

And we're housebreaking Shelby, obviously, so there was a lot of racing with dripping puppy to newspaper or front door.

i can definitely sympathize with that. Here's our usual situation:
-Pippin gets in position to pee on carpet-
Me: NO NO NO PIPPIN ON THE PAPER. PLEASE. ON. THE. PAPER. PIPPIN.
Pippin: -continues to pee on carpet-
Me: PIPPIN NO BAD. ON PAPER. -chases puppy to try and catch it so it doesn't drag pee through the rest of the house and to show him wher the paper is-
Pippin [an hour later]: -gets in position to pee on carpet.-

and so it continues. Good luck!!!

[princessstarr.livejournal.com]

Aww. We did the crate training thing too- our pup got used to it after the first week or so (given that she spends a lot of time in there).

Of course, she also figured out that barking = humans = attention, so when she gets bratty, she will not stop. ("SHUT UP, ROSE.")

[txvoodoo.livejournal.com]

The amazing thing is that, once Shelby grows up, you'll be thinking of her puppyhood NOSTALGICALLY. "Remember when she was so small and adorable?"

It's nature's way of making sure we get more puppies - amnesia!

Jasper licks you. *icon*

[mokeyhokey.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I'm happy to see that you're crate training. So many people think it's OMG INHUMANE!! but A) it's for their own safety, and B) dogs are den animals and like holing up in tiny spaces (within reason!) to sleep. That's why they always want to sleep right on top of you in your bed.

I don't want to sound like Internet Dog Expert #479, but I have a few suggestions to make things easier for you and Shelby. The most important thing is that Lucky's crate is way too big for her right now. If you're using it to also house train her, you only want enough room in there for her to stretch out, otherwise she can just pee in one corner and chillax in another and think it's okay to do that in the whole house. You don't need to get a new crate or anything - walling off some of it with plywood or old books or a towel will do the trick. Some other things that you can do to make the crate easier are putting a towel over it to make it dark and cave-like, and to put a safe toy (like a nylabone or a stuffed animal if she's not inclined to tear stuff apart) in there with her so she can occupy herself while everyone else is asleep. She's probably going to wake up a few times a night and cry for a while yet - because she has to pee. She might try crying to get out when her bladder gets bigger just to be a diva, but if you treat the crate as a fun place she'll learn to not put up a fuss and eventually hang out in there voluntarily.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Well, it's the same crate we trained Lucky in, and he was smaller than Shelby at the time.

[mokeyhokey.livejournal.com]

Oh sweet, then I'm sure you have got a handle on it. When we got Twinkie (yellow lab) we bought a crate with the future in mind and it was an absolute disaster since it was like a palace for her wee puppy self. Only after much hand wringing and reading at the library did we figure out that her crate was too big.

I hope I didn't come off patronizingly - I think people with dogs (myself included) tend to get overzealous with advice when someone starts talking about puppies, and more often than not we end up sounding like that one batshit soccer mom who thinks everyone else is a bad mother because they didn't use organic cloth diapers or something.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

No, it's cool! Most people give advice because they genuinely want to help, I find. I don't know how my stepfather trained the poms--this was before he and my mother got married--but Lucky turned out to be one of the best-trained dogs I've ever known. It probably is a touch big, but what we've done in both cases is to line half of it with beach towel and the other half with newspaper, put a bowl of water (maybe food? I can't remember. Not in Shelby's crate, anyway) and all the toys in there (which takes up some more room), and leave the puppy in there overnight and, when necessary, during the day if we can't be home, although usually someone will manage to come home at lunch and take the puppy out for an hour at worst. Shelby's already figured out not to wet on the towel, only on the newspaper, and once she's able to hold it through the night, we'll probably line it just with towel, since she associates that with bedding.

[yarha.livejournal.com]

I had to think for a moment before understanding what 'chillax' meant.

Yarha, Words That Make You Go Hmm

[mountainlaurel.livejournal.com]

This sounds SO familiar. My baby, my "puppy" is 18 months or more and we have a wonderful time with her teddy bear and she still does the play til you drop thing. When she drops though, it is usually on me when I'm trying to sleep myself, so all is cool. Gots to love the babes.

[trash-addict.livejournal.com]

Aw, Bonnie's only 9 months old and I'm now reminiscing about her puppydom. You will miss all the craziness soon! (Although, I can't even imagine trying to handle 3 dogs at once).

The question is, with all this work on your behalf: exactly which one of you fell off the couch three times?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Heh, Shelby. She hasn't quite grasped the concept of edges yet, although she very quickly learned how to leap down.

[trash-addict.livejournal.com]

Hee, puppies do have a tendency to ....fling themselves from inappropriate heights, don't they?

[songstressicons.livejournal.com]

Wow, we have two dogs and they're a lot of work. Adding another one to the mix is unimaginable. Plus, Scotties in generally aren't that hyper. Except for our Shilling, who has never stopped being a puppy and is constantly finding new ways to get dirty. Puzzle, on the other hand, is far too dignified for any of this and is quite contented to sleep in her chair and be worshipped if she deems it acceptable at the moment. She gives Shilling these great looks of utter disgust. "You're a Scottish Terrier, stop fetching things! You're a disgrace to the breed and no, I will not nuzzle you, plebe. Hmmmph!"

[rclementmoore.livejournal.com]

I have a new puppy, puppy (http://rclementmoore.livejournal.com/121114.html#cutid1), too. (http://rclementmoore.livejournal.com/122972.html) So I had to post becuase my day sounds almost exactly like yours. Especially with the hair chewing. What is that about? And I'd forgotten that puppies have such really sharp teeth.

Hang in there!

[fadagaski.livejournal.com]

Aren't puppies just the most amazing spectacle ever? It's hilarious just watching them.

I found this site - Izimi (http://www.izimi.com/) - that you may or may not want to put in a linkspam. It's best use is for long-distant family and friends to share photos, and perfectly legal exchanges of files that a re most certainly not under copyright law. ^_^

[maliekai.livejournal.com]

I want a new puppy, aww. If only I had my own house and didn't already have one dog that makes renting a nightmare.

[supersyncspaz7.livejournal.com]

Puppies are, indeed, a handful. At least they haven't run into glass windows/screen doors yet (Pepper, TWICE in the first three days we had her... yeah).

[jazzchang.livejournal.com]

My best friend got her first dog off the street, and the second day she had her, the dog ran through the floor to ceiling glass window. He went from being a $50 dog to a $5000 dog in a day.

Her second dog convinced me that I never want to own a puppy. Play with, yes. Own, no. They are a handful, and I pity the people who think that it'll be easy to handle a puppy, especially if they're out of the house most of the day.

[lotusbiosm.livejournal.com]

well, I think one could argue that a great many Christians were also Spiritualists, so there's some overlap.

[artname.livejournal.com]

Might want to try a smaller crate, or putting something big and unchewable in with the pup. Most dogs seem to like smaller spaces better, and they are less likely to relieve themselves in one corner of the crate and sleep in some other ..