puppy love

I am not a “dog person.” I have never had a dog in my life, but Steve had dogs in his family growing up and the plan was that we would get a dog someday when we moved out into the country.

That someday came 3 days ago, when we got Sadie, a 5 week old golden retriever. We’d been searching the classifieds semi-regularly and came across several ads last week.
Monday evening when we got her, we were supposed to just go look at the puppies, pick one out, and bring it home in 2 weeks. There were 10 puppies in the litter and 5 were still unaccounted for. Cale boldly stated that he liked “this one” and Natalie agreed. We were told she was the runt of the litter.  The mamma dog was getting tired of feeding all those babies and the owners may have been getting weary of all the pups, too, so they had already begun weaning and told us we could just take her then if we wanted. We weren’t prepared because we thought we had 2 weeks to buy stuff, but rather than drive a ways back to pick her up, we just took her then.

Since this is a new experience for me, here are my first thoughts & observations:

1. Taking care of a baby dog is not all that different from taking care of a baby human. Fortunately they both sleep a lot, but they  also wake up at all hours of the night. Getting up several times a night is by far the hardest part so far, but this too shall pass.
2. A full moon makes a handy light source when taking a puppy out in the middle of the night.
3. Placing a sleeping puppy in her crate without waking her up is much too reminiscent of placing a sleeping baby in her crib without waking her up.
4. I’m very thankful for wood floors that clean up easily and only a few accidents so far.
5. I’m very proud of Natalie for showing great responsibility in taking care of our new pet. Animal lover that she is, she adored this dog with all her heart from the moment we got her (maybe even before). Turns out that the 2 extra weeks are extra time that they get to spend together all day before school starts again.
6. It had never crossed my mind that a dog has a belly button. Ours has an “innie.”
7. Not being able to leave her home alone yet is a little confining, but this too shall pass.
8. Bacon scented plastic teething/chew bones smell kind of good.
9. Our puppy’s breath smells kind of like coffee breath to me.
10. Puppies apparently dream when they sleep.
11. Puppies are cute (duh!).