Puppy Prison

House breaking is killing us. We're stuck on guard duty in our kitchen - looking for clues, indications, some kind of pattern to her peeing.

But she's onto us.

She knows we're watching. She runs around behind the cabinet, out of view, to make us get up and see what she's doing. It's a game. It's a check that we're paying attention. She loves attention.

The house is cold. It's manageable, but uncomfortable. We've dropped to an average of 60 degrees. It feels like a prison.

Two nights ago she slept 6 hours straight through the night. Six hours for us now is a good nights sleep. Last night we put her down at 10. At 2 she was up and whining, so I took her out - in the cold drizzle. Brought her back in and put her down again. Wasn't happening. She didn't want sleep or wanted too much attention. Jen got up to calm her back to sleep. At 4 she was up again - wanted more attention. I got up and laid down with her till 7. We realize now both 2 and 4 were mistakes. We should let her whine herself to sleep, overcome her anxiety on her own, but at 2 and 4 in the morning all we wanted was sleep.

And something else... We're trying to train her to use only one part of the yard for her bathroom and that part happens to be out behind the garage. That means when we take her out, we have to carry her down the stairs to the door, carry her down front steps to the house, carry her down the sidewalk, across the lawn and out behind the garage. Doesn't sound bad till you do it five times in an hour - a billion times a day. Why all the carrying? Two reasons. First is we have to make sure she doesn't go till she gets to the spot and second she's too small for the stairs. She can actually go up and down them on her own, but there's this whole thing about not making them do too much physical stuff too early for fear of joint and ligament problems - blah, blah, blah.

Am I rambling? Yeah I'm on duty. Nothing to do but watch the dog and type.

We did buy a scanner to help occupy our time, hence the seemingly random pictures from my past.

- b