It's been a week since we picked up little Elsa and I thought I'd share a very real, uncensored report of her homecoming :-)
And it's been harder than I ever could have dreamed!! I know this is "normal", but I only had cats my whole life until last week so I really didn't get it. She's the most darling, sweetest little thing in the world, but she's a lot of work for a tiny six pound pup! I've somewhat jokingly said many times this week "I can't because of my newborn...", "I'm so tired because my newborn stayed up all night..." and "We have to get home because we can't be away from the newborn..." But in many ways, she IS like having a newborn. It's been challenging trying to figure out how to take care of her with all of our other commitments - feeding her at the right time so that she can use the potty before we have to leave, not being able to run that last errand because she has been in her crate too long, etc.
Judge me by my size, do you? {Our Star Wars Yoda Pup}
The littles found this shirt for $2 and dressed her up :-)
As far as potty training, perhaps some would argue that I'm too helicopter mom, but that's just who I am. She tee-teed on one too many rugs the first two days and so we started taking her out ever fifteen minutes. You read that right. Every FIFTEEN minutes. From 6:30AM - 10PM. Ahhhhh!!!!!! Towards the end of the week we got to know her better and can see little "tells" when she needs to go. She'll get up of stop what she's doing and start sniffing the floor, usually bee-lining for a rug. And so we scoop her up, put her leash on and carry her out to the pine straw to take care of business. We're still taking her out every 30 minutes or so if she's awake. But it's working!
We are also crate training and we made great strides this week! She started off acting like she was going to kill herself trying to claw her way out. Oh, and she barked and whined ALL night. Poor little baby. We learned after just one night that we needed to relocate the crate to our bedroom, and that solved it immediately. Also, thanks to all of your tips on Instagram, we have put in the divider to make the crate a more appropriate size, covered the crate with a sheet, put one of Honey's shirts inside (she adores him), got a little Kong with a treat to keep her busy when she first goes in, and we play a Georgia Tech lullaby CD (that was the only thing I could dig up) when we leave. I was scared to leave her the first few days, which made me batty being cooped up here all day. But, we ventured out on Wednesday, put her in her crate and it felt good to leave. And what do you know? She was just fine when we got home :-)
The littles have been absolutely wonderful with helping take her out. I knew they would love on her and play with her, but I have been very pleasantly surprised with their willingness to do the dirty work too. When we went to her first vet checkup this week, I got a little chuckle out of their questions.
John: (who is so obviously my child) Can we get any diseases from dogs?
The vet provided wonderful and informative information about illness in dogs and that most can not be transmitted to humans. She also let us know that we should be very careful of parasites in their poop.
Whit: Are you going to do anything that hurts our puppy? Sometimes going to the doctor hurts.
The vet assured him that they wouldn't do anything to hurt Elsa. In the next breath she said she needed to have a booster on one of her shots and Whit was quick to call her out and say that SHOTS HURT! :-)
So, one week in we've had some accidents, we've had some meltdowns (yours truly), we've learned that people are more opinionated and vocal on how to take care of a dog than they are about a kid, and we've felt like giving up. But, also in that one week, the boys have fallen in love, we've started to figure out what works best for our family and Elsa, and we are positive that Elsa is going to fit right in! Welcome home, Elsa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
xoxo
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