The computer is finally hooked up and online at Tim's house, and most of the chaos of moving and unpacking is behind us (please, let it be true!) and I finally have time to write about the puppy.
I went to pick her up on Friday of the holiday weekend. I took the day off from work, thus giving myself a 4-day weekend, which I thought would be perfect for getting a new puppy and starting housebreaking, and also perfect for moving into Tim's house. Note to self, and to others who might consider this in the future: Do not ever, EVER think it's a good idea to get a new puppy and move in the same weekend! It was a horrible idea! Talk about chaos. More about that later.
When I went to pick her up, the red tri boy puppies weren't as cute as they were the last time I visited, and my red merle puppy was beautiful and sweet, so there was no doubt which one was coming home with me. One very cute thing about her is that her eyes are blue -- kind of ice-blue, very intense -- but one of them is half green. It's very cool although I joke and tell her that she is a witch in disguise because of her multi-colored eyes. I popped her in the crate and headed home. She whined and barked and dug frantically at the crate door trying to get out the whole way home. I've gotten four puppies since moving to Arizona -- two guide dog puppies, two Aussies, all picked up in Phoenix -- and of all of them, only Sunny was completely silent all the way home. My two Labs and Annie all screamed the whole way. (Sunny's silence was totally typical of him -- his thought process would have been something like, "Oh, I don't like it in here. But the door is closed and I can't get out so I guess I can't do anything." All the girls were more like, "I hate this crate! Get me out! NOW!")
The first night she got me up a couple times, and was pretty fidgety and whiney the whole night. I totally expected that, so wasn't too upset about it. Then the next day was the Big Move, where I moved the dogs and cats and all their assorted paraphernalia over to Tim's house. That day was pretty much awful. I left Annie in the crate at my house while I moved the dogs over to Tim's house, and then came back afterwards to find her screaming and terrified. Poor puppy, all alone in a strange empty house. Then after I got back I played with her for a few minutes and then had to pack up the cats and their stuff, wash the litterboxes, et cetera so it was back in the crate for Annie. Then that night she had to sleep in another brand-new place and get used to a new backyard when she had only been in the old one for a little over 24 hours. Plus every waking minute at Tim's house was spent unpacking and organizing and trying to fit all those animals into a much smaller space than we had before. So it was either difficult or impossible to keep an eye on Annie all the time. Thank God for the ex-pen. It's like a puppy playpen, and we definitely overused it the first couple days.
So not only was there the matter of unpacking and setting up the house, there was also the matter of keeping an eye on Annie and Zsiga. Sunny and Hilda prefer to not acknowledge puppies ("I don't see you, therefore you don't exist"), but Zsiga was beyond thrilled to see her appear. ("A new toy for me? Awesome!") He is 16 weeks old now and almost as big as Sunny, and he likes to play rough. He also likes to chew on Annie like she's a stuffed toy. I hate that! Every time they play, his big wet mouth gets her all dirty and slobbery. Then I have to wait till she dries and brush the dirt out. Even with lots of brushing and never leaving the two of them unsupervised (one always either on a leash or in a crate), she is still dirty all the time, especially on the parts of her that are white. I hate dirty dogs but have decided I can live with a little dirt in exchange for letting them get out some of their energy. Annie is tough and feisty and does not take Zsiga's crap lying down. She comes right back at him with teeth and big mean puppy growls. They're actually quite cute, but every once in a while he gets a little too excited and it starts looking a bit too much like prey drive -- like when he bit down hard on the back of her neck in a "kill bite", the way wild dogs break the necks of their prey. After that, we instituted the "No unsupervised play" rule. There is also a rule that no one can play in the house with the exception of quietly chewing on their toys. Whoever violates the "no play in the house" rule gets a verbal warning first, then a timeout. Oh yes -- my commitment to positive training has gone out the window. Between the stress of moving and the stress of not getting anything like enough sleep, I have neither time nor patience to teach and reward acceptable alternative behavior. Instead, I scold and leash correct. I know, shame on me. Sunny hates it. Every time I yell at Zsiga or Annie he winces like I just beat him. And he has started walking around the house in a permanent slink, just trying to stay out of everybody's way. Hilda, meanwhile, has taken a different approach to the chaos -- accumulate as many toys as possible, then guard them for all she's worth. These poor dogs.
Annie's temperament is interesting. She's definitely not as soft as Sunny, which is what I was secretly hoping for but looks like I didn't get, again. She is determined and persistent when she wants something that doesn't coincide with what we want. And she is extremely whiny -- the whiniest puppy I have ever had. She whines for everything -- wants water, wants food, wants out of the crate/pen, wants to go smell something beyond the reach of the leash, doesn't like a sound she heard, et cetera. She is, hands-down, the WORST puppy I've ever had as far as sleeping through the night or being quiet in her crate. She goes about two hours before waking up (with annoying whines, of course). Then I take her outside, she pees and poops right away, and I pop her back in her crate, which is where she's supposed to realize the people and dogs in the room are still sleeping and go back to sleep herself, but she doesn't. She has middle-of-the-night temper tantrums with whining, barking, howling, and biting the bars of her crate. Tim and I both really enjoy those. NOT! It's so bad that last night I got a spray bottle of vinegar and water and was going to let her have it if she was noisy -- but, miraculously, she slept through the night and didn't make a sound. Hmmm. On the other hand, there are a lot of good things about her. She's very cuddly, unlike Zsiga, who struggles and shows expressions that remind me of a 10-year-old boy being told to go kiss his great aunt Gertrude right now OR ELSE any time we try to snuggle with him. Annie will happily sleep with her nose shoved up in my armpit and the length of her body snuggled up against me like a living body pillow. She's very responsive, so when Tim or I praise her she stares up at us adoringly and flattens her ears back and wiggles her little no-tail butt. She's very food-motivated and will do anything for a treat. (I taught her auto-sit while walking in heel position on one lesson -- and she even learned to sit straight with virtually no effort on my part.) Even though she was afraid of everything at first, she's now over most of her fears and can even walk down the street with noisy traffic and not show much reaction at all. So she should be an excellent performance dog, which is, after all, what I really wanted.
I just hope that last night was the first of many nights where I actually get to sleep. I think it will be easier to be more of a positive trainer if I'm not in a chronic state of sleep deprivation.
