Lessons from Puppies - the Lighter Side

Okay, so I had my moment of pontificating yesterday.

Now that that's out of my system, here are a few more lessons from life with puppies, from the lighter side of the lesson coin:

1. Always, always wear shoes outside. Always. Unless you enjoy the feeling of nice warm mud oozing between your toes only to realize it's not mud.

2. The more you try to avoid poo piles, the more likely it is you'll step in them. It must be the same principle at work here that makes dieting so impossible.

3. When you enter the arena of life (or the puppy pen), wear shin guards. You know, like they wear in hockey....the ones that cover your knees, shins, ankles, and feet. This is particularly true once the pups get their razor teeth, sickle-like toenails, and can stand on their hind legs (velociraptors anyone?). In fact, maybe an entire professional-ice-hockey-goalie's uniform would be a good idea. Nah...then you'd never feel the warmth of puppy kisses or the delicious aroma of puppy breath. :o) Shin guards will have to do.

4. Selective hearing (or a deaf ear) is a good thing (except in husbands, kids, or aging parents). This comes in handy during the first few nights of crate training. Oh my... how melodramatic pups can be: poor forlorn pups cruelly abandoned by their mean masters in those awful crates with those awful sheepskin beddings! Can't you just hear their wailing and gnashing of teeth?

5. Nap while the napping is good. I learned this lesson twenty years ago when my human kids were babies -- I slept when the babies slept, especially since I was getting up with them at night. But I forgot this lesson somewhere along the line (probably somewhere in my I am Woman Hear Me Roar! thirties). Now I'm older. And now I need about 9 hours sleep a night to function well (and now, in my Who Gives a Rip? forties, I find no shame in admitting my limitations or need for sleep). But puppy bladders don't go nine hours without having to empty themselves. So we put them to bed at 11 p.m. and get them up and out at 5:30a.m., which is only 6.5 hours. And in my twenties, 6.5 hours would have been plenty of sleep. But not in my later forties. So I nap while the napping is good.

More to come...

'Til next time,
Joan