Growing Pains

My puppy, Micah is growing up. This is evident since the night he decided to make a mess on my bed and I was so pissed off I locked him outside overnight. He did seem a little sorry but I bet he still doesn’t know what he has done wrong. I’ve done a bit of googling and apparently dogs don’t spite. If you scold him and punish him, he’ll be like, “Whot? I’ve done nothing wrong, just being a normal dog, innit?”

Anyhow. He’s eight months old now and he used to be such an overactive dog we all wondered whether he would ever be out of energy. He followed us everywhere, ran and jump around as if on Prozac 24/7. We used to let him off the leash so he would explore the whole house and just generally be a dog by sniffing around, going up and down the stairs all he liked, and refusing to come to us unless we called him for ten times, and even that needed a bit of an effort which consisted of squeezing plastic bags – he somehow associated the sound to packageful of snacks – and making chewing sounds from our mouths as if we were eating something interesting or pretending to run up stairs and close the door, as if leaving him alone to bed. I remember the first day we brought him home, we were overwhelmed with exhaustion of having to play and mind this little furry thing that moved so much.

When we first got him, we tried to housebreak him by using newspapers around the house and clearly, after eight months of trying, such habit had failed to accomplish, because he still preferred to litter anywhere but on the newspaper. A day without noticing small lumps of turds on the floor would be such bliss, and that was very, very rare, I could tell you that much. Even I started to worry that my dog was in fact, lacking the intelligence of such normal dogs, and got even more anxious to think that perhaps it was my lacking the intelligence to teach him. That behind our backs, Micah had been complaining and muttering annoyingly in doggy language, saying that it was us who were the dumb-arses, not him.

So about a week ago, I did more googling and it turned out that trying to housebreak a dog by using newspapers as his littering area would in fact slow down his understanding that it was actually not okay for him to litter in the house. Moreover, by using the newspaper, it made the dog think it was okay to litter, despite the presence of the paper to filter the dirt.

Most people took their dogs out every now and then, usually after sleeping and having a meal, and I wasn’t a big fan of taking my dog for a walk because there were a couple of wild dogs out there who seemed vicious enough to tear my sweet little mutt apart. Also, I wasn’t very keen on waiting and urging my dog to ‘piddle’ – it just seemed silly. But alas, what has to be done has to be done, and I had to improvise a bit by using the backyard, which was technically not a backyard at all because there was not a patch of grass to be found whatsoever. But it was better spot than having him litter all over the house.

I’ve been doing that lately and now Micah has seemed to improved so much. Not only it is a proud moment watching him litter in the correct place – I even felt like I’d achieved something worthy here – but the house no longer smelled like turds.

I’ve also noticed that he seems to sleep a lot. When I’m watching the TV, he would contently lie down next to me and within the next five minutes, be sound asleep peacefully. But as soon as I make a small movement, he’d be awake and follow me around like a second shadow. It doesn’t matter where I am, he seems to be able to nod off easily and at first I was worried that he might be sick but after another act of googling, I found out this was perfectly normal. Not to mention that he seems to sleep even more deeply when I put on very, very loud music. He even sleeps right in front of the speakers and doesn’t seem to be affected by the noise at all. I rarely let him off the leash now because apparently young dogs are not to be let off the leash until they can behave responsibly and this is to be expected at least eighteen months or so. But Micah seems happy enough to be in a leash. In fact when it is time to piddle, he is happy to be attached to the leash, and I feel like my dog is for once a normal one for being so excited by the sight of his leash.

I used to dream of having a dog that would happily lie down next to me, being all placid and calm, and now that I do, it is such a surreal experience, I still feel slightly odd about it.