Forest’s got a leak

Wow, the past month was crazy! We had three straight weekends full of Thanksgiving festivities. Our little puppy was introduced to a lot of new people and new places and, well, it sometimes overwhelmed him.

For example, we visited Nick’s family the weekend before Thanksgiving. We hopped in the car right after work and drove for about three hours to Iowa. Forest was in the backseat the whole time and overall was pretty well-behaved. We laid a blanket across the seats and put some toys back there for him. He freaked out a little when the car was stopped, like “Holy shit, what’s going on, is someone getting out, getting in, do I have to get out, what’s that over there?” but on the highway he fell right to sleep.

We stayed at Jason’s house that night (Nick’s brother) and he happened to be taking out the garbage as we pulled up to his house. As soon as Forest jumped out of the car I tried to steer him towards the yard to do his business, but no, Forest wanted to go say hi and get a belly rub from Jason. The puppy ran up to our host and jumped on him a little before settling down at his feet with his tail going a mile a minute. We all thought it was really cute until I noticed the growing puddle. “Uh Jason, the dog’s peeing on you.” Yep, little Forest was so excited that he pissed all over Jason’s white Pumas.

Unfortunately this is not like a one-time thing. Sometimes Forest gets so worked up that he can’t help but let a little go. We call those his “happy squirts”. We were actually lucky that only one shoe was victimized this time. When Forest was a few months old, I was waiting in line at doggy day care to pick him up and bumped into a friend I hadn’t seen in awhile. I was so excited to introduce her to our new little furball that as soon as they brought Forest out I picked him up and started gushing over what a sweet doggy he was and how cute he was, bla bla bla. Suddenly my arm felt a little wet, and me in my innocence thought that Forest had licked me or maybe even drooled. But no, as I lifted him a little higher I saw that Forest had just piddled on me, the floor and the doggy carrier at my feet. Not the best first impression he could have made, but I guess I should be happy he didn’t puke or poop on me (no, he was going to save those for later, damn dog). Now when I pick Forest up at doggy day care, I have a strict policy of going straight out the door, no chit chat. Live and learn I guess.

Forest’s got a leak

Guard Dog in Training

As hard as it is to imagine now, I’m hoping that Forest will one day become a guard dog. He’s already mastered the barking part of the job, probably more so than needed. When Forest is inside the house, he’ll bark when he hears a car passing by, when he looks out the window and sees any movement whatsoever, when anyone enters the house (even if he knows that it’s just me or Nick) and when he sees his own reflection in a mirror or window. When he’s outside, Forest will bark when anyone walks or rides pass the house, when cars drive by, and when he sees any of our neighbors (even if said people are standing in their own yard a block away). He also barks at the garbage bags people put on the curb for garbage day, they freak him out for some reason. All this makes me very confident that I’ll be notified if someone comes to the house or steps on our property, especially if that someone is wearing a poncho constructed out of a garbage bag.

However, we’ve found one little quirk that needs some more training (or dog therapy, I don’t know).

We had only owned Forest for about week when we brought him to the Iowa cabin for the first time. We slept in a first floor bedroom that had windows facing the front door and yard. Forest made a small ruckus when we put him in his crate the first night, but he was exhausted from the long car ride and the excitement of meeting Nick’s extended family so the puppy soon fell asleep.

When we put Forest in his crate the second night, he made his usual ruckus...and didn’t shut up. He was whining, pawing at the crate door, even a few barks (which he rarely did the first few weeks we had him). At first, we couldn’t fathom why he was freaking out so much, he had been fine the night before, no problems, so what the hell was wrong with this puppy?

Then I had a random thought. We had turned off the front porch light so our bedroom was basically pitch-black, but the night before we had left the front porch light turned on. And I thought no way, there was barely any light coming thru our bedroom window the night before, really? We were getting desperate (most of Nick’s family was trying to sleep in the same house) so I snuck into the hallway, snagged a night-light, and plugged it in the wall in our room. Tada, the puppy was quiet.

My future guard dog is afraid of the dark.

Guard Dog in Training

Big Puppy-Sized Tennis Ball

Recently we had one of those moments when we realized that Forest is getting less like a puppy and more like a dog (might compromise and think of him as a big puppy).

When we finally decided to get Forest (which seems like ages ago) I bought a bunch of toys and supplies in preparation of his homecoming. Of course when we brought Forest home for the first time, I discovered that most of the toys I got him didn’t actually fit in his little mouth. So I went back to the store and bought some tiny tennis balls (there are some cute photos of Forest and these balls in my Forest-Sized Tennis Ball post). Forest has tripled in size over the last three months, but he still loves playing with his small tennis balls.

A few days ago we took Forest over to visit the neighbors and the puppy spent most of the time running around their yard. You would think that we could have relaxed a little because the puppy was outside and free to potty anywhere, but he managed to get into all sorts of other trouble. Forest found lots of sidewalk chalk (non-toxic thankfully) and wood chips to chew on. The neighbors had a bonfire going in their fire pit and Forest kept trying to get close to it. On top of all that, Forest was on a leash and was constantly wrapping it around chairs legs and our feet. Luckily he was just adorable during all of this so we didn’t feel like drop-kicking him across the yard (which Nick threatens to do quite often).

At one point the neighbors brought out a regular sized tennis ball for Forest to play with. I told them that it was a sweet gesture but the ball would be too big for Forest. The puppy decided that this was a good time to make me look foolish and immediately picked up the ball in his mouth! The ball was still a little too big so Forest had to stretch his mouth open as wide as it would go to pick up the ball (can dogs get lock-jaw?). Sometimes he wouldn’t get a great angle and the ball would just slip out of his mouth and roll away, which caused Forest to run after it and try to pick it up again (an amusing cycle that kept Forest occupied and out of trouble for awhile). The neighbors were tickled by all this and gave us the tennis ball to bring home.

Forest loves this big tennis ball, but he still plays with the smaller balls as well. We’re probably going to have to take the small balls away at some point, don’t want the big puppy to choke on them.

Forest: Look ma, it fits!

Forest: Crap, it's slipping :(

Forest: I love this ball.

Big Puppy-Sized Tennis Ball

Forest-Sized Puppy

In my Mystery Puppy post, I explained that Nick’s severe pet allergies limited the types of dogs that we could adopt. We discovered that F1B poodle mixes are very hypoallergenic, so we did a lot of research on different types of poodle puppies. Nick declared that we could only get a dog that he wouldn’t be embarrassed walking around with in public, so that eliminated small mixes like Cockapoos. We finally narrowed our options down to Labradoodles and Goldendoodles.

Unfortunately F1B puppies are not as common as their F1 cousins. We came across a few places in other states that had F1B puppies for sale but we felt weird having a puppy “shipped” to us. Finally we found a breeder somewhat close to us in Missouri (seriously, what did we ever do before the internet? Yellow pages were useless).

The breeders were extremely nice and really seemed to care about their dogs, but they had an unusual policy about not letting potential owners meet the puppies before buying them. They explained that there are serious canine diseases that are very easy to spread and can kill entire litters (I’ll talk more about those diseases in a future post), so they didn’t want to chance losing their puppies. They tried to compensate for this policy by posting lots of photos and YouTube videos online so we could see what the puppies looked like and some of their personalities.

Nick and I didn’t like this policy, but we also didn’t really have any other options at that point. Plus we figured that if Forest didn’t work out then we’d have to say goodbye to the possibility of ever finding a dog that wouldn’t kill Nick. So we decided what the hell, we’ll just get a puppy and be done with it (those actually might have been Nick’s exact words, I think he was getting irritated by my constant puppy chatter).

The breeder’s litter at the time just happened to be F1B mini goldendoodles, and they estimated that Forest would grow to be about 20 to 25 pounds. I couldn’t imagine how big Forest would look as an adult, so I talked to our friend Doug, who owned the smallest dog (Bailey) that we knew at the time. Doug guessed that Bailey weighed around 15 pounds, so the “adult-sized Forest” image in my head became a taller version of Bailey. Nick and I thought that was a pretty good size for a dog, though maybe a little smaller than we had hoped for.

When we finally got to bring Forest home with us, he was only 4.7 pounds. He seemed so freaking tiny!

Forest next to Nick’s running shoes.

A few weeks after we adopted him, we left Forest at home (a non-potty trained puppy with no obedience skills is not travel-friendly) and went over to Doug’s house. It’s a tad embarrassing to admit now, but at first I didn’t recognize Bailey, I thought Doug was babysitting a neighbor’s dog or something. She just looked HUGE. I didn’t realize that staring non-stop at our little puppy for a couple weeks (remember this was during the “if I glance away for 30 seconds he’ll poop in the living room” phase) could change my perception of dog sizes so dramatically.

Luckily I didn’t say any of this out loud and after a few minutes figured out that it was indeed Bailey. Duh.

Forest-Sized Puppy

Puppy Nap

Apparently Forest didn’t find the Iowa/Indiana game as exciting as I did (GO HAWKS!).

We went over to a friend’s place to watch the game last Saturday and the hosts were nice enough to let us bring the puppy along. Everyone loved Forest, like “Can we keep him?” love. I think we recruited 5 new eager puppy-sitters that day. Luckily Forest got really worn out playing with everyone, so I didn’t feel as guilty for sticking him in his crate early that night and going to some Halloween parties.

Sleep tight little guy.

Puppy Nap

The Crate Escape

Yesterday's blog post was getting kinda long, so I decided to post this crate story separately.

Rewind to the first week we owned Forest. Before I discovered the fantastic world of doggy day care, Forest spent 8am to 5pm at home in his crate, which forced Nick and I to rush back to the house a couple times a day to let him out (little puppy = little bladder).

One day I let Forest out in the morning, put him in his crate and sped back to work. A few hours later, I get a call from Nick who asks, “So how sure are you that you closed his crate door?" which is just a smartass question because of course I’m going to say, well hell, I’m pretty sure. Nick proceeds to tell me about how he came home and found the crate door wide open, a couple shoes with canine slobber on them, some nibbled chair legs and a very happy puppy in the kitchen. At the time I was positive that I had closed the crate door, but then I started thinking, well hell, I was in a hurry to get back to work, maybe I thought I closed the door but didn’t secure the latch properly? I spent the next 5 minutes worrying and apologizing while Nick hunted thru the house in search of hidden puppy poop (we’re still surprised Forest didn’t take a dump behind a dresser or in a closet).

The very next day, I left work to let Forest out, walked in the front door and called Nick. “So guess who I just found in the kitchen?” (next to destroyed chew toy and puddle of piss). Yep, the puppy was out again. Thankfully this time Nick was the last person to “close” the crate door so my claim of not being an irresponsible, ditzy dog owner was validated (which I reminded Nick of, oh, just a couple of times).

Our hypothesis is that Forest hates being left alone in his crate so much that he scratches, bites and jumps on the crate door hard enough and long enough to jimmy the latch loose. Then it’s party time for puppy.

So we’ve come up with the following solution:

The bungee cord may not be aesthetically pleasing, but it gets the job done.

This puppy ain’t going nowhere.

The Crate Escape

Forest’s Crate

In case some of you non-dog people out there don’t know this, a dog crate is basically a cage. But no one refers to it as a cage, no, manufactures, pet stores and dog owners all refer to it as a crate (maybe that makes everyone feel better about locking up a sweet doggy in a cage). Some crates have solid, plastic sides with a wire door so the dog can only see out the front of the crate (thus you’re basically putting your dog in an expensive box). Most of the dog owners I know use a crate made entirely of metal or plastic wires/bars, so that’s what we use too. I think this type of crate makes it easier for us to keep an eye on Forest, plus it lets the puppy see what’s going on around him (the crate’s in our bedroom).

So why would we own a crate you ask? Why not just stick Forest in the yard or a closet while we’re away? Besides keeping the puppy out of trouble and out of our shit, a crate is supposed to make potty training much easier (it’s sometimes referred to as “crate training”). Apparently, dogs try not to potty where they sleep. Some say it’s a natural instinct, and some say dogs learn this as puppies when they soil their sleeping area and see their mom clean up after them by eating the poop (I really hope this second explanation is just a rumor, cause if not, damn, mommy dogs are hard-core). If you set up a divider in the crate so the puppy has just enough room to lie down and turn around, theoretically he won’t be able to potty anywhere without lying in it, so he’ll try harder to hold it.

We've put up a divider so Forest only has access to half of the crate.

According to everyone we’ve talked to and everything we’ve read, dogs are supposed to love their crates and like spending time in there. Well of course, Forest is not a fan of his crate. In fact, for the first two months we owned him, Forest HATED his crate and raised hell every single time we put him in there. He would whine, bark, whimper and moan (yes, dogs can moan, or at least this one can, and it sounds creepily human like) all while chewing on or scratching at the crate’s bars, or trying to stick his head and paws between the bars.

If we stayed in the room with the puppy and he could see both of us at all times, eventually Forest would quiet down and go to sleep. If, heaven forbid, we left the room, that dang puppy wouldn’t shut up for hours. Seriously, we timed him. We’d be in the garage or out in the yard and could still hear Forest yelping.

On top of all that, the puppy would never go into his crate willingly so we always had to gently shove him in there. We tried making his crate more appealing by filling it with treats and toys, but Forest would stand outside the crate door and stretch as much as he could to get to the item without actually entering the crate. We tried feeding him in there once but Forest seemed to prefer not eating over getting in the crate. Every time he put so much as an ear in the crate, Nick and I would give him praise like he just learned to talk or something, but everything seemed to fail.

Luckily, we’ve seen some improvement during the past month. For example, Forest no longer whines when we put him in his crate for the night (he doesn’t sleep in our bed with us). I think he knows its bedtime and we’re going to stay in the room with him, so he doesn’t freak out. Even if one or both of us leaves the room for a few minutes, Forest expects us to come right back so he doesn’t make a scene.

We’re still having a rough time leaving Forest alone for extended periods of time. I know dogs don’t have a great sense of time (they probably can’t tell the difference between 15 minutes and 5 hours) but I swear, if we leave Forest alone for awhile then that dog thinks we’re never ever coming back and he’s stuck in that damn cage forever.

Nick and I try to avoid letting Forest out of his crate when he’s whining or barking, kinda like how parents aren’t supposed to pick up a baby every time it cries. But sometimes that puppy just won’t shut up, so Nick and I have to stand in the hallway waiting for a pause in the madness so we can enter our own bedroom. It almost feels like a game to me (hopefully it doesn’t seem that way to Forest). I’ll stand in front of his crate, Forest will whine, I’ll leave the room, he’ll bark a little, pause, I’ll walk back in, he’ll whimper, out I go again. It’s a sad process, but eventually Forest will remain quiet (for a moment) when I stand in front of his crate so I can let him out. *Whew*, so much work.

I swear we’re coming back Forest!

Forest’s Crate

5 Month Old Puppy

Forest was born on May 30^th, so Friday was his 5 month birthday! We didn’t do anything special to celebrate, just gave him a well needed bath. God that puppy gets smelly at doggy day care. I don’t know if it’s from playing with other dogs, or sleeping in the vet’s crates or what, but by the end of the week Forest sometime has a strong funk on him. So on Friday we gave him a bath, which unfortunately terrifies the puppy. We’ve only had to give Forest like three baths since we’ve owned him (the vet and groomers have had that pleasure several more times) but I think Forest remembers our baths because he won’t willingly enter the bathroom where he takes his baths. It’s all worth it though, he smells so much better now!

In honor of Forest’s birthday (and a nice smelling doggy) here’s a bunch of Forest photos covering his short but sweet life so far.

Forest at 5 months:

Forest at 4 months:

Forest at 3 months:

Forest at 2 months:

Forest at 1 month:

5 Month Old Puppy

Forest Got Snipped

Sorry lady pups (and let’s face it, male pups too, those horny fellows) Forest is officially off the market.

On November 14^th, little Forest got neutered. We didn’t really have a choice in this matter, the contract we had with the breeder stipulated that Forest had to be neutered before he turned 6 months old. I felt bad making this kind of decision for Forest, they are his balls after all, but I wasn’t against the idea. Nick however didn’t want anything to do with it. He didn’t want to talk about it, hear about it or participate in any planning. He knew it had to be done, but I guess the subject of snipping a male puppy was a little too squeamish for him. Luckily I was able to schedule the procedure to take place while he was out of town on business.

When I was in college, I had a cat named Skylar. When my kitty was neutered, there were no post-operation instructions, no follow-up visits, no extra pain meds, nothing. It all seemed very easy. So I was surprised at how serious this turned out to be for Forest (which Nick would say is a huge understatement). For 10 days, Forest wasn’t allowed to be around other dogs, run, take walks, jump or play rough. I didn’t realize this before I scheduled the procedure, but fortunately Forest got neutered the day after his last obedience class (where he participated in all of the events listed above, and then some).

I had to choose between two types of stitches: one that would disintegrate or fall out on its own but was more fragile, and another that would need to be manually removed by the vet but was sturdier. Forest is a licker, so I choose the latter. The surgery went as expected and the vet gave me a few extra pain meds to give Forest over the next few days. And of course, they gave us the “buster” collar, or as I called it, Forest’s cone collar. I thought dogs wore cone collars so they wouldn’t chew on the stitches, but I guess the main concern, at least in Forest’s case, is that the dog will lick the stitches, thus delaying the healing process.

Forest is a little guy so his cone collar looked like they cut a regular cone in half. The collar part was a little tight, so I had to kinda grab Forest’s face and squeeze his head thru it. I always thought that would freak Forest out, but surprising he just sat patiently while I struggled to get the cone collar on him. There was no chance of the cone falling off, but it had a thin piece of rope around it so you could tie a knot and keep the cone in place.

Now this sounds mean, but it was pretty funny watching Forest trying to get around with this huge cone on his head. He was constantly bumping into the wall or snagging the edge of the collar on a door frame. He could slowly make it down a flight of stairs, but he couldn’t get up any stairs, the bottom of the cone always hit the first step and Forest would stagger back a little and then try again. I ended up carrying him around a lot.

Forest figured out how to sleep with the cone collar on. Unfortunately he was constantly shifting and rearranging himself so the cone made a lot of noise in his crate at night.

I think the saddest part of the whole experience was how Forest acted right after I put the cone collar on him. I think he thought the cone was punishment because he always got really quiet and tried to cuddle as close to me as possible.

I felt horrible about the possibility that Forest felt guilty when wearing the cone collar, but a small part of me was also thrilled that the cone collar made the dang puppy calm down for awhile. Is this how parent’s secretly feel when their kids get sick? Yes, we’re worried and feel sorry for our babies, but gosh it’s nice to have some quiet time around here :)

Forest: I’m sorry for whatever I did wrong, can you please take this damn thing off me now?

Luckily the whole mess is over with. Forest, sans balls, is doing fine and doesn’t seem to be acting any differently. The vet had to shave his downtown region so hopefully the hair will grow back quickly (it looks we’ve been manscaping the puppy). And not exercising has sped up Forest’s weight gain so he’s around 15 pounds now!!! Sniff, the little puppy is growing up.

Forest Got Snipped

Head of the Class

Forest graduated from obedience class last week! I wouldn’t classify Forest as “obedient” yet, but he did learn the sit and down commands. We need some more practice with come, wait/stay and loose leash walking (which isn’t as strict as heel, Forest should just stay relatively close to my side without pulling on the leash or stopping). And we definitely need to train Forest on how to properly greet someone. Jumping up on people is cute now, but I don’t want him to knock over a kid or keep this habit as an adult dog.

Everyone took lots of photos during this last class, especially the instructor. We had a couple group photos with all of the doggy graduates and their parents. Some people had trouble getting their dogs to sit still and look forward, most of the students just wanted to lick themselves or their neighbors. Forest was one of the smaller dogs in the class so luckily I could just pick him up and point him towards the camera. The instructor also had one mini graduation cap that she wanted each dog to wear for individual photos. I think there were like 9 dogs in the class, so it took awhile to get the cap strapped onto each dog and then calm him down enough to snap some photos.

Forest was especially antsy, so I only got one good photo.

Then I got a cute but blurry photo.

At first, Forest was a little confused on how to wear a hat. I think he was trying to stick his face in it.

The instructor for the class was a little kooky, but she was also really passionate about training and raising dogs. She didn’t teach us as many commands as I would have liked, but she did teach us helpful training methods, so I’m hoping Nick and I can continue training Forest to not be a hellion.

Speaking of training, I have like the ultimate command in mind for Forest. There’s this scene in the movie “Shooter” that’s totally unrelated to the plot but looks cool: the main character’s dog is trained to open the refrigerator by pulling on a towel tied to the door handle, then snag a beer in his mouth and carry it back to his owner. Yes I know dogs in movies and TV shows are trained to do all sorts of stunts, but this one seems actually possible :) Unfortunately I’ll have to wait until Forest grows up before I can verify that a can or bottle of beer will fit securely in his mouth. Until then, I’ll guess we’ll keep working on the basics.

Head of the Class

Regressed Puppy

Sorry I haven’t written in awhile, I’ll make up for it with a thorough posting :) It’s been a tad crazy in the Forest household lately; Nick and I have had hectic work schedules, illness and end of summer weddings and festivities. Then on top of all that, we’ve been very preoccupied with a certain puppy problem.

For the first two months of his life, Forest was allowed to go potty anywhere he wanted. His doggy-mom tried to teach him not to go where he slept, but anywhere else was fine. Then Forest came home with us. We spent the next two months trying to teach the puppy that pooping in our bedroom was not OK and he should do all of his business outside.

We researched two methods of potty-training: negative reinforcement and positive reinforcement. I think negative reinforcement used to be the popular approach a few years back (find a puddle of dog pee? just rub the dog’s nose it in while yelling, that’ll teach him). But now the general consensus is that negative reinforcement can be just that, negative. So positive reinforcement is the preferred method (find a puddle of dog pee? don’t yell at the dog, just praise him the next time he goes outside). Even if you catch the dog in the act, positive reinforcement emphasizes not yelling at the dog, give him a stern No or your “negative” marker word and take him outside to finish up…don’t forget to praise!

We found that a mixture of positive and negative reinforcement works best for us. If we catch Forest peeing in the house, there’s going to be a hell of a lot of yelling, but then we take him outside and tell him what a good dog he is. The yelling part sounds mean, but Forest just wasn’t catching on to potty training until we started yelling when we caught him. We aren’t even that picky, if the dog wants to go potty on the driveway, have at it, as long as it isn’t inside. And no, if we find a random puddle in the house, we don’t rub his nose in it. If we’re not watching Forest and he takes that opportunity to pee, well then that’s our fault for not keeping an eye on him. He is a puppy after all.

So after two months of potty training, I think Forest was finally starting to get it, he was only having one or two accidents a week in the house. Then Nick and I spent a few days in San Diego visiting some friends. We feel bad asking anyone to puppy-sit Forest until he’s fully potty trained, so we decided to board him at the vet. We dropped Forest off Friday morning and picked him up Tuesday evening. San Diego was fabulous, but I missed the puppy. That was the longest I’d ever been away from him so I was pretty excited to get Forest home.

The excitement was short-lived. Forest was only home for like an hour before he peed inside. Luckily, I caught him in the act and got a “No no no no bad bad dog!” out before Forest stopped midstream and cowered with his tail between his legs (now I understand why nature engineered puppies to be so adorable. I was surrounded by dog pee but felt absolutely horrible about yelling at him for it).

After 5 days at the boarders, Forest had regressed back to I’ll-go-potty-anywhere-I-want-to puppy. We couldn’t blame the boarders, they’re not responsible for potty-training all the dogs they watch. But I can’t believe how quickly Forest slipped back to bad habits. He peed inside again a few hours after I caught him that first time. The next night, I look over and he’s taking a big dump in the middle of the kitchen. And a day later we were playing in the bedroom and found little wet spots streaked across the carpet, which we determined were caused by Forest running and pissing at the same time.

Friday and Saturday passed without accidents so we started feeling a little more confident, like maybe Forest was remembering that peeing in the house = bad puppy. But Sunday night did not go well. No, it did not go well at all. Forest was hanging out with Nick in our basement. We have two huge bean bags made of pleather-like material in the basement. I love them, they’re super comfy and can fit 2-3 people on them. Forest also loves them and will often drag his toys on top of them to play.

Nick said that at one point, the puppy was standing on a bean bag and watching TV (which just sounds so cute) when he suddenly jumped off and came over to sit on Nick’s foot. Nick said the puppy felt a little wet and looked guilty. Sure enough, Forest had piddled all over one of the bean bags. Nick said he had never given much thought to the design of a bean bag before, but unfortunately the crevices and dips in the bean bag makes this sort of accident look like lakes and streams of puppy piss (which I never got to see, the sweet boy had cleaned it all up before he told me about it).

After almost two weeks of cleaning up mess after mess, we got Forest sort of retrained. Then we had to board the puppy again to attend the wedding of Nick’s brother. Sure enough, Forest was piddling all over the place when we got him home.

So we’ve gone back to checking on the puppy every few minutes, fun times! Experts say dogs have no concept of “revenge,” but I’ll say, it certainly looks like Forest is punishing us for boarding him (that’ll teach us).

Regressed Puppy

Sleepy Puppy

I’ve never had kids so I’m pretty uninformed on the subject of child rearing, but I’m going to make an observation and hopefully not piss off any parents who may be reading this: it seems like having a puppy is a lot like having a baby. Many of the complaints I have about raising a puppy sound very similar to the complaints I hear from the few parents I know. Things like, “He won’t sleep more than 5 minutes at a time, I feel like a caffeine fueled zombie,” or “He’s such a picky eater, and is he supposed to throw up this much?” (although the finicky eating habits may be unique to Forest, most of the dogs I know will eat anything) and “Dear God, breath thru your mouth, he just pooped pure evil.”

Luckily, Forest is a big fan of naps. After constantly checking on the puppy every 30 seconds for over a month to make sure he wasn’t peeing, pooping, chewing, scratching, choking, falling or running away, we can finally ignore him for a half hour or even –gasp!- an hour at a time. I’ve searched thru my extensive photo collection and picked out some of the cutest “holy shit, he’s finally quiet and not moving” moments to share with you.

Sometimes Forest finds the oddest places to sleep.

Like on the step of a sliding glass door…

…on my shoes…

…on a chair leg...

…or in a gym bag.

Forest has a habit of sneaking under chairs for a nap. We’ve had many “Crap, where the hell is the- oh he’s under my chair again” moments.

He’s not ashamed to show off the goods (while he still has them).

Looks like Forest figured out what a pillow is used for.

I love this picture. Forest laid down first, the rest of the guys soon followed. Awww.

Sleepy Puppy