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