Life with a new puppy

We've had the new monster - errr - puppy 2 weeks now. He seems much more energetic than I remember our older dog being as a puppy.  He's into EVERYTHING and seems to have the attention span of a gnat. Or ADHD, yes I think ADHD describes him perfectly.  Considering that, he is starting to pick up quite a bit of what we are teaching him pretty quickly. Or at least it seems that way to me, but I really only have our older dog to use as a comparison, so for all I know new puppy is way behind schedule.

He is 10 weeks old now and has learned to sit on command already.  He is now sleeping all night in his crate, without a peep. We only had a couple of nights of crying and barking.  We are very diligent about taking him outside constantly, so the concept of doing his duty outside is slowly starting to sink in. He does know that when I take him outside and he pees he immediately gets a treat (provided he sits, of course). He also is starting to remember that I will ask him to sit before I open the front door to go back inside.  We are still having accidents in the house once a day or so, but there have been a couple of times he has gone to the door by himself, but then he quickly seems to forget that is an option.  We are trying to teach him not to go into the kitchen area and while he knows hes' not supposed to he will try anyway any chance he gets if he thinks he can get away with it.  The cat food on the other side of the kitchen is his primary target. And occasionally we forget to set it back up on the counter after the cat is done (cat likes his bowl filled at all times so he can graze whenever he feels like it). Lets just say puppy has eaten a lot of cat food in 2 weeks.

Though he is sleeping all night the schedule he is on is still wrecking havoc on my normal sleep schedule. DD has to get up by 5:15 or so now to get ready to leave for school at 6:25. Of course once she is up, so is the puppy. At first we had him in the small crate in her room at night (she hadn't started school yet when we got him, so this worked great the first week) but when she woke up so did the puppy. This week we have been putting him to bed in the big cage type crate that is in the corner of the dining room. She is now able to get up and get herself ready in the morning before he will wake up when he hears her going to the kitchen for her breakfast.  I then get up at 6:10. Hop in the shower and then get dressed to be ready for puppy duty as soon as she walks out the door.

At this point it is about 90 minutes of non-stop puppy energy. I'm supposed to be working at my desk, but puppy is anywhere and everywhere.  So we got a gate to go across the opening of the family room entrance to keep him back where my desk is.  This is working pretty well.  Finally about 8 am he will plop down at my feet under my desk and fall asleep for a half hour until he hears me leave my desk (to leave for the office) and then DH gets up and takes over.  I've also discovered that if I give him a rawhide chew bone, he is quite content to try and chew on that and stays out of more trouble in the mornings.  Big dog wants nothing to do with this early rising so he is very content to stay sleeping our our bed while all this is going on.

The rest of the day he calms down quite a bit and pretty much alternates between an hour of play and an hour of naps.  Big dog is starting to play with him and they rough house quite a bit back and forth. Our big dog will not leave our property, so we have been experimenting with letting puppy go outside with him for a few minutes without us right there. So far puppy doesn't leave his side and will even come back to the front door on his own when he is ready.  The house looks like we have little kids again - toys everywhere.

Future plans, as soon as we can, are obedience classes and neutering.  My favorite commands learned when we took our older dog to these classes was "leave it" and "drop it".  To this day he will not take any food or treat until he is told it's "ok".  Let's hope new puppy even has half of his manners!