Joep & I have been dying to get a dog. We’ve been talking about it for ages and getting closer and closer to actually taking the plunge. We realize that this is not a rational decision given that we are not exactly settled down yet and that we live in a small apartment but all that seems irrelevant when you really want something! A colleague of mine, Allison, and her boyfriend have a gorgeous golden Labrador puppy called Ty(phoon). He’s a toddler and he is 6 months old so he is all paws and no body and he is full of energy. Allison and Dan went away for the weekend last weekend and we had offered to dog sit. We were hoping that Ty would wear us out and then we wouldn’t want a dog anymore …
This goal was not entirely met …
When out walking with Ty you are guaranteed that pretty much every person you pass on the street will stop you and want to talk to you whilst petting your dog. We all know that the Joepinator loves to be the centre of attention so needless to say, he loved walking with Ty. In addition, we took Ty out a few times to restaurants in the market and sat on a terrace with him. He would lie beside us while we ate and bask in the glory of all the people walking by stopping to pet him. So again, Joepinator was happy to get attention and I was happy to be eating outdoors in the good weather.
We also took Ty down to the river where he had his first taste of submerging himself in water whilst chasing a stick. I’m not sure who enjoyed that more – Joep or Ty. Either way it was a lovely way to pass the time on a balmy summers afternoon in Ottawa!
These are all the wonderful things. Then there were a couple of things that were not so wonderful. Firstly, when you live on the 10th floor, your puppy can’t just be let out to go to the toilet. You have to go down the elevator with him and take him out. Ty pee’s like 10 times a day. And he does lots of #2’s as well. Plus with the #2’s you have to bag it up … I did not like this task. However, to counteract this negative let me say that I am quite sure I could train Ty to walk to the elevator, push the buttons and get outside to do his business without any human assistance. Its not hard. And dogs are smart. I am sure I am not over extending my dog training abilities here …
The next semi negative thing is that at nighttime Ty didn’t like sleeping. In fact, on the first night he cried for ages before eventually nodding off at 1:30am. He then woke up a 4am for a toilet break. That was not fun. And after his toilet break he wanted to play. Joep took charge here. Then at 6am I took over and Joep had a nap. By 7am we were wondering how all those parents who have constant sleepless nights do it … sleep is important to us. I don’t know if that will ever change.
I did, however, find a solution to this crying and moaning problem. Joep says that it is not good parenting. I don’t care. Here is my solution. I found that if I let Ty do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted to do it then everything was fine and we didn’t have to have a fight. So if he wanted to crawl into bed with me at 4am … I helped him get in. If he wanted to sit on my lap on the couch even though it meant I couldn’t see the tv, I let him. Joep was not a huge fan of this strategy. I didn’t mind because I had Ty and he loves me no matter what … as long as I let him do what he wants.
This methodology of letting your puppy do whatever he wants works splendidly unless you are outside the house and other people are judging you. So on Saturday night when we went to Mikey & Anne-Marie’s house for a lovely evening of chatting and playing games and drinking wine (What? You thought that we had a grown up evening without wine?? Ha! Clearly you haven’t read the other Mikey & Anne-Marie related blogs!) I pretended to be a good mum and Ty pretended to be well behaved. It was exhausting. So on Sunday morning we reverted to our old routine of Ty being the boss of me.
Joep, on the other hand, is going to be an incredibly good dog owner/father. He is full of discipline and certainly knows how to show who is the boss. I was very impressed by this and relieved that in the future I will get to be the good cop to his bad cop in disciplinary discussions.
So after 4 wonderful days of dog walking, poop scooping, face licking and no sleeping we returned Ty to his rightful owners. Now I’m not going to lie to you, on our last day with Ty I did start to regret all the things I let him do because I was worried that I had untrained him and his owners would be mad. Thankfully it appears that Joep’s strong discipline counteracted my free spirited approach to parenting and from all accounts this week Ty is as good as usual. Phew!
All in all the weekend met its goal. Despite the fact that we LOVED having the puppy around and I loved being able to force something to give me cuddles and kisses whenever I wanted them, the simple fact is that we really like to sleep. And to go out without having to organize anything. You can’t do that with a puppy. So we will keep being grown ups and not get one just yet. Who knows though … maybe in a little while …
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