I didn’t expect my puppy to be so crazy—even though people warned us that “labs are crazy.” Maybe crazy isn’t the best word. Enthusiastic? Over the top? Excited? Yeah, she’s all about being excited.
All four of us in the family—me, my husband and my two children—have scratches and nicks and our hands and legs from the dog being excited. I don’t even notice them anymore. And I get new ones every day.
That’s not to say the cat isn’t to blame too. Both of them seem to think gnawing on a person’s hand is the best way to say I love you. (Chewing on your hair is a strong second runner up.) It’s a hard habit to break them of. And having the run of the house, Spencer can do even more damage.
He likes to come up stairs early in the early morning before I’m ready to get up and nibbles at the edges of my sleep—by nibbling my hair or fingers until I wake up. And if that doesn’t work, he head butts me and purrs like he’s packing a Harley engine so that he’s almost impossible to ignore. I feel like a new parent again with this sleep deprivation. (Only my children never bit me, there’s the difference.)
Mornings are INSANE! When Hershey gets out of her crate she leaps and twirls and jumps on us all to say, hello, hello, hello! I didn’t think you’d ever come down! I swear she watches the digital clock on the TV. She starts whimpering and barking downstairs around the same time every day.
So, she’s busy greeting us all, checking her bowl for food and running from room to room. Spencer the kitty is meowing as loudly as his little Siamese self can (which is very loud if you’ve ever heard a Siamese) so he can be heard above the ruckus. I imagine he’s saying, “Food now, people! Spencer hates to wait!”
Once they’re fed, watered and let out, let the games begin. It’s time to start play-fighting. Hershey gets so wild, her eyes almost roll to the back of her head. They tear across the floor and crash into things, and just when you think the poor cat is getting pummeled, he’s coming back for more. No, this is definitely reciprocal play.
And that makes me wonder if the two of them would be less crazy if they didn’t have each other to be crazy with. Would Hershey settle into a more sedate routine if the cat wasn’t constantly pouncing on her? Many a Hershey nap has been disrupted by this frisky feline. Or, is Spencer helping Hershey burn up her puppy energy that she’d other be channeling into chewing even more things?
My daughter’s a bit to blame, too. She tries to break up the cat-dog play fighting all concerned about the cat, and she gets caught in the crossfire. And then the dog thinks she wants to play and starts nipping and lunging at her. Then Riley’ll do something stupid like tug at the dog’s tail to get her to stop, (like maybe that’s where the on-off switch is) and it’s game on. Hershey’s put holes in a few of her shirts, most of her stockings and a pair of pants from tugging at her clothes.
I don’t know if it’s because Riley is so small and close to Hershey’s size, but Hershey is always trying to engage Riley. These fights are really hard to break up. Then just when you think you can’t take one more moment of it, the cat and dog curl up with each other and take a nice long nap.
I try to coach her to give Hershey a toy to play with instead, but that doesn’t always work. There doesn’t really seem to be anyway to calm Hershey down when she’s ready to rumble. “Don’t worry,” my sister-in-law with a wild lab tells me, “She’ll calm down in a couple years.”
Thanks. That’s really reassuring.
And now that Hershey’s exploding in size we have a new problem—the furniture. She can totally jump up on the chairs and the couch and we don’t want her to. I’m hoping when we can take her out when the weather turns nice, that Hershey will burn off her energy the good old fashioned way—with a walk or a game of fetch. But for now, it’s crazy town at our house, and I’ve got the scars to prove it.
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Have you missed any of the articles in this series?
If so, you can find them at:
The Bringing Up Puppy Series page.
Related posts:
- Bringing Up Puppy Series – The Worst Lab
- Bringing Up Puppy Series – Holding Tight
- Bringing Up Puppy Series – Who is the Boss?
- Bringing Up Puppy Series – Fairy Dog Mother – Part 2
- Bringing Up Puppy Series – Hello Stranger
