Doggy Woes Chronicle #1

Naughty Puppers. Credit to Richard Thijeratt.

Any of you ever wanted a dog really badly, and when I say really, I mean REALLY badly. Well, that was (is?) me. So, here’s my two pence on that.
First, some context, I’m young, and I mean young enough to live with my parents and go to school. Second, I live in a place where it’s freezing half the time and swelteringly hot the rest.
Okay, now that that’s said, let’s move on to the more engaging details. I’ve wanted a dog for a better part of my life. As a single child, you tend to get a tad bit lonely. Fast forward to the global pandemic and a move in which I left all my friends behind; finally, my parents agreed to get me a dog. Under a couple conditions, of course: he was, by most means, my responsibility. They did agree to help me on a day to day basis, and all his medical needs were to be kept by them. Additionally, when I leave for college they would take up all my responsibilities, and the dog would become theirs officially.
I know what you all are thinking, “K, great deal! What’s the issue?” Well, it was a great deal, until I realized that we adopted a HEATHEN!
Let me explain. We did our research. We decided we wanted a medium to borderline low energy dog which didn’t have too much energy. We go for regular outings (pre-covid), so we wanted a dog that wouldn’t just be a couch potato all the time. We were also okay with dogs in-between ages 5 months to 4 years old. Do I even need to explain why he can’t have too much energy? Moving on, we were very active on Petfinder, a tool for finding adoptable dogs. After lots of research and 2 visits we met Spots(name changed for privacy), the fosters described him as a sweet, docile 6-month old whose history was unknown. We adopted him the day we met him, and that was that. He was a mutt, and all the shelter knew was that he had some Pitbull in him. He was pretty small, weighing in at only 29 pounds, with a lot of long hair!
Revisiting the memories, I do feel guilty for perhaps not looking at enough dogs. I do think we could have taken a bit more time on the decision. We thought if we didn’t adopt him that very day he might get adopted by someone else. Oh well, too late for regrets.
The first two and half weeks were great, he peed inside a couple of times, but that was just part of getting a dog. However, after that period, our sweet pup became an absolute nightmare. He started barking, jumping, and worst, biting. The worst was stairs, we live in a house with a lot of stairs, whenever we went up the stairs he would lunge, bite and hold on to limbs and clothing. It was absolute hell…

In my next post, we can visit how I trained him to not bite, only to be stumped by his other problems…