The First Day with Oscar

I’m not going to kid myself – I know we just had an extraordinary day with him yesterday and not every day will go so smoothly.

Our Setup:

We thought we had everything planned out and safe for him but . . he’s smarter than we are. The way our two recliners sit, he could get around them on either side and between them and behind them is where all the cords are – extension cords, and computer cords and tablet cords.

There are also things back there that we need to go through and that little rascal can get into everything. He finds papers to chew, he was chewing on a rubber mat that I had for blocking knitting. He was chewing on the plastic around a roll of batting. We just need to block him off from that area. Today we’re going to have to come up with a way to keep him from going around our chairs. I think we can dismantle the 5 or 6′ table we have set up for eating, push our chairs together . . no that isn’t going to work – even if our armrests are touching, there’s still about a 1′ gap between the bottom of the two chairs. We can put a box between the two chairs and angle the table on its side so he can’t hop up on the hearth and get past it and it will block his way on the side of my chair and we can use boxes on Vince’s side of the chair.

Bathroom Manners:

I’ve been so impressed with him. We met the lady to get him. She had three puppies and there were three of us meeting her to get our puppies. I’m not sure how long he had been in the car – at least 2-1/2 hours. I asked Vince if we should walk him and he said no, he’d be fine til we got home. Not so. I had brought a small blanket to wrap him in and he was actually sitting on that on my lap in the car and . . he peed. It got on the blanket, not on me . . thank goodness.

I don’t think the breeder had been taking him outside. There were several puppies and she worked outside the home so I’m guessing they used puppy pads.

The first time I took him out at home, he hopped around in the grass, rolled around in it and thoroughly enjoyed it. We walked quite a bit before he finally peed. We kept walking and he pooped. Both times, I was saying “go pee” and “go poop” while he was actually doing it. Then I praised him . . gave him a treat, which he wouldn’t eat so the next time, I took a piece of kibble out and gave that to him and he was thrilled.

Every single time I took him out, even if it was 10 minutes after he had been out before (because I wanted him to see what Rita did just to make sure he understand what we were trying to do). But, if I walk outside with him, the minute I put him down, he pees. I praise him and give him a treat. He did #2 three times outside – not once did he pee or poop in the house. As far as I can tell, he didn’t pee in his crate last night. I took him out about midnight so from midnight til 5 a.m. wasn’t terribly long to hold it since I don’t think he drank any water late last night. We forgot to get a water bottle to put in his crate but we’ll get that today so he can have water at night if he wants it . . I guess. I can’t remember if we left water in Speck’s crate overnight. Do we need to do that?

He was on and off the carpet all afternoon yesterday. I think he likes being in the area where we are.

Here’s a funny story: I’ve probably told this before. When we got Speck, Vince and been saying “I’m not ever having a dog in the house. I don’t want a dog peeing and pooping in the house!” So, we got Speck and he was about 8 weeks old. He had not been house trained and yes, there were a few accidents in the house but one day, Vince was walking in from work and I saw Speck just fixing to poop on the floor. I knew I couldn’t get him outside in time . . this is gross . . but I grabbed it in my hand, ran to the bathroom and flushed it . . before Vince saw it. I did not want him to know Speck had done that. It was on tile floor so as soon as Vince went to change his clothes, I sprayed it and cleaned it.

Yesterday I had put Oscar and his toys on the tile floor and had him blocked from the carpet and he wanted in. Vince said “Why won’t you let him in here?” I said “I don’t want him to pee on the carpet.” Vince said “It’s just carpet. Clean it. The worst that happens is once he’s trained, we have to replace the carpet.” WHAT?? Where did YOU put my real husband? 🙂

But, seriously, I’m so happy we had a good day with training. We’ll see how today goes.

He’s just the sweetest little guy. In some of the pictures, he looks big but he’s just so tiny. He weighs just a tad over 3 pounds.

While playing with him yesterday, Vince said “I wonder when we’ll hear him bark.” Just as Vince said that, he barked. We both cracked up.

His worst behavior – we don’t wear shoes in the house and he grabs our socks and tries to pull them off our feet. Super sharp puppy teeth . . he usually grabs our toes trying to get to our socks. Yesterday I was sitting on the floor and had my feet kinda behind me tucked up under the sofa and he still managed to grab the side of my foot. We’re going to work on that little habit.

The lady we got him from said her friend came over yesterday evening and her little boy is 5 and he cried when he realized Oscar was gone. That was his favorite puppy. She showed him the pictures I had sent her and explained to the little boy that Oscar is very happy in his new home and she said he was better after seeing the pictures of Oscar in his new home.

Let’s hope today goes as well as yesterday did.