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It’s A Good Thing I Love Him

Every day I tell Vince how much I appreciate him being so calm with Oscar’s shenanigans. I keep thinking if he had wanted a dog and I hadn’t wanted one and I finally agreed to get one, I might not be as patient as Vince is being with Oscar.

First, he has so much energy. I know that’s just puppy and it seems worse because we’re older. I go out and we walk. He explores everything the first few trips around the house but by the third or fourth circle around, I push him to move a little faster – run off some of that energy. We come in the house and he’s still full of energy. Eventually, he’ll crash and sleep for a while. I told Vince this morning . . . I guess I’m going to have to nap when Oscar naps and go to bed when Oscar goes to bed.

Second . . the puppy pads! This takes about 30 seconds from the time I put a pad down. If I’m in the living room, I can stop him but if I go upstairs to put clothes from the washer to the dryer, or I go out with Rita, I come in and find this.

Same thing with the re-usable pads. It takes him a few minutes longer to tear those up but he has completely torn up three so far.

My deterrent for most things has been to spray him in the face . . just a mist . . of water so he learns if he does something he isn’t supposed to do, he’s going to get squirted but, with the puppy pads, I don’t want him to think he shouldn’t go near them . . just that he shouldn’t try to tear them up. Any advice?

He’s so cute but . . he’s a handful. It’s a good thing I really, really love him.

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Comments

  1. Puppies are hard!
    That’s why we have never just gotten one. We always get 2 puppies. They play, they sleep together. Believe it or not 2 are easier than one!
    I say get another one!!

    • I believe you but . . what IF I got another one and the two of them together were twice the trouble as Oscar is??

      We talked about getting two but that would give us three dogs and a cat and the vet bills would be more than we need to be spending.

  2. Walmart has some plastic pad holders. They fold in half to store but when you unfold it – the pad is the same size. And they pad snaps into each corner. I’m sure he could get it loose but it would slow him down?? Ive not had a dog that would understand to use the pad. Good luck.

    • Oh, I didn’t know that. Maybe at least I could hear him starting to go crazy with it. I’ll go check on that right now. Thanks.

  3. Are you ringing a bell every time you take Oscar out to potty? That helps give him the clue that this is potty time. I personally would skip the potty pads, you don’t want him to think it is ok to potty in his play yard.

    • Yes and he seems to think that’s quite fun but he just pees when he gets the urge and doesn’t even go to the pad half the time.

  4. Ask Jo. I think she had some bells for her pup to ring when he needed to go out.

    • I have the bells and we’re working on that but for now, all he wants to do is tear the bells off the doorknob and run with them.

  5. No puppy pads here ever. It’s just another thing to chew. We have a 1-year old puppy who has hit his terrible teens. Hasn’t chewed non-dog things in at least 6-8 months but is recently tearing up an upholstered chair (trying to entice the other dog to play with him), as well as an antique table, hat, and kids’ toys. Back in his crate he goes when he can’t be supervised!

    • We will always use pads every now and then, mostly when there’s sleet and ice outside and it isn’t safe to be out walking around. Oscar really needs to go often right now so having the pads down helps . . until he started shredding them.

      Also, if Vince is out of town or goes to bed early and Oscar needs to go out before bedtime, I’m too chicken to go out at midnight by myself without Vince knowing I’m outside so I always want Oscar to know about the puppy pads, though I prefer we not use them except under those circumstances.

      • If you had a fenced yard it might solve both problems. You would not need to go out with him and he could run free and get exercise.

        • He’s too small. We have hawks around here and there have been small dogs that have been taken by them. I’d never let him run outside without being right with him.

  6. We have never used puppy pads. We always had a set time when we would take them out. They learned this. When we would leave the puppies, they would be in their crate. They will not go in the crate. The only time we used pads was when Rose got very old and she couldn’t make it out every time she needed to go. So we put down pads everywhere. We had a friend who showed dogs and he told us his dogs could go for 3 days without pooping and peeing. They do need a routine. Same time every day.

    • I don’t think I would expect a puppy to go more than an hour or two during the day. They have very small bladders at this age.

  7. I feel for you, I have a 10 month old toy Australian Shepherd, that’s a bugger. Been 16 years since we had a new puppy, so it’s been hard. I put a small amount of vinegar in the water that’s in the spray bottle, doesn’t hurt them they don’t like the smell. We have a ton of chew toys, her favorite is the horn, so have them scattered everywhere. I just keep thinking what a wonderful work out I’m getting each day.

  8. We saw our mechanic and his wife yesterday. They have a now one year old puppy like Oscar. She says he still tears up everything, chews on everything and runs like a wild dog. She sees no change in sight.

  9. I was told years ago that if you let puppies chew on cloth like items they will chew up anything with a similar texture. They don’t know the difference between the soft chew toys and the pads. After we found this out we only bought things with other textures, primarily nylabone items since we’ve had big dogs. When Bridger was a puppy we bought small ones and they got bigger as he got bigger. Odd but he hasn’t been a big chewer but he’s big into retrieving so a rubber like ball with a rope was his favorite as a puppy. We also always crated him when we couldn’t be right with him. It’s a good thing they are so cute and adorable as puppies! Hang in there….they don’t stay puppies forever!

    • That may be true but Oscar will chew on leather furniture, wooden chair legs, metal table legs, hard plastic baby gates. I think he’s going to chew everything he can find for a while. The lady we got him from said he was the worst chewer of the litter.

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