Little Oscar Is Almost A Big Boy!

Yesterday Vince and I were talking about Oscar and Vince asked me if I was still happy with Oscar and was there anything I would change about him. I am still very happy with him. I told Vince the only thing I would change is that I wish he was a little smaller. I think to be a mini, he should be under 12 or 13 pounds and he’s about 16 pounds. Because of the risk of back injuries, we do not let him go up or down the stairs. If I’m upstairs, we’ve started putting him in the crate downstairs because we just cannot keep him from breaking through every barrier we’ve tried. Once he comes up, I’ll carry him down and coming down the stairs with a squirming 16 pound dog is not easy. I think Oscar is a few pounds heavier than Speck was but . . when Speck was Oscar’s age, I was 25 years younger and my most recent memories of Speck was when he was an old, fragile and not very squirmy dog so maybe I’m just not remember him being so active.

Before y’all tell me that he needs to learn to be upstairs, there are several reasons he will never stay upstairs. First, we spend most of our time in the basement. It has windows and sunlight in the rooms we’re in so it’s an ok place to live. Second, the upstairs is almost all hardwood floors and Oscar has one speed . . running like a crazy dog, and his nails are like bear claws. When he’s just being calm, he scrapes us with his nails. Third, it’s the upstairs doors that might be opened and he would have a good chance of escaping. Downstairs, we have to go into a little “foyer” type room and to get into that room, we have to walk through a doggy gate that stays closed unless Oscar knocks it down so he can go upstairs, then to get outside from there, we have to go through a door into the garage and then out a walk through door and then into the fenced back yard. I’m not going to say we couldn’t lose him from the downstairs but I don’t think we would. Fourth, Vince spends a good bit of time upstairs and he’s not really good about not leaving candy or cookies within Oscar’s reach (chocolate!) so .. Oscar needs to stay downstairs.

A long time blog reader, Cilla, knows more about dachshunds than I’ll ever know and when I said I hoped by the time Oscar was a year old, he’d be calm, she always said “It will happen around his 2nd birthday.” He’s now 14 months old and almost every day he seems older and more mature. He listens better, I feel like he’s 100% trustworthy with his bathroom habits. He’s stopped chewing on the carpet and furniture. He will sit on our laps for hours.

He he was sleeping on my lap yesterday while I was stitching.

Speck was so protective of me and sometimes wouldn’t even let Vince walk by the chair where I was sitting. I told Vince that he needed to be the one to stop that kind of behavior and let Speck know who was boss but that never happened. Oscar seems to like us both pretty much equally. He’ll sit with Vince or he’ll sit with me. I’ve never heard him growl at either of us like he was going to bite.

Here he was sitting with Vince watching the Superbowl last night. The weird metal thing there is my Lowery frame with a little bag hanging over it. I put my thread tails in the bag.

Then he decided he would sleep on the arm of Vince’s chair, facing me . . he was right between us . . and that made him happy.

We couldn’t have gotten a funnier dachshund. His quirky personality keeps us laughing.

Rita is fine. She doesn’t enjoy human interaction. She doesn’t want to be held, doesn’t even like it when we pick her up to carry her outside. I have tried my best to get her to learn to love to snuggle but it’s never going to happen. She’s such a sweet little girl and I want to hold her and snuggle with her but she’s happiest being left alone.

Boots is as sweet as ever. He will set with me for hours so long as Oscar is not around. Oscar really aggravates him because Oscar wants to play and Oscar plays way too rough for Boots’ liking. Oscar never growls at Boots and Boots never hisses at Oscar but Boots seems to know exactly how high he has to sit to be out of Oscar’s reach. Oscar has given up barking at Boots. He seems to know now that when Boots is out of reach, no amount of barking is going to get him to come down so that’s helped a lot.

Everyone seems to be getting alone . . so long as neither Boots or Rita have to interact with Oscar