Puppy Update: December

Hard to believe Ferris is already over five months old. It’s been a bit since I gave you all an update on how Mr. Drooler is doing, so I thought I’d fix that right now.

All told, he’s settling in very well. He’s got a routine that he sticks to for the most part. Up around 7am, lunch at noon, dinner at 5, and to bed at 8:30pm. Lately he’s been teething, with little puppy teeth coming out left and right. This also means that his mouth is hurting him, and so he likes to gnaw on things a bit more than normal. (The real trick is convincing him that MC is not a chew toy. He still views her as his peer instead of Someone to Listen To.)

Tomas trained Ferris to ring a bell by the door whenever he needs to go out. This was a very good idea in theory, and Ferris picked it up very easily. However, it also gave Ferris a tool to tell us that he pretty much always wants to go out. If we’re not being entertaining enough, he’ll just go over and ring the bell. Multiple times. Have you tried reasoning with someone whose trump card is “I will poop on the floor if you don’t do what I want you to do”? It’s very difficult, especially when the only way they can communicate is by ringing a bell, barking, or lunging for your seven year old.

Still, we haven’t had any accidents in a long time. (Except for one, when the kids were all trying to get ready for the bus, and Ferris was freaking out. We thought it was just because he was sad they were going. It turns out it was because he had to poop . . .)

He’s very affectionate, and still likes to come sit in my lap, even if he doesn’t really fit anymore. (He’s getting very big, very quickly.) He will happily play fetch with anyone who’s up to the task, and he loves going on runs. That said, he also tends to be frightened pretty easily. We were watching Alone the other day, and there was a bear on the screen. Ferris was not a fan of the bear at all, and wouldn’t calm down until the bear left. Of course, it was on our projector, so the bear was bigger than he was. I guess we can’t blame him.

The older he gets, the easier he is to have around. It’s great having someone there who’s always up for some camaraderie, though it’s true that sometimes I’d rather just sit there and relax instead of entertaining a five month old puppy. But between the five of us, we’ve usually got him covered. Really, if we can get the nipping completely under control, I think we’ll be sitting pretty. We had been yelling at him a ton when he nipped, but I’m beginning to think that’s the wrong approach. It’s like ringing the bell. He knows he can get attention if he does it, so we have to try distracting him instead.

It’s a learning curve, but we’re getting it down. Still very glad we got the little bounder.

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