Well, my niece Melissa is gone!  And I finally have the house to myself, kind of. Now that Melissa is gone along with her dog Bonnie, everybody wants to come visit. So this coming weekend I have my brother (my little brother), who’s a big successful PhD researcher with the government. So I have to do quite a bit of tidying up the house to try to impress him and his wife. Thankfully their children are grown and they have no pets, so it’ll be just a relaxing visit with them, me, and the puppy (and Dakota of course). Melissa being the millennial that she is of course, did not exactly leave the guest quarters of the house in a clean and pristine state for the next guest. Her bathroom was a complete disaster, and her bedroom is pretty muddy from Bonnie tracking in that beautiful red clay mud that is everywhere down here. It will also be a challenge to clear off the dining room table of all the puppy papers, food, toys, and other things that have been put up so he can’t chew them. And something that drives me nuts, I guess it’s a particular idiosyncrasy of mine, is I need to clean the windows on the front of the house. There’s only 6 of them but they are just caked with mud and several have bird shots on them. It’s one of the things we never did when we first moved in because we got new windows I figured we do it then. I also never put up curtains in Melissa’s room or her bathroom because she took care of that with some humongous set of room darkening curtains I would never have my house. I guess when you want to sleep until 12 o’clock or 2 PM you need to make your bedroom most like a cave. Also in order to get that odor of several puppy accidents around the various bedrooms, all the bedrooms need to be shampooed. So we’ve been keeping busy.

And when I get hot and tired from doing all that stuff, I’ve been sitting down and watching a lot of my videos from 2016. I wish I had done videos of Caesar when he was a puppy, so that I would know if this puppy was like he was. Similar to babies, I don’t remember puppies being quite so much trouble. Especially the fact that they want to be awake at 2 AM, and 4 AM, and 6 AM. And I’m trying to be patient, but sleep deprivation makes you a little on the touchy side. Just to let you know, he is crated during the night in what we are calling his “kennel”. When I tell him it’s time to go to bed, he is pretty cute. He comes in to the kitchen where his crate is and kind of dances around in front of it. He does not want to go in it because he knows what it means, that he will be separated from us for the night. But if I give him a little push in the direction he goes right in and lays down. And then once we turn off all the lights and go into my bedroom, he may give out a couple of whines and a bark, but then settles down and goes to sleep. But then usually around 2 or 3 o’clock Dakota will get up and move around or go and get a drink or leave the bedroom and lay on the wooden floor outside of the kitchen and I think that wakes him up. And he wants to see what the activity is so he starts the bark. I probably mistakenly have done the wrong thing, and gotten up and let him out to pee, which he actually does on command now. But then he does not want to go back and go to sleep. One night this weekend I was really tired and I went in and gave him a SWAT and told him NO! He did seem to go quiet for another 2 hours. But he did start back up at 4:30 AM. I really just need to learn to sleep with a pillow over my head or ear plugs.

Other than my constant state of sleep deprivation, we are doing pretty well with the puppy. He is slowly learning the rules about not eating Dakotas food, not chewing my shoes (though he has destroyed my slippers and my sandals which I mistakenly gave him when he first got here). Much like my younger son Bradley, was now almost 25, he does like to untie my shoes. I think he also has small fits of frustration when we take things away from him. Especially when Dakota takes things away from him. Dakota has had to put him in his place several times when he believes he’s the “Alpha” puppy. But they really do play well together inside and out. And we have started to do a little training with him since he is now just 14 weeks. Potty training is fine if I pay attention to him. He comes to me to go outside and sometimes I think he just wants to play. But it’s definitely a different signal that if I was paying attention I would realize he wants to go outside. Now he always goes right outside and tinkles, but then he does run around and play, so I’m not sure if he’s training me or if I’m training him. He still doesn’t hold it while I’m at work, but of course I put down papers (which he ceremoniously shreds into little bits after peeing and pooping on them) which seems to be making it just harder to clean up. I do think he tries to clean up himself because he tends to drag the towels in his crate over to where he peed and drag them through the pee and poop and around the kitchen. I haven’t the heart to tell him he’s not really helping.

So we have done a couple of small hikes and some nice little parks, and we will try to put out some short videos about those. One of the things I found out was that the counties around here have a pretty regular episode of rabies in the wild animals. Mostly skunks, and occasionally a bat. And since Akela has not had his rabies shot yet, I’m a little reluctant to take them out to some of the far-off places that we like to hike. We’ll get him those shots this week, and maybe get him chipped, just in case he ever does disappear. Though it’s amazing how well he comes when called and stays within easy sight.  And so far he has not taken off after any squirrels  or bunny rabbits, though he did show an excessive amount of interest in a squirrel that ran out of the neighbors yard this morning. He was perked up and in the “ready to run” stance and I defensively said NO! ,  and he did immediately turn around and come over to me. So that’s what’s new with us and the puppy. If you haven’t seen the latest videos, Dakota and the puppy had a great hike on the Buffalo Mountain preserve with my son that you can see by clicking that link, and we did a local hike in the Big leaf Magnolia Park in Statesville, which was fun although way too hot. So keep an eye on the videos, we are going to make a “Puppy Playlist” and we will do some basic puppy training advice to add to that playlist for anybody who wants to know my philosophy on puppies. So thanks for reading this far, stay tuned to the videos on my YouTube channel, and stay happy, smiling and living life to the fullest.

Rick, Dakota, Caesar 2.0 (Akela)