Young Ones

My life this week has been pleasantly surrounded by young souls. I picked up Lil Cuz on Thursday for a long weekend visit, and a week ago today a new family member was brought home. Our two and a half month, almost three month, old boy is a German Shepherd puppy. I’ll nickname him Sweet Boy for this purpose.

Sweet Boy is, as his name implies, a sweet loveable boy. He has been pretty good for us this week, except he doesn’t like his cage. I’ve had mixed emotions about the cage. I’ve never had a dog that I caged but the experts are now saying that because of the dog’s long history of den living, cages are perfect. They say if you create a den atmosphere about the cage, then the dog will grow to feel safe and comfortable.

Unfortunately, Sweet Boy hasn’t gotten the memo yet. He has gotten better over the past few days, but he still goes through long periods of whining. We have been caging him at night in hopes of creating longer periods of time between him going to the bathroom so that he can better handle when we’re at work. We have gotten him up to four hours, but only after a 2am pee break. Sagittarius and I have been trading naps during the day to compensate for the sleep deprivation. I imagine this must be similar to what parents go through with new babies.

We are also working on his biting. It’s cute now, but as one book brought to our attention, it won’t be cute when he’s an adult with teeth designed to tear flesh apart. So we have taken to the idea of crying out in fake pain and halting the play every time he bites. The idea was that puppies stop bite playing with their siblings when they cry out in pain. Hopefully he won’t like the loss of his playmate and will eventually stop biting the playmate for fear of losing said pal. So far, results have been mixed.

Sweet Boy

In the midst of all this, I picked up Lil Cuz so we could spend some time together. She is going to be one of my bridesmaids.  So we took the opportunity to go dress shopping this weekend with Rose, who’s going to be another bridesmaid, to get ideas. It was productive as both agreed on a style they liked and I finalized what shades of green and red I would like for the wedding.

Lil Cuz amazes me sometimes. In the same discussion of typical teenage girl talk of boys, she also talks about what she wants from life, being true to herself and her goals, as well as throwing around other terms that you would expect out of an adult more so than a sixteen year old. Even if I do have to con her to give up her phone and texting for part of it, even visit with her is precious.

I and Lil Cuz at mini golf

Sagittarius, Lil Cuz and Sweet Boy at the park