A day in the life of Pupkin, month 1
I have now had my little Pupkin for almost four weeks (!). As of a week ago, she had already gained two pounds during our time together, bringing her to a gargantuan seven pounds three ounces. She is smart and funny and adaptable and wild and sweet and I love her so much that sometimes I just want to squeeze her. She is very squeezable.
When I first got her, she was so scared and so out of her element. She had never been away from her mother and siblings, never been on a leash, never been in a car except for a few trips to the vet. Within a couple of days it was clear how adaptable she is, as she was by then accustomed to a leash, understanding of what she should do outside, and an angel in the car. A few days after I got her, we drove almost six hours from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh and she slept in her carrier the entire time. She is still good in the car, but I have to make sure I take her on a car ride at least once a week, as she struggles when I put her in her carrier if she forgets what that means. She does fine on the highway but does tend to get a little carsick on curvy roads.
So many things about her have already changed from those first days I had her. At that time, she couldn't maneuver hills at all. Her coordination involving her feet was not very developed, and every time we went down even a slight incline, her body would get ahead of her feet and she would tumble over like a pillbug, which did not faze her in the least. There were times then when I thought that she was forgetting to use her back paws because she would move her front ones while keeping the back ones in place, making her stretch out and ultimately causing her to crash to the ground. But I've since concluded that she does this intentionally as a mark of caution; it happens whenever she approaches a new surface in particular, like the first time she came into the kitchen, with its linoleum floor. She checks it out with her front paws first until she feels safe moving her whole body across the surface line. She does this less and less. She was so unused to anything in my world when she came into it; she wouldn't even cross tiny side streets. Now she is getting more and more fearless. She was born in the country but she will be a city dog.
She likes her routine, and she's very set upon it. When I come into the living room to get her in the morning, she's always wide awake and sitting up to greet me (no doubt she's usually awakened by hearing the alarm five or six times). She just waits for me; she doesn't cry or make any noise. She gets crated at night and when I'm gone and does fine with it -- she even likes her crate and will go in there on her own to sleep sometimes. That said, when I open the door to get her out, especially in the morning, it is like I am releasing her from Auschwitz. She weeps, she hugs, she kisses, she paws at my face. She is always so so happy to see the daytime.
I take her out and feed her, and she follows me around and begs for attention while I brush my teeth and make the bed. When I head into the shower, though, she knows I'll be out of commission for a bit, and then my dog does the most hilarious thing that I think she does. She has three toys: a rope chew, a nylabone, and a stuffed Gumby. The rope and nylabone stay in her crate with her at night in case she needs something to occupy her and Gumby stays wherever in the house he landed, because Gumby has a squeaker and I'm not going to listen to that shit while I'm trying to sleep. While I'm in the shower, without exception, she goes and fetches all three of her toys and brings them into the office. She knows that's where I'll be all day, and thus where she'll be, and I like to think that she is setting up shop for the day. She knows the sound of the shower curtain being pulled back and runs into the bathroom the second she hears it, where she greets me by licking the water off my legs, which I hate.
She stays in my office most of the day (in general, she follows me wherever I go, which means I never have to coax her anywhere, which is nice). Some of the time she plays with her toys, and some of the time she sleeps on the floor or in her bed (not to be confused with her crate), but usually once in the morning and once in the afternoon, she gets WILD. This can manifest as running around the house or as incessant chewing on things she shouldn't be chewing, usually her wicker bed or the rug. I try to deter her and steer her towards her toys, but occasionally I have to give up and put her in her crate if I have any hope of getting work done (not as a punishment! The crate is never a punishment!) If this happens, she usually goes right to sleep. As I type this, she's in her open crate, chewing on her blanket. She's had a wild evening.
After the workday I feed her dinner and try to grab the opportunity to do stomach crunches, which is the only exercise I've been doing for several months, unfortunately. I don't know what it is about this activity, but if she catches me doing this, she goes crazy. She crawls all over my head and on my face. It's quite annoying and hilarious. In general, if she's near me when I'm lying down -- though we're separated at night, I've let her stay with me the couple of times I've taken a nap -- this is how she behaves for a few minutes until she settles down. Then she cozies up to my face and goes to sleep. She likes to have one paw on my face or on my hand while she sleeps, which kills me, obviously.
I try to take her on a long walk in the morning and a long one at night, but my schedule and my ankle being what they are, this usually turns into short walks in the morning and at midday and a long one at night, if I can. She's a much better dog outside of the house than in it for the most part. She'll bark at people and dogs in the yard but rarely does so on walks. I assume this is territorial. She gets better and better at walking every day and loves the park. If I do a good job and really take her on the kind of walk she should have, she is worn out by the end. Sometimes she will just stop and lie down on the sidewalk before we're home. I think she knows our house -- she usually scampers up the steps when we get there -- but she will also often tentatively try to go up stairs at other houses, which is hilarious because she can now get up most stairs but still can't really go down any.
Her chewing extends to people, which I'm trying to break her of to a fair degree of success over the last couple of weeks. The absolute worst thing that she does is play with her leash in a very aggressive way. The vet has assured me that it is just playing, but she will bite her leash and refuse to let go, and if I try to take it from her, she growls in a scary way and seems to stop obeying completely. I've recently noticed that this behavior is at its worst on Friendship Avenue, probably the busiest street we walk on, and that it's even more exaggerated during rush hour. So now I think it may be a nervous reaction and that taking over her leash is her way of gaining control over a scary situation. The best thing to do in this case, I've found, is to ignore her and do my best to keep walking, no matter how much she pulls back. While she already has a sense of "go out" and "eat," she does not seem to understand the word "no" at all. If I yell at her she thinks I am trying to play. It gives credence to the wisdom I've read that schnauzers love ALL attention, so the most effective way to train them out of doing bad things is to ignore them.
She is not fully housetrained yet and I'm a little discouraged by it. She knows exactly what to do when she goes outside and does it regularly and beautifully. But she does not seem to have caught onto NOT doing it inside. Working from home gives me the benefit of taking her out regularly throughout the day -- every hour if she's awake. And we still have yet to have an accident-free day. If she has to go, she just goes, even though I know she can hold it. She doesn't even try to hide it from me, which says to me it hasn't registered that this is not good yet. I'm doing absolutely everything the wisdom and trainers tell me to do. It's frustrating, but I guess it's just a matter of patience. In everything else she has proven very trainable. She increasingly responds to "walk" and "come" when we're walking and will often go to the bathroom outside on command. Jonathan taught her to sit and she was an expert after about five minutes, though she will only do it for him, not for me.
For the most part, she really is a wonderful dog, very sweet and affectionate and smart. She continually surprises me with her ability to handle new situations and environments. I started bringing her to the theater with me last week, which I was nervous to do, mostly because of the housetraining issues. But she did beautifully and just stayed quiet and observed the whole time. She loves sitting and snuggling with other people, though if I leave the room, she apparently sits up and looks intently in the direction I've gone until I come back. She is my baby and very attached to me for sure. But she loves most people and is very affectionate with them. She uses her front paws (her hands, I call them) more than any dog I've ever known, and one of the things she does with them is to take someone's face in her hands when she licks them. Some people are thrown by this, understandably so, but I think it's quite adorable. She loves being held tightly, swaddled even, and calms right down when I do it if she's wild or upset. It's one of the primary lessons I've learned about puppies, I think -- how quickly they can change their moods based on the cues you give them. The other big lesson is how well they do as long as they know absolutely that they're loved, that they're secure, that their needs are accounted for and that they will always go back to a safe happy home. The longer she's in that environment, the quicker she learns, the better she responds to people, and the more eager she is to love. I guess that is a good lesson to learn generally.