Well sadly I’m way behind in posting about our new baby Daisy. She is now ten months old and we have a playmate for her that is 5 months old. Wow, how time flies when you have new dogs in the house. I’m going to try and catch you up on our “dog” adventures. Let’s start with this one, when Daisy had been with us a whole four days…..

Today we will begin our 4^th full day with Daisy.  All 2.9 pounds of her arrived around 6 p.m., Thursday night.  What a little doll.  I don’t believe I have ever had a dog that small.  She was kind of quiet and seemed a bit shy.  At a little over seven weeks old, this will be the first night away from everything she has ever known.  What can go wrong there?

We have been planning to receive our new baby for three weeks now.  Her special area was all ready.  We had her food, bed, baby blankets, toys, pee pads.  So just four hours after she arrived, it was time to go to bed.  Now the hard part begins.  We put her in her bed in her special area and off to sleep she went.  Huh, how about that.  I woke up at 2 a.m. and thought, wow still no crying.  When I rolled over in bed and was facing the side of the bed my husband was on, there was a little black and white blob.  Well good grief, what kind of mother am I?  I didn’t even hear her cry.  But my husband did and didn’t have the heart to let her cry it out.  I kept worrying about her waking up and my not hearing it.  So I just kept watching her.  At 3:20 a.m., her eyes popped open and our day officially began. 

My husband and I both stayed home from work Friday to be with her.  We did all the usual things.  We took her to my office, to his office and to Petco of course because we apparently hadn’t gotten everything we needed.  We chased her around Friday and worked hard to get her to go potty where she was supposed to go potty.  Grass was a new concept for her but the pee pads were a really good thing. By the time Friday night rolled around, we decided to just put her in bed with us. 

Daisy slept on my side of the bed, but what she really wanted to do was sleep on top of my head.  I battled this dog for hours trying to get her to sleep where I wanted her to sleep and her letting me know that we were playing by her rules.  So I had another 4 hours of off and on sleep when I was jolted awake because she finally fell off the bed.  Up at 4 a.m., Daisy and I began our day again.  My entire Saturday felt like I had jetlag without the fun trip.  I was a walking zombie and my husband was not far behind me.  As we got ready to go to bed Saturday night, my husband asks, “What are we going to do tonight?”  I had a very firm answer for him, “I don’t know.”  What in the world have we gotten ourselves into?  Are we too old for this?  After a few minutes my husband made the decision.  Tonight she sleeps in her bed in her special place and we will do our best not to go get her if she cries.  “Deal.” I reply. 

I put all of Daisy’s toys in her area and put the t-shirt I had worn that day in her bed.  She curled up and went right to sleep.   We tiptoed past her to get to our room, fell into bed and I don’t remember much after that.  At 5:30 a.m., after 8 glorious hours of sleep, I woke up and looked around the bed.  No dog.  Did she really sleep in her bed all night and not cry?  I jumped up, put on my robe and quietly opened the door to her room.  There she was, sitting in her bed with one of her toys.  When she saw me she got up and came to me with her little tail wagging and covering my face with kisses.  Wow, she did it.  We were on to something here.

The most important thing in new puppy training that I had forgotten while in my brain fog and severe fatigue was consistency.  Babies, children and puppies need consistency.  Daisy needed to be loved, to play hard, eat nutritious food and learn a routine.  I’m told a Shih Tzu will respond very well to treats while training.  We are finding that to be the case for sure.  At just 3 pounds, it’s a little hard to push through the heavy vinyl of the dog door.  But put a tasty treat on the other side and call her, she can get through, although its slow right now.  She even went through it on her own yesterday, but then wasn’t sure how to get back in.  We are working on that.

I have also learned that she is like a baby or toddler because she need naps.  Lots of naps.  She loves her bed and when she gets tired, she just goes and gets in her bed and takes a nap.  If she is playing with us and we notice that she is playing too rough with those sharp little teeth, we know she is tired.  Instead of crying like little kids do when they are overly tired, she just gets too wound up and can’t seem to get control of her emotions.  We put her in her bed and she goes right to sleep.  My human kids weren’t that easy to put to bed.

Another really exciting thing we are noticing today is that she seems to be getting an idea of when she needs to potty and going to the appropriate place.  The ultimate goal for Daisy is to use the dog door and to go out to the yard area we have for her to do her business.  The sun is finally shining here today and hopefully no more rain for a few days.  I think we can make some real progress with potty training this week.

Well nap time is almost over.  I have got to go get those training treats ready for our next opportunity to learn.