Puppy Parenting 101

Welcome to puppy patenting! Where the nights are short and the days are long. The food is over cooked and often a little bit cold.

Puppy parenting, where your Friday night date is a Wonder Puppy play date and your pockets are littered with stinky puppy treat crumbs.

Puppy parenting, where the main topic of conversation is the color, consistency and frequency of his poop.

Welcome to puppy parenting, where you get stopped every 3 -5 feet on a walk because he is so unbelievably adorable and where you discover it's all worth it because of the unconditional love you'll receive every single day for the rest of his life.

Welcome Home Baby Boy

I can not believe how big our new puppy is already. I love having a puppy in the house again. He's so adorable and I will never tire of watching him sleep.

We've already started his potty training. We set a timer for 30 minutes and take him out every time the timer dings, unless he's alseep, which he is right this very second and that is why I am able to write this.

Kismet

I was just about to start this blog with an apology and then I decided, "No way". I'm not about to apologize for the excitement I have in my life right now for the little being that is about to bless this house with unconditional unstoppable puppy love energy.

I know I posted quite a few pictures and a video of our new addition on Facebook over the weekend, but we are so excited to have little Marbles in our lives. The litter reached their 8wk mark this past week and most of his litter mates went home, but before we knew we were getting a new little guy in our lives we made plans to go to the beach for Christmas.

We decided it would be much better for Marbles to stay with Golden Grams, our breeder (Judy), while we went to the beach. We want his first place away from his birth home to be his forever home for the ease of transition on him.

He won't be alone. Don't you worry one little bit about him. He will have his puppy Momma, Chatter, there with him along with a sister and a brother. Plus there are plenty of animals at Golden Grams house.

We went to see him this weekend, even though we knew we would be leaving him there with Grams. We sat in the barn with all the families that were there to take their babies home and visited and played with puppies for about three hours. It was so much fun and we are so freakin' excited. We literally keep eking out little squeals of delight. Sunday morning when we were pretending he was already here, Keri said, "We're going to have to calm down when he's actually here. We need to be the calm leaders of the pack that he will need to feel secure". She's so cute and so ready. She placed his crate in it's place in the bedroom, so we can acclimate to it's presence so we don't bump into it and startle the little guy in his sleep.

OMG!!! I just remembered that we were watching, "I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown" on Saturday evening. That was the day we went to see Marbles, and like we had never seen it before this scene comes on,... and I don't know how familiar most of you are with Snoopy and his cast of characters, but Keri has been a huge fan since she was tiny. She had a Snoopy bathing suit when she was little and carried a Snoopy around with her everywhere. She had, what she thought was all of Snoopy's siblings too and used to build houses for them out of record covers. So, we always watch all the Carlie Brown specials.

This time though we saw something we had never seen before. Rerun, Linus and Lucy's younger brother really wanted a dog for Christmas. He went to Charlie Brown's house and asked if he could borrow Snoopy. Snoopy wasn't having it, but the subject of Snoopy's siblings came up as an option and the very first one mentioned was Marbles.

Wha- wha- WHAT????? Yes, that's right. Keri's lifelong love of Snoopy and all the years she has watched Snoopy cartoons she never remembered him having a sibling named Marbles, but there he was clear as day. We quickly jumped on the interwebs and Googled, Snoopy's brother Marbles.

Lo and behold, there he was. So, not only is our Little Marbles a nephew of Waffles, but his namesake, is also a brother to Snoopy. This could not be any more perfect!!!

Love at First Sight

One of the most exciting things in my world happened over the Thanksgiving weekend. Keri and I were at our friends house doing our Thanksgiving thing, chatting, eating, laughing and sharing.

As I was sitting at the table eating this delicious meal and thoroughly enjoying the lightness of the conversation I looked out the window. The evening was dark and there were lights on the leaves of the trees. It seemed to me the trees were standing outside giving me a friendly wave hello as the breeze was blowing through.

I looked over to my wife to see her adorable smile as she was enjoying the conversation with our friend and he was smiling his adorable bearded smile. I paused for a moment and smiled back at them and said, "This is the perfect Thanksgiving. The food is delicious, the company is fantastic and the ambiance is so relaxed". It was lovely.

After we finished dinner, our friend invited us to come sit in the kitchen and visit with him while he cleaned. The ease of the evening continued. We offered to help, but he wouldn't have it. So, we continued with conversation as he effortlessly weaved in and out of being busy with cleaning and maintaining the flow of conversation.

During the course of, after dinner, conversation and sipping sweet iced tea, Keri thought to check her e-mail. Why??? You my be wondering when all was going so perfectly. Well,... Let me tell you. We had been waiting for a response from our breeder, Judy. We knew it was Thanksgiving weekend and we weren't sure what plans she might have, but we also knew our puppy was to be 5 weeks old meaning old enough for a visit.

The response came that perfect night. Judy asked Keri in the e-mail if we were available the next day around 11am. We squealed with delight. Oh my goodness!!! We get to go see our puppy!!! The next 16 hours were full of Keri and I letting out little bursts of excitement, followed by either one of us saying, "I'm so excited!!!"

It's the Little Things

A couple weeks ago I was laying in bed on a lazy weekend morning, talking with Keri and planning our day. As I was laying on my side looking at Keri, I occasionally would peek outside our window to look at birds and squirrels. As I was looking out there I discovered in the leaves and branches of the trees a familiar shape. I refocused my eyes and looked a little harder.

I said to Keri, "Look, baby, we have a puppy outside in our tree". I do this kind of thing all the time. I see images in random patterns of clouds, leaves, grains of wood, swirls of marble, and just about anywhere. I have tried pointing these things out to Keri over the years and we just see things differently. She knows this and I tend to forget, so when I tried to show her the puppy she said I have a hard time seeing those things, but you can tell me about it.

There was a cute little husky puppy out there. It looked to me like he standing right at my feet, looking up at me with big puppy eyes as if he wanted a treat or some lovin'. I told Keri we need to name this puppy. She said, "Ok, let's call him Roscoe".

Even though she can't see him and he's not really real, I'm happy to have a puppy around the house until our new puppy is born and is old enough to come home with us.

Simply the BEST

One morning this last week I was talking to Waffles, our 12 year-old golden retriever puppy, as I was making breakfast. I was telling him all the things I love about him. I always include his sweet brown dramatic eyes and his beautiful blonde eyelashes. I talked to him about his gorgeous white sail of a tail. I told him how much I loved his expressive little eye brows.

I love it when I am having a bad day and I sit down to cry he comes and sits right beside me. Most times he doesn't do anything, he doesn't even look at me, but he just sit there and will BE with me as I cry. He usually he gives me a sweet little sideways look as if to ask me if I'm going to be ok. Sometimes he'll put his paw on my leg. He really is the sweetest dog I have ever known.

I was telling him how I thought he was not just our dog of dogs, but THE DOG of DOGS. I know people who are admittedly not "dog people" and you know what? They LOVE Waffles. His sweetness effortlessly transcends limits set before him.

One of the best things Waffles exemplifies is the philosophy of TRUE. He has no false pretense. He does not care who comes to visit him if someone else has something yummy and he thinks he just might have a chance of getting some yummy in his tummy, he will totally ignore his visitor. He never intends to hurt anyones feelings, he just knows what he wants and he's going to drum up the cutest face he can to get it too.

Waffles you are one of my very best friends and I love the example of living and loving life that you provide to me and everyone that has the tremendous amount of luck to know you. Mommies love you buddy.

Yummy feelings of LOVE

It's difficult to put into words how much I love my 12-year-old golden retriever puppy. He is a part of me. It's like I am a poly cotton blend, except it's more like puppy human blend. His fibers and my fibers have woven themselves together to provide a very cozy feeling relationship that wraps us both up like your all time favorite blanket. You know, the blanket your grandma made for you. The one you wrapped up in every single night of your childhood and every single time you stayed home sick.

The love that was hand stitched into that blanket warmed you to health, soothed you to sleep and wrapped you in an embrace of love that you will carry with you deep in your soul no matter if that blanket still exists or not.

Why am I writing about this? Well, I gotta tell you, I sat down to my keyboard to write a blog this evening and I looked over at my wife loving on our puppy and he looked at me with the sweetest brown eyes, blinked his little blonde eyelashes at me and I felt my very being swell with yummy feelings of love. It was like the perfect mixture of warm melted butter and your favorite jelly on toast, oozing out of all my pores. For me that would be more butter than jelly and the jelly would be a very thin, barely visible, smear of strawberry, delicately and purposefully spread to cover the entire piece of toast.

Waffles is our golden's name and he will ALWAYS be with me, no matter if his physical form exists or not. His eternal spiritual being will always be with me even if he re-emerges into another physical being of another dog.

There are two reasons why I am writing about him in this manner. #1- Even though I know what I am knowing about him being with me for ever, I am also knowing that he will transition. when he does it will be before I am ready and I will be sad. #2- I managed to total my car this last week. I was not ready for my car to make that transition and yes, I did feel a flicker of sadness as I cleaned out my little silver bullet today. I said good-bye to my little car and my very first Apozitude window lettering. I sat on the curb next to my car in the auto body shop and looked up to the sky. I thanked the universe for providing me that car and for the car doing such a good job of protecting me. I am grateful for what I have.

Someone asked me later in the day if I was sad to let my car go. I said, "Yes, a little bit, but it was just a car". I would MUCH rather be sitting here cuddling with my sweet little Waffles Bear.

We Luh ya' Puppy

Whenever I write about Waffles, I always feel I should clarify because I don't really know how many people are reading this blog. I imagine it is more than I know and that new people are discovering Apozitude all the time, so I have to be sure that when I mention Waffles, every one knows he's our sweet little golden retriever.

Waffles is the sweetest most gentle puppy you'll ever meet. He will be 12, July 13th. Wow, that's next month! I can't believe it, Puppy. He is so loved by so many. He has a very special spirit this Waffles Bear of ours. We feel tremendously blessed to share our lives with him. Do you know the song, I Luh ya Papi, by JLo? I sing that to Waffles all the time. I luh ya puppy. I, luh ya, luh ya, luh ya puppy.

The first week of May Waffles gave us quite a scare as he walked up to my wife, Keri, and leaned into her legs as he started to have a seizure. We weren't sure at first what was happening, but figured it out real quick. I have epilepsy myself, so I kind of feel like I had an idea of what he was experiencing. Keri has seen me have seizures before, so she had a different perspective on the situation. Together, I feel we handled it like a couple of pros.

After a trip to the emergency Vet that evening, our regular vet the next day, blood tests and much consideration, we decided to take him to a neurologist for an MRI and spinal tap to determine if a brain tumor was the cause. It was devastating news at first to have confirmation that a tumor had started to grow on his brain. We did further tests to rule out any other tumors in his body, once we knew what we were dealing with we decided to seek treatment.

Dr. Cyman gave us a good prognosis and laid out a course of radiation treatments. His treatments have been going just fine. I think if it were me enduring what he's going through, I'd be crying, just from the anesthesia very single day, but he's taking it like a champ. He's kinda drag ass going in for the treatments, but his energy is very good afterwards and he hasn't complained once.

During the weekends when he has a break from the radiation we do some of his favorite things. We took him to the beach before his treatments began and he played like a puppy, chasing the ball, exploring the beach and we've taken him to a local park where he threatened to chase some ducks, but was a little stand offish when the ducks reached the water. He needs a little ramping up to jump in water. We've played soccer and he really enjoys all of these activities, plus they provide him some exercise. It is also really good for Keri and I to see that he is his usual strong playful puppy self in spite of the tumor.

We have always said Waffles is our dog of dogs. He's such a wonderful sweet adorable puppy. We're very grateful for our sweet friends who have helped us get him to his appointments. 5 days a week for 4 weeks has been challenging, but we are happy that treatment is available and that we're able to make it happen. We made an agreement when we decided to adopt Waffles that we would do what ever we could manage to provide the longest healthiest life we could for him. We are keeping our promise and he has kept his promise too. :) He promised to be the BEST puppy in the whole wide world. We love you Waffles Bear.