I’m cognizant to the circumstance that mothers to actual human beings would be slightly irked by the phrase “we’re parents!” True, the two situations are not in full comparison the same thing. I didn’t create and grow a life form from within me. I give you mom’s out there a big high five! That is some tough stuff. However being a dog parent, you can come to find yourself encountering some pretty ruff stuff too.
The day my boyfriend and I brought home our little butterball, we were flooded with questions. Neither one of us had raised a puppy before. First decision was a name. We decided Bradley after thoughtful consideration, mainly because everyone else had already beaten us to the name Cooper. You know, after Bradley Cooper. Then there were questions like: Dry food or wet food? What kinds of toys are safe? How old does he have to be before he can get his second round of shots? We had never needed to know answers to these types of questions before. This was new to us. We were new to Bradley.
The first two weeks we found ourselves taking Bradley out to use the bathroom seven or eight times a day. We also had shifts on who would take him out in the middle of the night and early in the morning. He wasn’t potty trained yet and we lived in fear for our carpets. Unlike humans, he couldn’t talk to tell us when he needed to go. We had to guess, and pray that he would go when we took him. This was all trial and error, eventually Bradley learned to tell us in his own way. He tends to lick one of us in the face, sometimes taking half of my makeup with him. Thus the miracle of puppy potty training!
He counts on us to feed him, walk him, scratch his itches, and give him kisses till he gets annoyed. He hates the word “bath” and is stubborn about particular foods. He hogs up the majority of our bed and kicks us in the middle of the night when he’s having a bad dream. Some mornings I’ll wake up with a pool of drool on my cheeks, somehow he confuses our heads for pillows.
