The Terrible Twos

If one = seven in dog years, I wonder if four months is the puppy equivalent of the "terrible twos."

My sweet little Nicki has become a Devil Dog.

Oh nothing bad. She's positively gleeful as she races around the house wreaking havoc wherever she goes.

Actually I'm glad to see it. I no longer see neurological signs that worry me (either that or I've stopped noticing them). She's just behaving like a normal puppy. She races at top speed down the hall chasing Lizzie, they roll over and over and over again, Lizzie growling ferociously, then they race back again, Nicki slips on the Pergo, picks herself up and races on after Lizzie again. Nicki no longer gets freaked out by some hulk pinning her down. She's learned how to roll over, get up and go right back to the fight.

She's learned about knobs on doors and as I sit here I keep hearing scramble scramble thud scramble scramble thud. That is the sound of Nicki jumping up to grab handles or knobs in her mouth, slipping off and falling to the floor.

Then yesterday I decided she'd developed a tapeworm. The day before I had finally realized that all the barking and barking and barking was coming from the little garbage can where I keep the dog kibble. I thought I'd see if she was hungry so I gave her an extra cup of kibble, and she downed it like she hadn't eaten in a week.

Wellllll....I created a monster. The next day she was barking at that damn garbage cann most of the day. At one point I wrote to ask Ashley if there was any danger of overfeeding her. She wrote back that she was a puppy and I could feed her whatever she wanted to eat.

I swear that dog ate 10 extra times yesterday. Not only that, but when I went to pick her up at the end of the day, I swear she'd gained 2 lbs. I couldn't believe she could eat so much. (Today she seems to have stopped demanding food every 10 minutes, so maybe the growth spurt is over.)

If there is anything good about that it's that I know with 100% certainty that all of her food processing organs are working just fine, thankyewverymuch. This little dog is quickly earning the title of "Poop Queen." We've had grown BIG dogs that don't poop as much as this little puppy does. But then they don't eat as much as she ate yesterday either.

I wouldn't say that she is learning that outside is the place to eliminate, but she seems to have learned that when I take her out, she should produce something. We go out first thing in the morning and she circles and circles until she finds the perfect spot and then she pees, then circles some more, poops, and I bring her back inside. 3 minutes later she's repeating the whole thing indoors as well. Sigh.

Actually "housebreaking" might go better if I just did nothing all day long but watch her. We used to worry that she walked around in circles. Well, I don't see her doing that at all unless she's looking for a place to pee or poop. So if you just sit here and watch her and grab her as she starts to circle you can keep the floor clean. But since she seems to pee every 15 minutes, that pretty much has to be your WHOLE focus every day.

There are two things that haven't changed, though. She still seems to have an "off switch" when you pick her up. The way to calm her down is to put her in your lap. She has a kind of zen response to being cuddled and petted. That makes dealing with her so much easier.

Also, from day 1, she has slept in the cage all night long without a single complaint. When she wakes up in the morning. she just sits there calmly waiting for me to take her out. In that respect she is by far the easiest puppy we've ever had.

When you balance out poop output with cage behavior, it's a tossup.

She's definitely a unique little puppy. I know I'm going to miss her when it's time for her to move to a forever family.