Saturday, September 29, 2012

Mia!!!

So we have been really wanting a puppy for a while now, but have put it off for lots of reasons like no backyard, no time, etc.  So we finally decided that while right now is probably not the perfect time, things are better now than they ever have been and we might as well go for it!  We got lots of advice, most people telling us not to do a puppy but maybe an older, already trained dog or something like that.  But of course we wanted a puppy!!  We wanted to bring an animal into our home from the very beginning and have them be part of our family and grow up with us.  We had this wonderful picture in our head of how things would go, it looked like this:  Our family gathered around playing and laughing with our new puppy, taking her with us wherever we go and she would be so happy and well behaved just to be with us, us watching TV while she happily napped on her bed in the living room; well you can see where this is going, our fantasy of a dream dog was exactly that - a fantasy!  We got Mia at six weeks and immediately fell in love with her!  She had ten siblings and they were the cutest things ever.  We chose Mia because we were told she was the most mild tempered and sweet of the litter; now I can't imagine if that is true how the other puppies behave!  She has endless amounts of energy loves to play with people.  The biggest problem we have is her nipping, which sometimes turns into biting when she gets too excited!  The girls can't be in the same room with her unless I am right there supervising every step anyone takes or Mia will get too excited and start jumping on them and maybe even biting.  I can't really let her in the house anymore because she chews things and again she terrorizes the girls.  However, we have now had her for six weeks and I have seen huge progress in her behavior.  She still nips, but she happily sleeps through the night and never cries.  Nate feeds her and puts her outside in the morning and she stays out there pretty much all day and does just fine.  We go out and play with her as much as possible and she goes for a walk with Nate or I every morning and night.  I am hoping if we keep up this routine she will continually get better and as the girls learn more about how to handle her, our fantasy might not be a comlete reality, but hopefully close!