What My Puppy Has Taught Me, Part 1

It’s been said that if you raise a puppy from full-out puppydom to hard working adult you’ll have learned a lot of the skills that come with raising a child. First time parents that have raised a puppy aren’t as stressed and react more calmly when something happens. They understand the importance of scheduling, consistency, and a good carpet cleaner. Waking up at the crack of dawn for diaper changes and feedings is easier than waking up to find Fido chewing on your down comforter and peeing on your pillow (or, god help, pooping on your pillow). Oh, and don’t forget the ability to speak in baby-talk. That’s something that you learn very quickly with a puppy.

There’s some advantages that raising a puppy has over raising a child, and some obvious disadvantages. I think my favorite advantage is the speed. Accidents and potty training lasts for only a fraction of the time, as with midnight wake-up barks and destruction of prized comforters and pillows. They don’t understand what you’re saying, though.. so you can’t eventually have a talking companion as with a child. They’ll never leave you, like a grown child would, which may or may not be a bad thing depending on the dog and the child.

So in raising my bouncing Corgi Ichiko, I’ve learned and practiced a lot of skills that will help me in my “full adult” life, which is to say “when I have kids.” I’ve compiled this list, that's broken up over several posts, for all those wishing to have a little insight into the life of a single chick living with a cat who thinks she’s a dog and a dog who thinks everyone and everything was put on this planet to play with her. Or, you know, if you just want to have a laugh.

Scheduling
I never was a stickler for keeping a tight schedule, even when I was in college and trying to keep 5-6 jobs from not crashing into each other. Try as I might, I was never able to stick to a schedule for more than a week or two. Enter Ichiko. I learned very quickly that if I didn't get her (and myself) onto a schedule, I'd be getting way less sleep and way more accidents then I bargained for. I had to feed her at relatively the same time everyday, let her out every couple of hours, make sure she didn't get food or water however many hours before bedtime, and get her to sleep at close to the same time every night. If I didn't follow this schedule well enough, she'd be crying at 3 in the morning to go potty.. and once she was awake, she was AWAKE.

So I soon learned that the best thing to do was stick to a schedule. She taught me that unless I kept her up past 11, I'd be getting up before 7. Getting up at 7 actually is nice for work, so I decided that I'd keep her with her natural clock and just adapt mine to her's. Now I am exhausted and looking for bed at around 11 every night and up and at them no later then 8 every morning. On weekends, when I used to sleep in until noon, I now wake up at 9. Not only has picking up my dog's schedule helped balance my life between work and play, I feel more energized throughout the day.

So the moral of this story is: Stick to a sleep schedule. You'll feel better about yourself and once you get really into it, you won't need 4 alarm clocks to wake up in the morning. Just a cellphone and a puppy.

Until next time,
Tar