What do you do after you buy a puppy and don't know how to take care of it? You forget to set up the litter box, and you try to name it. The problem was we bought a GIRL dog, and I didn't have any good GIRL names. I have loads of great BOY dog names like Gatsby, Clarke Gable, Kubrick, John Ford, Frank Capra, etc. So we chose a normal human name and called her Aly. Now that I'm pondering dog names I found the Top 10 Most Popular dog names:
(copyright vetstreet.com)
Who names their dog Luna? This list is less then enjoyable. I guess there is no winning. Either way our dog was now stuck with "Aly" and she learned her name pretty fast since we were ALWAYS yelling it.
Problem #1 ROOMMATES
How do you train a dog when you live in a apartment full of people? You can't very well put her in a kennel for the day and go to class. Incessant puppy whining all day during midterms was not appreciated. I thought people would love having an adorable puppy around, but puppy pee on the carpet wasn't winning anyone over. Jacob and I would switch off who had the puppy every other day to try and keep our roommates from getting mad.
Problem #2 NIGHT TIME
The hardest part was bed time. Aly had to be in my room, because it was busy out in the living room. The first night I set Aly on the floor on her dog bed, and I climbed into my own bed. She immediately jumped up and ran to edge of the bed and cried. I got up. Put her back in her bed. I climbed back into mine. She waited a few seconds and then ran back to the edge of my bed. More puppy crying ensues. I got back up, etc. After we did the puppy shuffle the millionth time, I decided to put her dog bed on my bed but at the end. Aly sat there happy to be up on the bed with me. Finally content, we went to sleep, for 10 minutes. Aly slowly wiggled her way from her bed to my toes. After she was sure she wasn't in trouble, she crawled up to my knees. She continued to squirm up the bed until her nose was touching mine, at which point she fell asleep. Cute, but puppy breath is not so great. So I put her back in her own corner of the bed. Throughout the night I would wake up with a little wet puppy nose licking MY NOSE. Adorable and awful. I didn't sleep for a couple weeks.
Problem #3 THIRD STORY BALCONY
One day boyfriend and I wanted to go out to lunch without the puppy. It was nice outside so we decided to leave Aly out on the balcony. The railing had some fairly big holes so we lined the porch with her little dog fence. Satisfied she was happy, we went out. An hour later we came back and there was no puppy on the balcony. We are on the third story, where could she have gone?? Either this dog is really SMART or really STUPID. We checked with the roommates and when they didn't know, we frantically searched outside. At this point we had little hope. I thought for sure we were looking for a dead dog on the ground. Someone saw us calling for Aly and approached us. They had found a dog limping and had taken her inside. SHE JUMPED OFF OF A THIRD STORY BUILDING AND LIVED. Hallelujah. Aly is a miracle puppy. After comforting Aly in her distress. We went back up stairs to investigate how she got out; evidently she had pulled the puppy fence out from the wall just enough to squeeze through. I called the vet and freaked out, but they told me to calm down since it didn't sound like it was broken. I think they thought I was exaggerating about the balcony height. I wasn't!
At some point during this fiasco, we realized we were not suited to take care of this puppy.
Problem #4 HOW TO SELL A PUPPY
You can't take it back to the pet store. I tried. They laughed at me. And you can't "sell" an animal on craigslist, if you search for that PETA freaks out all over your google search. But you can certainly "re-home" you animal and charge a "re-homeing" fee on craigslist. One person offered to buy her to use to breed. I would NOT sell my puppy into prostitution! Luckily I found someone who was willing to drive 8 hours to come pick up Aly. I figured if she was that devoted she must be a good dog person. I was sad to see Aly go, but she needed a more responsible human. We obviously can't be trusted with baby animals.
