My Puppy Jumped from 3 Stories

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.

I accidentally bought a puppy

I swear it was an ACCIDENT, just a complicated one. It starts with an apologetic boyfriend who really wants to get married and a girl who isn’t ready to commit, so is looking for things to distract him.

It started with a little hint dropping from both of us-

Boyfriend: So have you ever thought about what type of ring you’re interested in?

Me: Oh, not really. But do you know what I thought about buying?

I had never had a dog before, but I didn't have a lot to do because I had the easiest major in college: FILM. (kids if you don’t have a major yet – sign up for film now!) So I had a bit of free time due to the fact that my homework was watching movies and my finals were two-page papers. I was working hard on “school work” meaning I went to “production meetings” where all our friends reserved a classroom and we talked about movies. Or "location scouting" where I drove around drinking Sonic diet cokes and looking for cool houses to film. Life was pretty good and I obviously didn’t have enough to do because I wanted to get a dog.  

It was really a joke. I lived with three other girls in an anti pet apartment with no yard; there was no feasible way I could care for a puppy. 

The puppy-buying was really SITUATIONAL. One day we had to find something to do for an hour and we just HAPPENED to be next to a pet store. After about 10 minutes I was holding the most adorable thing I had ever seen. A puggle puppy.

It’s a mix between a PUG and a BEAGLE. Sounds like a bad idea, but it’s not.

I am holding this puppy and thinking "this is the most precious little thing in the whole world, how could I possibly go another minute without this puppy in my lifeI must take it and give it all the love possible". PLUS - the kids working there told me she was already potty trained.  The puppy snuggled up into my arm.  Sold.

We managed to gather up every responsible thought and put the puppy back. We walked out the door and drove to our BBQ. 30 minutes later we were back at the pet store. It's something about those little pleading eyes. They look up at your like you are the best thing since sliced bread, and they need your help. I thought, THIS PUPPY IS HOPELESSLY IN LOVE WITH ME AND I MUST SAVE IT FROM THE PET STORE.

Did you know puppies are expensive? I didn't.  It cost me something like $400. And then I realized I didn’t even know what puppies ate. We had to admit that we didn't own anything to take care of a living creature- and the employees gave me that look like oh, great. So they started to pile on the goods:  bed, the leash, the collar, the dog food, etc.  I was starting to get a little nervous. Puppy litter box? (OK honest moment I knew right then that I was making a mistake. I don’t even have a rational place to let this dog live. )

But then you look at this little puppy’s face and your heart melts. How can you say no to this face?

So we took the pup back to Boyfriend's apartment and started to think up names. Part II will continue later when I figure out a way to politely explain how a puppy falls 3 stories. SPOILER - she lives. 

A little bit of Photoshop goes a long way

With my basic understanding of Photoshop, I may never have to diet again.

Since graduating college, I have been working under my own company with husband. Things have been a littler slower recently and we have had more down time in between jobs. This means that I have  UNINHIBITED FREE TIME for the first time in my life! The first month that things were slow I used my time to sleep in, take naps, and watch puppy videos on Youtube. (There are a lot of great videos of dogs like: Great Dane Steals kid’s bubble bath , or Husky and baby sing, or bulldog and baby cuddle - the possibilities are endless)

But after some ridicule from husband for being obsessive about puppies and worried phone calls from mom, I decided to do something useful with my time and finally learn Photoshop. The idea was, I would get good enough to create content for our videos and websites, etc. The problem is I discovered a tool call LIQUIFY.

BEFORE

 AFTER

Too much? :) OK I over emphasized this one on purpose. But you get the point. This took me 2 minutes. Maybe less. It is the EASIEST thing in the world to give yourself a rockin body. No joke, this is the best kept secret. It practically does all the work for you, you just have the “push the mouse in over an area” and voila! This is a problem because now all I want to do is it edit my photo history. Think of the possibilities: I could start adding celebrities to my parties, and erasing those sweat stains. So how is that for being lazy? 

 I found out that celebrities have personal "photoshoppers" who edit every single image of them in the tabloids. And the more I learn about advertising and photoshop the more I realize no image is real. Article: Airbrushed Makeup Ads banned from UK for being Misleading.  The UK was like, "Hey I know Julia Roberts has more wrinkles then that, you can't fool us!"

Is there a Photoshop Rehab? America should look into that.