Stonehenge and calm-assertive energy

I woke up before my alarm at 7:00 am today, pulled on a sweatshirt and padded downstairs to the den to where Belly sleeps. (To maintain anononymity on this blog, I'll call our new puppy Belly.) "AAAIIIEEE!!" That scream was internal! On the outside, I maintained calm-assertive energy. Cesar Millan would have been proud. The truth was that I was still too deep in my pre-caffeinated sleep fog to be anything but calm.

We've had Belly for 6 weeks. As first time dog owners, we were determined to do everything right. We researched online, gobbled up Cesar Millan's teachings, and checked out several puppies of our desired breed (a mix) before bringing Belly home. During his first week with us, we took him to the vet, a nice lady with a great metal-tableside manner. Belly loved her, as he seems to love all humans!

(As a sidenote, we are lucky. Belly has a wonderful temperament and loves people and other dogs. He'll actually whine if strangers do not fawn over him... well, maybe he's an attention monger. I'll have to keep on eye on that. I'd also like to think that hubby and I are doing something right that he's not afraid of people.)

Back to the story. We asked the nice vet how much we should be feeding Belly, but forgot to ask her, "how much weight should he be gaining?" Hey, I didn't go to vet school, but apparently I forgot to bring my common sense, too!

During the next 5 weeks, we fed Belly 1/4 cup of nutritious puppy chow in the morning and 1/4 cup at night He wasn't gaining any weight, but he seemed to be a happy and well adjusted canine, so we didn't worry.

Finally, after not gaining any weight for 5 weeks, we asked a different vet how much we should be feeding him. We learned that we'd been lovingly starving Belly. New Vet told us that we should be feeding him TWICE as much as we had been and that he should be gaining a pound a week during this critical growth stage. Oh my! We'd messed up. But never to dwell on guilt and negative thoughts, 2 days ago, we immediately started feeding Belly more...

So, I woke up before my alarm at 7:00 am today, pulled on a sweatshirt and padded downstairs to the den to where Belly sleeps. "AAAIIIEEE!!" That scream was internal! On the outside, I maintained calm-assertive energy. Cesar Millan would have been proud. The truth was that I was still too deep in my pre-caffeinated sleep fog to be anything but calm. Poor Belly, unused to his new Input, had left me a creative present as his Output --- his own rendition of Stonehenge, in various size and consistency "rocks." He himself was curled up in his usual position on the loveseat's poufy pillows. I stepped over the doggie gate.

Tail thumping at a millions miles a hour, he stretched and stood up to greet me. He looked up at me with those liquidy eyes, floppy ears flipped inside-out. Sigh. All is forgiven.

Let the scrubbing begin! ZZZZzzzzzz....