The Un-Cuddly Baby

I”m a very cuddly person. In fact, we are in general a very cuddly family. Or smuggly as we like to call ourselves finding snuggle to not be a particularly inviting word we much rather smuggle. In fact under cover smuggles are our favorite.

Our dog, Athens, is cuddly. In fact he can’t even bear to lay on a wooden floor like a real dog, but instead prefers ideally laying on pillows also undercovers.

At first Elia wasn’t particularly into this whole human cuddling in a bed thing, but she saw Athens was living the good life and so she jumped aboard as well. For a long time we had two dogs undercover in the bed with us. Then we had to institute the “no dogs allowed” policy because it had gotten a little bit ridiculous.

Bear has always been a cuddly fellow. We would swaddle him when he was a baby because he loved the feeling of being tightly held. His absolute favorite thing was what we called frogging. He probably spent my entire maternity leave laying on top of me frogging while I watched daytime TV.

He still loves to cuddle in fact he sneaks into our bed every single night and sleeps with us. We basically say good night by saying, “we’ll see you when you sneak in.” I heart his cuddles big time which is why I’m in no hurry to ask him to remove himself as my nightly visitor. In fact I used to think Athens was the best cuddler as he can contort himself into seemingly any position, but I think Bears got it covered now as #1 Cuddler.When the H is out of town I don’t even make him fall asleep in his own bed first, but let him stay in mine from the get go.

But Bella, not so much. She has no interest in these kinds of things. She had no time for swaddling as a baby, she preferred to cuddle her face suffocatingly close to her blanket. While we read Bear books every single night before bed (we had the bedtime routine thing down cold), Bella will not sit still long enough to read her the shortest of books. Rocking her to sleep? I don’t think so. The closest I’ve gotten to cuddling is when she was a baby and she’d fall asleep next to me nursing in the wee hours of the morning when the H would bring her before he left for work. Now even nursing is an opportunity for her to practice various circus acts of how to keep moving while still being attached to me.

She was very adamant that she was not interested in napping yesterday afternoon. She did however not want to play. Or eat. Certainly not be rocked, or read to. I tried singing her a lullaby, but she took her nuk out of her mouth and stuck it in mine. I thought that was a little rude as she could have been more tactful in her preferences.

I really hope she outgrows this I don’t like to cuddle thing because she’s not going to fit in very well with the family otherwise.

The Dog Dilemma / Overstepping Your Bounds

So yesterday when I came home from work the dogs (or most likely singular — moose) had decided they wanted an afternoon snack of Christmas ornaments. 5 ornaments in total were destroyed including the one Bella got for Christmas and is looking at with such interest in this photograph:

I decided to cry upon seeing the giraffe destroyed and the general fact that I have terrible dogs. (I also had a hard day at work realizing that in fact I have to keep working there.) The H came home shortly after and chose anger as his outlet. Issue is that the MIL came to drop off the kids since she had been watching them during the day at her house and she walked into this scene. I had luckily composed myself at this point, but the H was yelling at the dogs that I had banned to the outside. While I took Bella to nurse the MIL decided to take this opportunity to lecture me on how we need to get rid of the dogs, because we have so much going on and they’re destroying the house and how we should put them down if we can’t find someone to take them. She peppers this lecture with frequent mentions of how she doesn’t want to be over stepping her bounds.

I’m sorry lady but you just told me to kill my dogs because they ate $10 worth of Xmas ornaments. I think you’re over stepping your bounds a little don’t you? Doesn’t help that like my breast is out and there’s not much chance of walking away from the situation, she has me cornered. Literally.

She then leaves and calls me afterwords saying that she’s been thinking this through and we really should consider getting rid of these dogs. While in the short term perhaps Bear will be upset in the long term its more detrimental to him to see the “pressure” and stress the dogs are placing us under. And to see The H’s anger. And please tell the H to call her because she wants to have a talking to with him.

Uh ha.

She calls the H later, since he of course does not call her, and lectures him as well about how we should get rid of the dogs.

I’d like to insert the fact that she put down their family dog because he had separation anxiety when the H left for college since they had most closely bonded.

My solution usually isn’t to kill or return something (well unless its due to my excessive shopping) just because they acted badly. I’m not going to claim that the dogs are saints, I’ve obviously blogged and tweeted frequently about the fact that they’re not. Nor am I going to deny on multiple occasions in anger threatening to get rid of the dogs and wishing they would die. The issue is I don’t mean it. I’m angry and frustrated and that sounds all fine and dandy in the moment. Until like last night I go in to the kitchen to get something to drink and moose is laying chilly alone on the couch looking all dejected because we’re all in the bedroom and there’s no room for him. And then my heart melts. Because this is my dog. And I’ve had him for almost six years. He was my first baby. And despite the fact that he’s an awful dog (sometimes, not always) he’s my awful dog. Can you imagine if they had put down Marley?

The New Godmother and I were discussing this and we agree that its similar to kids. If Bear broke things and didn’t listen to us we wouldn’t return him. He’s our responsibility and we would work on fixing the issues. Not just get rid of him for ease. It’d be a whole other discussion if the dogs were remotely aggressive, but they’re not.

Maybe he’ll do anything for food but he loves his family and he’s amazing with the kids. Look at him and Bear from Thanksgiving:

Also, its not HIS fault that he’s a bad dog. Its much more likely our fault for being bad dog owners. I did a lot of googling on this topic this morning and perhaps he has pica, or maybe we just need to feed him more, or feed him a more nutrient rich diet, or maybe he’s just bored. So upon recommendations of the ASPCA I ordered two kongs from Amazon today. One for each of the dogs. Using the New Godmother’s suggestion we’re going to fill it with peanut butter and dog treats and the key here is to freeze it. She does this for her dogs and finds it works well. Hopefully it’ll work well for us too. And maybe the H can take the dogs for a quick jog around the block when he gets home to burn some of their excess energy.

We’re going to make this work because well he’s damn cute, and he’s my damn cute awful dog.

Clean House

Every time we go over to our best friends’ house I’m struck by how clean their house is. Granted they don’t have two dogs or kids and she’s not currently working so has more time available, but still I just wish I had the energy. It seems like no matter what I do its always not really clean. After my parents visit the house is usually at its cleanest because my mother seems to always be cleaning if she’s not running around playing with Bear. But this past weekend, it wasn’t really any cleaner than when I do it perhaps because there was little non-Bear time.

Earlier in June I spent $300 getting the carpet’s cleaned. Which was WAY more than I was quoted on the phone when I was initially considering it. I suddenly decided to clean the carpets after we moved all the stuff from the office/guest room out of the nursery in order to paint and discovered a giant color difference in the carpet between where the bed was and the rest of the carpet. So looking at MERSC once again I found a carpet cleaner with a 20% discount that I decided to go with except when the guy got there and saw the stains in the basement from Elia’s accidents and then the general dirt of the basement stairs he said everything was going to need to be “deep scrubbed” and there was an extra $125 “urine removal charge”. Because I’m myself and don’t know what else to do and the man in standing right in front of me I agreed to everything. I kept thinking to myself this carpet better be fucking clean when he gets done for $300.

And I have to say, I totally notice it in the basement. The stairs are actually white again and not grayish black. And the smell of the basement has certainly decreased (mostly to the addition of the inlaws dehumidifier) and most of the dog stains are gone. He said it takes a few tries to get the yellowish color out and left us with a little of the solution and instructions for further removal. The thing is the upstairs looks the same to me because we have a berber carpet (which I hate) and you couldn’t really see any dirt in it because of the closed loops and colors. There is definitely still a giant rectangle where the bed used to be in the nursery, but its certainly less of a giant rectangle. And he couldn’t remotely get out where I dropped the black eyeshadow by my bedroom mirror. I just really wish I could have seen the black water when he finished. Just so I could have gone, “Ah yes, he did clean something. That water is black.” And I’m certain it would be because last year when I borrowed a friends rug doctor the water was black. I just keep thinking to myself that this really wasn’t worth $300. Also online it says that apparently you’re supposed to clean your carpets every 6 months if you have dogs & kids. Are you effin kidding?

We also bought a new vacuum in June because ours pretty much exploded from all of the Elia hair. I sort of have a love/hate relationship with the one we got. On one hand I love that its bagless and super easy to clean, after every time I vacuum I need to empty and clean everything out sometimes even the filter because there is so much damn Elia hair everywhere (I do not recommend getting a lab/border collie mix unless you intend to brush her all the fucking time). She is cute though:

But I also hate that its an upright vacuum meaning that in order to really get under anything or clean the kitchen remotely I’m always having to use the attachments which is a PAIN. And its unbelievably hot and sort of heavy, and the cord is always getting tangled up so I’m always having to hold it and not try to run it over. A plus is that its really great on carpet though (but sucky on hardwood) and the attachments are really nice for the stairs.

I just hate that I have to vacuum like every freaking day, possibly even twice to really get rid of all the damn dog hair. Even after brushing her for like 20 minutes she still sheds like a maniac. And Bear runs around leaving his toys everywhere and the H is always leaving dishes and socks and dirty tissues around the house and sometimes I’m pretty certain I live in a zoo.

It just seems like keeping the house costs so much money and time. Two investments I’m really not too keen on making and after spending so much money on outdoor stuff in May and indoor stuff in June I don’t want to spend any more money except apparently on a dehumidifier because I don’t think I can go back to the musty smell of the basement without one. So there goes $200.

Dog Trouble!

So I’ve been hesitant to write about this for some time now. Mostly because I’m certain it makes me look bad. Sigh. I love my dogs. My love for Athens (going to be 5 in May, Weimaraner) is like the greatest love between a person and their dog. After all, Athens almost died as a puppy and I did everything I could and threw all the money I could to fix him, and I did. He’s however not the best behaved dog, at all.

Let’s recall the list of things he’s eaten (which should now be appended to add glass) or this post about the bad things they’ve done. He eats anything and everything. In fact, he once ate everything in our pantry after breaking the door open. He sleeps in our bed, under our covers ideally. He failed puppy school and had to go again. He pulls the whole time he’s on a leash. But as he gets older he’s continuously better behaved. Before Elia he stayed home alone without incident for months (minus the pantry incident).

Then there’s Elia our “new” dog. In a few weeks we’ll have had her for a year. I have to say it took me a really long time to like her much less love her. I think its because I love Athens just soooo much. But she’s grown on me. She’s fuzzy and cuddly, and totally crazy about me. But she’s not that well behaved either.

She poops and pees almost everyday in the house, and sometimes at night. She’s over a year old at this point. And she’s definitely potty trained. This happens when we’re not home. Perhaps because we’re gone so long, or perhaps out of spite. We used to keep her in a kennel until Athens chewed her out of it (though I’m beginning to wonder if she did it herself). Then we kept her in a new kennel. One that she would flip over, crap through the slates and then rub it into the ground by moving her kennel around. (Can you even imagine how disgusting that was to clean up on a frequent basis?) Then she broke out of that kennel and chewed her way through the wooden baby gate at the top of the stairs to get upstairs to Athens.

We stopped kenneling her at that point. It wasn’t worth the $100 for a new one. We’ve come up with many devices to block off the entrance to the basement (where she prefers to do her business, on the carpet, right next to Bear’s toys) but eventually she/he/they figure out how to open it.

Tuesday I came home to a poop and pee in the basement, a poop in the living room, assorted unidentified items chewed and Athens my 90 lbs dog hanging out on top of my glass coffee table. I freaked out. I cannot do this anymore. These dogs need some serious Cesar.

Now, I know a lot of it is our fault. We aren’t consistent with rules. Perhaps we are gone too long during the day. But because they don’t do any of this while we’re home I distinctly feel like they do it entirely out of spite. They know what they’re doing is wrong. I can tell when I walk in the house and they look at me all forlorn with the ears tucked back.

I don’t know what to do. Nor can I really afford to do much. I would never want to be one of those people that give away their dog. Even though Elia is trouble (in a way Athens never has been) I’m not prepared to give up on her, but I’m getting to a point where I don’t know how much more I can handle, or how much more I can afford to lose through her destruction.

What to do?

Apparently it’s in his blood

To go along with my previous post according to Wikipedia,  “This breed [Weimaraners] is known for having a penchant for stealing food from table and counter tops whenever given the chance.”

Clearly he can’t help himself. I also recently re-read a book on his breed that I got when we first got him that also talked about how the breed likes to sleep in beds and on pillows (Athens goes as far as undercovers) and that they have a tendency to open doors and cabinets and taht people have resorted to babyproofing for their weim. Which we also had to do. We had to lock the pantry because Athens broke into it too often and ate everything.

However look at how fucking cute he is!