my puppy FOR REAL!!

SIDNEY, DAY 1...

Here is our new puppy, Sidney! He's the cutest little puppy ever!!! Not that I'm biased or anything...

We brought Sidney home on Sunday afternoon after watching him play and roll around on the grass with two of the breeder's English bulldog puppies. He was an absolute angel in the car! He seemed nervous for the first few minutes, but then he perked right up and started licking me in the face. He also started farting without any hesitation, so I guess he already feels like he's part of the family. (I'm pretty sure Sidney could power a small city with his natural gas. A small and very smelly city. Jeff reminded me several times to ask the vet if that is normal puppy behavior.)

When we brought him into the apartment, we let him look around a bit. He was a pretty calm little doggie. We played with him for a couple hours and introduced him to his crate/den before deciding that we should run to the pet store for some treats, puppy wipes, and some Nature's Miracle cleaning spray (absolutely critical!). So we shut him into the bathroom where we set up his den and some newspapers for the supposedly paper-trained puppy...

We got home and opened the bathroom door cautiously, not quite sure what to expect. Sure enough, Sidney was sleeping in the papers that he was supposed to pee on and instead had left us a few presents on the bathroom floor. Ick.

Fortunately, that rotten little monkey is so cute it's impossible to be too annoyed with him. We'll see how I feel after five or six piles of crap on the bathroom floor.

Anyways, last night he was a perfect little puppy. He fell asleep on the floor by Jeff's foot. I woke Sidney up and led him to his crate. Once he was inside his little den with his favorite toy, I praised him, turned on a noise machine with a heartbeat sound, and sat in front of his den to block him in until he fell asleep.

I shut the bathroom door to keep him closed in overnight. I couldn't sleep at all--I was waiting for Sidney to wake up and start to cry. Instead he slept soundly through the night without any crying or wimpering at all. How much do I love this puppy??!!!

When I left for work this morning, I felt like a bad parent. I can see why new mothers feel guilty for leaving their babies at home when they go back to work. Jeff said he'd take Sidney for his second walk of the morning so I could head off to work--I have to admit that I felt a little sad that I wouldn't get to stay home and play with him all morning. Fortunately, I'll get to go home at lunch to say hello!!