The best thing we ever did - it’s worth working through the puppy blues! 🥹
When I first joined this thread 3 months ago, I was full of anxiety and worry. I was constantly searching things like “am I doing it right?” and “will the puppy blues go away?” I would spend all hours of the day and night googling every single thing my pup did or didn’t do. So I wanted to share a positive experience, because those kinds of posts really helped me in the beginning.
We’ve had our puppy now for just over 3 months and I can honestly say he’s the best decision we’ve ever made. Don’t get me wrong, it has been super tough. The first month I had major puppy blues. Between the sleepless nights and our pup having parvo, we had some really rough moments and I genuinely thought that feeling of regret would never go away. I wondered if we’d made a huge mistake.
But now he’s 21 weeks old and he’s just the cutest little bean🥹🐶
Of course, we still have our moments. We’re working on lead training because he gets very overexcited on walks and just pulls, he’s still bitey, and we definitely have some chewed furniture 😂 But he lost his first baby tooth last night which feels like such a milestone and made me a bit sad that he’s growing up so fast!
We’ve perfected the bedtime routine and he’s slept through the night in his crate since around 14 weeks. He’s fully toilet trained and knows his commands (when he chooses to listen), including “dance” which is a must in our household 😂 He comes with us to pubs, coffee shops and walks with friends, and he absolutely loves being out and about. He can stay home alone for around 3 hours now, and he’s finally starting to settle himself when he’s tired instead of causing complete chaos.
But most of all, he’s made us feel like a family. Me and my fiancé have been together for 7 years and he’s made our house feel like a home. He makes us laugh every single day with his cheeky personality. Our lives have definitely changed and we can’t do everything exactly how we used to, but honestly it’s so worth it.
One of my favourite unexpected things has been the social side of having a dog. We moved to our city 5 years ago and apart from close friends, we didn’t really know anyone locally. We’d always go on walks or to coffee shops, but never really interacted with people. Since getting our pup, people recognise him (and us), stop to chat, swap advice and tell us about their own dogs. We now see the same people regularly on walks and it’s honestly so wholesome. Before, everyone just walked past each other — now we have something in common regardless of age.
I know we’re not fully “there” yet and there will still be good days and bad days, probably some regression too, but recognising that he’s still just a puppy has helped so much.
So if you’re in those first few weeks feeling dread, regret, anxiety or puppy blues, please know it really can get better (if sticking it out is what you want to do). Slowly you start enjoying the silly little moments and the cheeky behaviours. You stop constantly questioning whether you’re doing everything right or wrong, and you start understanding each other.
It eventually becomes second nature, and I’m soooo glad we stuck with it, I might be a bit premature posting this and I’m sure he’ll done something shortly that will drive me crazy and I’m not silly enough to believe we’ve nailed it just yet, but this is just a reminder that it does slowly get better🤎🥹