Our New Baby Comes Home Today

 

Lady Emma Cuddleston-Smythe and Bella.

We are pleased to announce that a new member of the Fritz family has come home and is ready to upend our lives a bit, but gladly so.  Our new baby is Bella, a 7-week old Golden Retriever whom we picked up at the breeder yesterday afternoon. I wish that I could bottle the look on Lady Emma's face and her reaction when the breeder brought Bella out from the kennel and put her in Lady Emma's loving arms. Priceless, as they say.

Happiness is a warm puppy as Charles Schultz would have said.

We brought Bella home and carefully and slowly introduced her to Augie, our 16 month old Black Labrador. Augie wanted to play immediately but he can be rather overwhelming to a young pup. They seemed to get along fairly well and before too long Bella was taking over the roost, eating out of Augie’s food and water bowls instead of her own. Of course, Augie returned the favor by eating Bella’s puppy  chow. I’m not sure how this will play out.

House breaking training began immediately with us taking Bella outside every thirty minutes and so far, Bella seems to be getting the hang of this potty business thing.

Dad, being the good old bean that he is, volunteered to sleep on the sofa in the family room for the next week to help Bella adjust to her new home and not get the “night time frights”. We tried getting Bella  comfortable with her crate by putting toys and treats in it to coax her in. We want her to go into the crate on her own so as not to be afraid of it (like Augie is). Once she went into the crate on her own a few times we tried closing the door for a minute or two and plan on extending her time in the crate with the door closed.

At bedtime we turned out the lights, except for the outside porch lights and put Bella in her crate and Augie in his bed nearby. Bella was ok for a little while, but eventually the inevitable crying began. To make a long story short, I ended up keeping the crate door open, with Augie in the same room (kitchen) while I stretched out on the couch in the next room, door open so that I could keep an eye on both hounds, making sure that Augie wouldn’t try to hurt Bella. After that, silence for the rest of the night.

I woke up the hounds at three hour intervals: 1AM, 4AM and 7AM to take Bella outside for potty breaks. There was only one accident during the night so on the whole, I was pleased with how the first night went. Mrs. Fritz and Lady Emma got to sleep through the night and I slept sort of ok, despite waking myself up twice during the night as explained above.

Lady Emma came downstairs around 7AM to take over dog sitting duty so that Dad  go upstairs and get some sleep in the bedroom. I trundled out of bed at 10AM, so that gave me three more hours of uninterrupted sleep. Bella is supposed to be Lady Emma’s dog so we are letting her do most of the work during the daytime.

This will be a lot of hard work over the next 4-8 months, but the payback is well worth the effort when your dog grows up.

Life is back in balance once more; we have a Golden Retriever back in our house.

zzz