Hush Puppy

Trixie has been a bit mopey since I left with Toby and he never came home. It's understandable since he has been the head cheese since she got here to suddenly not have that security blanket. I'm honestly surprised at how she still seems to be waiting for him to come in the dog door or something. I guess when your brain is the size of a walnut it makes sense.

Trixie is a social dog, much more so than Toby was. I think it helps that the neighborhood has embraced the idea of having dogs as house pets so she has more dogs available than Toby did. We realized after getting Trixie that we waited too long with Toby. He didn't want to play with her and she was an annoying puppy to him. They got along like old people and midgets.

So we decided that if we were going to get another dog, we better do it sooner rather than later, so that Trixie would actually play with the new dog and hopefully become fast friends. I hope we are all picturing a scene behind an Italian restaurant with a plate of spaghetti and a single meatball. We didn't want to be potty training a dog in the snow so we were going to wait until the spring to get one, but we have had such a mild winter we decided to go ahead.

We found a litter of 8 week old Cocker Spaniel and mini-Australian shepherd mix puppies that were "crate trained". They were in West Valley so we donned our neutral gang colors and headed over to see if there were any suitable males. We decided to take Trixie. It made sense at the time, since we were picking not only a pet for us, but also a playmate for her that she should have some say in the matter so to speak. Alas she was as useless as a double sided wristwatch (I don't know okay?). She just hid on the couch behind Wendi the whole time which was funny since she was the biggest one there.

There were 4 males so we proceeded to check them all.
#1 (The Biggest) - Freaked out and peed all over us when we tried to pick him up and hold him. When I say freaked out, you would have thought we were skinning him alive and the pee was just the topping on the cake. DENIED!!
#2 (Next Largest) - Was nice enough but had a bad reaction to his shots and his muzzle was in bad shape. His ears appeared to be infected so we opted to not take the chance on him and risk large medical bills down the road. Sorry bud.
#3 (The Runt) - Much smaller than the others but very playful. He didn't like being on his back much and tried to wiggle free. Viable option #1.
#4 (Pick of the Litter) - This dog was such a doll. He was mild mannered and just loved to be petted and didn't mind not being in control. He was the only one that wasn't black and brown, instead he was white and brown.

We decided on #4 but we the lady said they weren't getting rid of that one...of course. So we opted to get the runt instead. We put him in the car (queue the crying) and drove home.We started the chore of picking a name for our little bundle of teeth. I voted for fun ones such as "Dammit" or "Treat" which I thought would drive the other dogs crazy, and "Carma". I really just wanted to yell "Bad Carma" through my neighborhood. Wendi voted for more normal names like "Edward" (10 guesses where that came from). In the end we compromised and decided to call him "Paul" but then we decided that isn't a dog's name, it's a persons name so we went with "Daxter".

The rest of that day Daxter wandered around our house crying. When time for sleepy-pie he laid in his crate and cried for an hour (not so much crate trained). So Wendi took him out he spent the night curling up around her head while we slept very little. The next day it rained, and it has snowed on and off for the last week which is so nice. One of my favorite things in the world has to be standing out in the snow half dressed trying to get a puppy to pee when all he wants to do is play with dead plants.

He is supposed to be super smart with the Australian shepherd in him, but a week has gone by and I'm not quite convinced. He learned to used the dog door after a few days which took Trixie a month to figure out. But the potty training isn't going so well. He keeps peeing and pooping right in front of the dog door, so either the effort it takes to get through the dog door is causing him to go or he is trying to be more earth friendly by not polluting our water table by going outside. Either way it's quite annoying.

He also has this bad idea of crawling in tight spaces. He has spent many an hour under our bed while we are walking around the house calling his name. He also likes to curl up under the recliner, which is a really good place for him as well. The other day though he found that there was a hole in the back yard that went under the cement patio and climbed in there. Wendi was able to get him out but he had some trouble. We plugged the hole with bricks until we can fill it in, but when we let him back out he ran straight back to the hole.








On the plus side Trixie seems to like him. The first day she pretty much avoided him, but the next morning she jumped up on our bed and they played for a bit. They seem to be getting along great other than they don't like to share food.

They learned that they can play tug-of-war with each other which has been nice. Daxter has had some trouble differentiating between dog toys and other items around the house. The other day he brought a sprinkler into the house that is apparently a dog toy now. Oh to have the worries of a dog...but the neutering is kinda a deal breaker for me.