Bringing Home the Puppy

January 2009. We greeted our New Year with a new dog. At 6 weeks old, we took home our brindle puppy, which my husband named Jake. He braved the hour-long drive by snoozing snugly on my lap. When we finally got home, he celebrated by pooping right next to the car.

Jake was the pick of the litter, so we got to choose him among all his other brothers and sisters. We didn't see him when we first got inside the house of the breeder, because he was under the pile of sleeping puppies. With all the puppies jumping around, it was hard to choose at first! There were light brown brindles, and dark brown ones. Their energy can be categorized into active, super active, and way too much active. We finally settled on the biggest dark brown boy, who I can say fell into the super active level.


Jake's first night was a sleepless one for me. We had prepared the kitchen with a doggie gate so his mess would be easy to clean up. After playing with him for a while, we called it a night and put him in his temporary space. Of course, he immediately whined to be let out. We did not want him sleeping with us, so we sharply shushed him and he quieted down. A few minutes later, he started whining again. The whining and the shushing went on for a while until Jake realized there was nothing he can do about it but fall asleep. About an hour later, he started whining again. I got out of bed to check on him, and on the floor was a nice pool of pee, gleefully waiting for me. After mopping up the floor, I took him outside to pee some more, played with him for a little bit, and put him back in. The shush-whine war promptly began after that, and the cycle repeated after every hour or so. By sunrise, I had slept for a total of 3 hours, and that was totally expected for a puppy owner's first night.