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I saw my shrink yesterday and told her how bad my anxiety is getting. She feels (as do I) that a certain amount is to be expected what with all of the uncertainty around finding a job, committing to a daycare, and so on.
She also seems to be of the opinion that I need to stop forgetting to take my meds. She may have a point.
All I know is, the anxiety bleeds to other areas of my life. I’ve gotten involved with a new service dog school that desperately needs my help, mostly because none of the “trainers” are in any way formally trained. I’m supposed to be helping my friend with her new dog (who is in desperate need of work in most areas, from obedience to skills) and I’m happy to do so, but knowing that I am supposed to be going out with her, rather than staying in my little hamster cage, causes me huge amounts of stress.
Then I agreed to take this dang puppy.
The school is in desperate need of puppy raisers, and right now they have three puppies without a home. They have a potential raiser for a lovely blue merle collie pup, but that raiser has only dealt with puppies from my old school, who came to her partially trained already. They wanted me to take this dog for a month or two and teach her that stuff, so this woman can get a dog at the stage she is used to.
I thought about it and said no.
a) I’m supposed to be helping my friend with her dog, and it’s hard to do that AND train a puppy at the same time
b) The job search and everything adds enough disruption to my life
c) PH was not huge on the idea.
So then they begged me to take her for just a month. Then just a couple of weeks.
When they hit “one week” I broke down and agreed.
The puppy arrived yesterday and I’m already regretting it.
It’s not that she’s a bad dog. She’s lovely, and considering that she’s not even four months old she’s quite well behaved, really. Beloved Dog was not nearly this well behaved at this age. Plus, she has the same birthday as Beloved Dog! You’d think this would serve to bond them, but he’s eyeing her malevolently.
Trying to deal with a puppy while dealing with a baby is… formidable.
I ended up locking her in her crate yesterday because I couldn’t handle trying to put my baby down to nap while the puppy roared around the room. This morning PH found himself trying to keep Babby from removing the caps on our electrical outlets while trying to clean up a massive dog crap on our living room floor.
This is the third “mistake” she has made since she arrived, and it’s awful.
She seems to have the idea about going outside to pee, but the THREE times she has pooped in the house have been RIGHT after PH or I brought her back in from outside. She waits until you turn your back for not even a second and lets fly, and these are big, stanking, soft poops. She’s eating one of those crappy “all natural” “for all life stages” diets and you can tell it’s bad because the poops are god-awful. If your dog’s poops make you want to die just because you caught a whiff of them the food needs to be changed.
I could take all of this in stride if I weren’t trying to watch an active, crawling baby at the same time. She’s spending a lot of time in her crate because I just don’t have the time to deal with her, when I’m supposed to be training her.
Anxiety. Anxiety. Anxiety.
Anyway, we’re going to a local park this afternoon to take in some Canada Day festivities. I’ll bring the puppy. Maybe I’ll be able to train her to know EVERYTHING in a couple of days and I can get rid of her…
If By Yes 