The Patty project

This morning I found myself telling the 4 month old giant puppy “all I want to do is sit down with you and love you” as he played tug-of-war with my clothing.

He is a big baby; he’s a Sheepadoodle. We are convinced that he should be called a sharkadoodle because those teeth really cause damage.

He has been home for just over 2 months and he’s definitely already part of the family but we are physically and emotionally drained. (like many newborn parents).

He is teething, he has a big mouth and to provide some sort of context my whole hand can fit in it. He has 2 ‘fangs’ that at times purposely and accidentally get connected to clothing, hair and skin. He runs to the door when I arrive from work and jumps to greet me and those teeth can end up wedged on my arm, hip or belly.

We’ve ‘graduated’ puppy school and next week he starts part 2 of training. he follows commands – most of the time (well, only at home).

He’s started puppy day care and has attended twice. He doesn’t bite or scratch his carer or her people and he loves playing with her 3 dogs.

Last week we went to a local dog park for the first time and although I was anxious I observed admirably how the others loosened their dogs leashes and released them to the field to greet and play with other four legged friends. Argos greeted others with lots of sniffing and tail wagging as they did him but he took to a taller, white dog named Ava. As they did what new pup friends do we humans started a conversation that revolved all around our dogs.

Ava was 6 months old and a regular at the dog park since getting all her vaccines. As Ava’s human spoke I observed something very familiar and they were the scars on her arms. I asked the human about the scars as I showed her my freshly scratched and somewhat already scarred skin and she shared about her teething experiences with a teething pup.

Ava’s human gave me hope.

Laugh if you must but for the past month or so as Argos gets bigger I’ve started wondering if we made the wrong choice.

His main human and I have sat together exhausted sharing about our feelings, tiredness and sore limbs both wondering if we’re strong enough to get through this.

The advice that Ava’s human provided left me feeling relieved and hopeful that we will get through this.

This week we noticed that he has lost a tooth and whilst we try to celebrate all his developmental achievements we find ourselves hoping the lost tooth is one of his fangs because we know that when they’ve fallen out the new, rounder ones will grow in and then his teething days will be over.

Apparently adolescence for dogs is worse…… huh I don’t think anything could be worse than having a 15kg shark-a-doodle hanging off your bits but I will let you know how that goes too.

#pattysjourney #argosadventures #sheepadoodle #mansbestfriend