Our first fortnight with Nugget the puppy

It only feels fair to write my newest article about our latest experience: we finally got a puppy! It's been two whole weeks of mixed feelings: joy, frustration, excitement, nervousness, love, desperation... you name it! But we did it; we survived our first fortnight together! Let me tell you the story around the last fourteen days.

My husband and I had been thinking about getting a puppy since a long time ago, but we never actually took a step forward. It just kind of stayed as a floating idea for our future plans. We did, however, know that we wanted to adopt a puppy, rather than buying one. A couple of months ago we actually started looking into rescue dogs web pages and social media sites, stumbling into more than one furry friend who caught our attention. Nevertheless, whenever we contacted the rescue organization, we were met with no response or with a "this dog has already been adopted" message. After a month or so, we realized that people here adopt dogs quite quickly and frequently. Anyway, we kept trying to find an available dog that appealed to us and... we eventually found it.

We'd asked about a dog that, once again, had already been adopted, but the lady who talked to us sent us some pictures of two doggy siblings that they'd just received and were about to be up for adoption. We immediately fell in love with the fluffy little female and asked the lady if we could have her. She agreed and we promptly began to fill out all the paperwork to adopt her. We had no idea that adopting a foster dog required so many steps, documents and formalities. We had to fill out a 10 page questionnaire prior to the adoption, send pictures of our home, receive an inspection at our apartment, sign a contract, agree to a spaying/neutering compromise, and pay for travel expenses, as well as an adoption fee. After that, we still had to wait about a month for the dog to be ready to travel to our city, since it was missing a couple of vaccines. We waited patiently... until finally, the day came. Meanwhile, we had started getting ready for her by making a checklist of everything she'd need and going out to get it for her. We also studied a different dog-related topic every night to be prepared enough to train her properly while giving her all our love. By the way, we had already decided on a name we loved for her: Nugget.

It was a Saturday evening. We went to pick Nugget up at the location where the dog transportation company did its drop-offs, which also included signing some more papers, receiving the dog's passport/vaccine chart, chip registration and a written permission to change her name. When we received her, our hearts melted a little bit. She was so cute! She was so calm and fuzzy, with the prettiest messy hair you could ever see on a dog. She smelled of that particular puppy smell, which took me back to the days when my family got our first puppy, a dalmatian named Domino. What a lovely memory! I just love puppy smell so much. We hugged our puppy, stood there for a complementary picture from the dog transportation managers, and then put Nugget in a beach handbag we had specially prepared to take her home. She was calm and comfortable all the way back home, even while we rode the subway and walked a few blocks to our building.

We set Nugget down onto our apartment's floor, and the first thing she did was sniff around a couple of times and pee straight away... two times in a row! She also pooped in the living room. That was her welcome performance for us. We knew she'd do that frequently and that one of the training priorities we'd instill in her would be potty training outside on the terrace floor. Indeed, these two weeks have been full of pee and poop all around the house: in the kitchen, in our bedroom, in the hallway, in the dining room and in the studio. We actually used up one of those giant paper towel rolls during the first week, when it usually lasts about a month. On the bright side, the floors are always clean now because we've had to mop them several times a day due to Nugget's "smelly little gifts" around the house, and the paw print trail she leaves after her little mess. I won't deny it's been hard work teaching her to potty train, but she's been increasingly doing it on the terrace, and much less inside. We put dog training pads outside, and she's been using them much more frequently than before.


However, last Saturday we took her for her first walk, and we've been taking her out on short walks these past days to try to train her to do her business outdoors. So far, she's only peed once, even though my husband praised and rewarded her when she did. She just really enjoys the walk around the block and seems clueless as to the potty nature of our trips outside. I think I'll throw a party when she starts to relieve herself outside!

Also, the first night she spent at home was not very good for her. She barked a lot, paced, cried and wouldn't go to sleep. We tried comforting her and taking her to sleep, since she was probably tired from the trip, but I guess she missed her old things and her little brother. She spent the next day mostly lying on her bed and not wanting to play much, but she started to feel more confident and wag her tail frequently as the days went by. We had put a green collar on Nugget from day one, and she clearly didn't like having it, so she would try to take it off with her paws or by rubbing it against a wall. In fact, there was a point mid-week where we decided to take her collar off just to see what happened, and she went CRAZY. She started running around the apartment like a maniac, jumping everywhere and acting like a hare running from a fox. We were super startled upon crazy little Nugget's behavior, since she had been so calm on the previous days. Needless to say, we haven't taken off her collar again. However, she does occasionally run around a few laps like a horse on the Kentucky Derby.

Apart from the effort poured into potty training Nugget, the other task we've found hard to deal with is her barking. I would describe her barking as a progressive curve that started as a valley, then reached it peak a couple of days ago, and now it's going down the slope. Everyone whom we've asked has said that the best way to reduce a puppy's barking is by ignoring it, turning around, crossing arms, keeping your head up, and even walking into a different room. We've been enforcing that almost 100% of the times, except for when she's not barking for attention, but at something in particular (like another dog barking). I want to stay positive and say that it's been working. In fact, Nugget gets up at around 8:00 A.M. and decides to announce that she's awake by barking at us. However, today she didn't bark and we were able to sleep until 9:00 A.M. She's also learning to stay home alone and "alone" (meaning that I'm locked inside a room doing things on my computer, not paying attention to her) for a couple or more hours. Her barking has also decreased in this aspect. We feel like she's quite independent whenever she wants to be, though sometimes she craves attention. What can I say? Dogs will be dogs.

I've been having several training sessions with Nugget to teach her some basic commands: "sit", "lie down", "come here", "get off", and a couple more. She has gotten used to some of them super fast, others are still in the process of perfecting, and the last ones have been more difficult for her to follow (like "stay" and "play dead"). By the way, yesterday she finally learned how to fetch and retrieve a ball! It was so exciting. My main references for training her are Zak George and Simpawtico on YouTube. Their videos are super helpful for learning about positive reinforcement and great techniques to teach dogs how to follow orders and behave correctly while giving them all our love and support. Nugget just turned four months old, so training her during this stage plays a key role in molding her as an exemplary and happy dog for the future.

We still have a long road to go, lots of lessons to learn and tons of love to give. A dog and its owner are together in good and bad times, so the three of us will be having adventures together for quite some time. As a fun anecdote (of probably many more to come), I have stepped on Nugget's pee puddles twice wearing socks. Yikes! I've also stepped on poop twice with my flip flops on, and slipped pretty hard almost stumbling to the ground... perhaps because our floor is a little deceiving due to its brownish tones. We always have to walk around like it was a literal dung minefield.

It's also funny how some random things scare or make her alert sometimes (like the mop, the hamper bag, and the whiteboard). That's when I try to desensitize her from those stimuli by rewarding her with treats when she pays close attention to me instead of the object in motion. I've been applying a similar technique to get her to stop biting our hands and feet, and jumping over us. It's really important to keep treats within reach around the house. We keep two mini plates with treats: one near the terrace and the other one in the dinning room.

There's definitely much more to come, so stay tuned for newer posts related to Nugget. Soon, I'll be editing and posting a tutorial on YouTube showing how I made her Princess Jasmine inspired bed. Don't miss out on it by following me on Instagram at @edu_and_joy !