Ok, I realize I’ve been VERY remiss about telling all y’all about Oliver. So this is Oliver.
He’s almost double that size now, because I’m lazy and he’s been here for a month and I’m just getting around to writing about him.
Lobsterface and I had been talking about getting a puppy for a while, because we’re both gone all day long and Neville gets rather bored. Apparently two cats do not make the best playmates for a still-kind-of-puppyish corgi. We were thinking about getting another one and having a matched set, but it turns out that freshly-minted baby corgis are expensive and, after talking about it for a while, L and I agreed that we didn’t actually need to invest in another brand name dog. Neville, as you may recall, appeared in our lives spontaneously and free of charge, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t happen twice in a lifetime.
So I spent a few days wandering around on Craigslist, looking for a cute puppy. We knew we wanted something smallish because we don’t have a big yard with a fence, so our pups are confined to the length of their lead ropes hooked to a post by the back door when they go outside. We also knew we couldn’t get anything with pitbull or rottweiler in its family tree because our local dog park has outlawed those two breeds, and since we have such a small yard, the dog park is the only place Neville (and now Oliver) can run around like a crazy person and get dirty and exhausted.
After about a week we found Oliver. Someone in an apartment complex nearby had a Dachshund-Yorkie mix puppy that needed a new home. I emailed, asking for pictures and I was immediately impressed by how SMALL he was. One blurry photo of him was on a kitchen floor, and he wasn’t even as long as one of the tiles. L and I took Neville over there after work that day to meet him; 10 minutes and $100 later we left with our new bebeh.
In the past month, he’s learned how to climb the stairs and the couch, but not the bed. He’s mostly learned not to pee on the furniture, but as far as he’s concerned, the entire rest of the house is fair game. He and Neville are the best of friends, stampeding through the house, fighting, barking, growling and yelping all at once. Oliver loves Pixel, too, but I’m not sure the feeling is mutual. He also has no idea that he’s 10 inches tall and weighs 7 lbs. At the dog park, he flips right out if he’s not allowed to play with the big dogs who could conceivably eat him in fewer than three bites. Sometimes they accidentally step on his head, but he just shakes it off and goes right back to trying to relieve them of their ankles.
We’ve just started trying to housebreak him. Does anyone have tips on how to do that? I don’t really want to crate train him, and we’re teaching him that peeing outside is good by giving him treats when he does so, but I’ve read that you shouldn’t smack their noses when they pee in the house, which I kind of think is bullshit. We clean up his messes with enzymatic cleaning solution that’s supposed to erase all of his tiny manscent, so he doesn’t think that it’s ok for him to keep peeing inside, but that doesn’t seem to be working AT ALL. Thoughts? Strategies?
Caulk and Crinolines 