My New Labrador Puppy

Let me start of by saying I didn't rush out during lock down to buy a new puppy out of loneliness or whatever reason. While I understand people's reasoning for this, our puppy was very much pre-planned and the deposit had been paid right at the start of March- way before lock down was announced.

Now the disclaimer is out of the way... Meet Knox! 

As you can probably guess by the title, he is a Labrador puppy, and is currently nine weeks old.

Before I go any further, I want to say that puppies are hard. Really hard. I thought I was prepared for the reality of a puppy, but I hadn't appreciated how much they turn your life upside down. I've touched on this is a previous post- it is impossible to do certain things at home while you have a very curious puppy following you around all day. I attempted a home workout this morning while Knox was asleep, only for him to wake up in the middle and cut the workout short by repeatedly attempting to undo my shoelaces. He's currently in the stage where he insists on following me around everywhere, and generally isn't comfortable chilling in a room on his own yet, so I have to accommodate this throughout the day.

Not only are puppies hard, getting a puppy in lock down is extremely hard. There is no way of socialising him with other people and dogs, as we can't mix with other households and he's not had his second round of jabs. We have two more weeks before he goes back to the vets, so I'm counting down the days until I can take him out for walks. He briefly met my friends dog during a social distance friendly chat, and he reacted quite well to that, so I'm looking forward to him getting to meet others.

Now I do want to talk about something that you really have to go looking for if you want information: Puppy Blues. Now I'd never heard of this before getting Knox- in my mind getting a new pup would mean sheer joy and happiness/ rainbows. The reality of this was quite different for me. He initially seemed to really struggle setting in at home, and although looking back I can see it was entirely normal, during that period I was so convinced I was doing something wrong and he wasn't happy. I spent hours trawling the information about new puppies, and there is so much conflicting advice online that I gave up in the end and went by gut feeling more than anything else. I think all those feelings were magnified by being in lock down and not being able to meet anyone and talk to them about it. Overall, it was a pretty hard week or two while I adjusted, and there definitely isn't enough information on the surface of things.

However- after adjusting to having a puppy in this house, I can honestly say I love it. There are still challenging times, but they are forgotten in the midst of his craziness and cleverness. The past few days, as I've been sat in the kitchen working on my blog he's been my little guard dog sat beside me napping away and bringing me toys to play with (as well as hoping for more food to be given to him) and he's really brighten my day.

A typical schedule for us looks like:

6-6.30 am: Wake up time 

7-10.30 am: Breakfast, then this time is split between playing and training

10.30-12 pm: Nap time. This amount varies depending on how active he has been in the morning

12ish: Dinner (happy time)

12.30- 5 pm: Knox spends this time playing, training and napping until Ollie gets home from work.

6- 12 pm: Knox will have his third meal at 6.30 and will spend the rest of the night playing and napping (puppies sleep a lot)

12 pm: Bed time! Knox sleeps straight through until the morning- this took around a week to settle down as opposed to getting up 2/3 times a night.

If you've made it this far, well done and thank you!

 Feel free to comment talking about your experiences with a puppy- I'd love to read them!

xxx