Caitey's 1st week at home

When Caitey 1st came into her new home, she looked tired but remained curious. She sniffed all over the kitchen and we let her roam around the house a bit with proper introduction from her 2-legged sisters.

After we let her eat and take care of her business outside on the grass, she sprawled her limbs wide and fell asleep on her tummy on the hardwood floor in the kitchen. She did not seem to like her crate so we did not make her go inside. I moved her upstairs with me later, she maintained the same position and slept under my bed.

That night, I got waken up quite a few times. It was always the brief walking sound of a dog and then flap she was on the floor sleeping again. Poor baby I thought, first night without mommy and siblings and having a hard time finding a comfy spot to rest.

I found myself restless that night also. I kept looking down under the bed to see where she was, how she was doing, and worried at the same time that she was going to flood my house... which she did numerous times. It was OK for me, she was new to the house and babies are supposed to have accidents.

Over the next few days, we started to struggle with her. Partly because of our ignorance about puppies and not using a crate, Caitey did the same thing over and over again -- roaming around the house, and peeing and pooing whenever she felt like it.

At times it was quite a funny sight, with a dog sniffing around the house and 4 humans followed her behind her wondering and talking: "what is she doing?", "you think she is going to pee again?", "nah, looks like she is going to poo again" etc etc... then my husband started to get a little uneasy and raised the question of if we should have a pet at all.

I was not willing to get Caitey up but I did see his point -- we don't have time to follow her cute little butt 24/7, school is starting soon and the girls are getting distracted from their studies, the originally shining spotless brand new Bazillion cherry hardwood floor gets soiled constantly... and even if when she does things right on the lawn we will have to put aside our pride momentarily, bend over and clean up her mess right away. Most importantly, my husband started to feel that the dog was taking away his time from his girls and work.

The three females in our family tried to turn deaf ears to him... after all, we searched high and low for her, but the same situation continued. Worse, Caitey started to chew on everything that she could lay her mouth on and we had to assign at least 1 person to watch her all the time, she is a golden after all. Now even the girls and I were getting a little tired.