Bye bye Lulu?
/Lulu has been driving us batshit!
Effing puppy what were we thinking?
As cute as she is, she’s the equivalent of a 1 year old baby, but fully able to stand and run. She’s into everything, goes up the stairs, tries to eat her way into the cat food and nicks everybody’s stuff to chew since she’s teething. But the worst thing by far has been her impact on the kids, they are scared. It’s not all the time, but whenever she’s in a frenetic mood there’s an inevitable scream followed by tears, after the hundredth such interruption I completely lost it.
It had been coming, shouting at the dog had become an hourly occurrence, (once you start shouting it’s hard to stop) my patience reserves are so depleted that when the kids do something stupid (fairly common) I’m shouting at them too as well as having rows with Ali.
This was not helped by a busy few weeks, aside from the daily house management, the emergency luluproofing carpentry work (we’d been gradually barricading the house) the utility room:
The new stair gate
We also had good friends coming for a week’s holiday in the area and we wanted to make the most of it.
After my spectacular rant I asked (demanded) that Ali get in touch with the breeder/dog trainer for advice. Her advice was that we were giving her far too much freedom, if we’re not around to supervise, we have to put her away for own safety if nothing else.
This may seem like a small bit of advice, but it has really helped. To improve the kids lives that little bit more and to limit the spread of dog poo we also bought some pig grade fencing and fenced off the garden.
Now the kids have a whole side of the garden for themselbed let’s hope there’s a marked reduction in tears and yelling!
In other news, we had great time with various visiting friends. Fred had his first sleepover, which went so well he stayed for two nights! During his stay he also had a successful first go at waterskiing.
Finally karate continues to go well and both F&G have progressed to yellow belts, they (and we) are well chuffed!