Testing the waters of dog ownership

This is Ellie!

She isn't ours; we’re just watching her for 11 days while Mike’s sister is on spring break. She’s a puppy, which means she’s incredibly soft and cute, gives sweet little kisses, and loves to play. Unfortunately it also means that since last Wednesday she has gone to the bathroom on the floor eight times, spilled her water bowl four times, and torn one of my shirts when she jumped up on me. Yesterday I had to chase her down and wrestle away a dead mouse she found in the barn. She barks at the cats no matter how much they hiss and swipe at her, cries if she isn’t in the same room as us, and has us on a full schedule of walks, play, and constant vigilance.

 

Before Ellie came, we didn’t really have experience taking care of a dog. But I’ve always wanted one, and having one someday is an important detail in my daydreams about our future decades here at the homestead. I really love big dogs like Great Danes and Mastiffs (they’re like loyal horses that get to live in the house with you!), but out of practicality we’ll probably get a medium-sized mutt from the Humane Society someday. Of course I assume we’ll find a perfect dog that is youngish but never goes to the bathroom on the floor, knows how to greet people politely, doesn’t have separation anxiety, and only barks at strangers.

But now we’re thinking of waiting a year or few before looking for our own dog. Ellie is a LOT more work than I expected. I love going outside, but taking her out 10 to 12 times a day (and sometimes at 3 in the morning) kind of takes the shine off. She makes it really hard to get more than 15 minutes of work done at a time, and during the first few days I wanted to throw her out the window once or twice.

But then she does adorable things like run to greet me every time I call her and curl up at my feet when I sit down, so I forgive most of the puppy antics. She plays fetch with sticks really well, too. And when we can be outside with her and let her run around freely for a few hours, she does well because she’s too tired to get into trouble when we go inside, so we’ve had some good days. I won’t be all that sorry to see her go, but I hope she still remembers and loves me when we meet at family gatherings.