I love my dog.

I miss her when I’m at work, I love taking her on walks, and cuddle time with her is the absolute best.

But also? I’m so ready for this puppy stage to be over. She is only three and a half months old so I know we have a long road ahead of us, but I’m thinking it’s got to get easier soon. Right? Right?????

Isaac and I have to revolve our entire lives around this little 10-pound, insane ball of fur. She wakes up at 6:00 AM and doesn’t understand that Saturdays are for sleeping in. I knew that getting a puppy would mean no more sleeping in, but I am honestly surprised at just how much work its been. It’s no wonder people say a puppy is good practice for a baby.

In the 2 minutes that it has taken me to write this, I have yelled “NO!” four times, gotten up to take a huge wad of tape out of her mouth, stopped her from eating Isaac’s shoe, thrown her off the couch, stopped her from clawing at my laptop, and stopped her from devouring a roll of toilet paper. She is a wild child. In fact, we have pretty much completely stopped calling her “Henri.” Her name to us now is “Monster” or our shortened version “Monstey.”

Don’t let the puppy eyes fool you

Isaac and I are completely exhausted. Monstey is great in the sense that she is very smart and has already learned to sit, shake, come, drop it, and fetch. And she is completely potty trained- has been since she came home at 7 weeks old. But I’ll tell you what, if she’s not doing a trick, sleeping, or taking a dump, she’s a total nightmare.

Reorganizing our kitchen/office area. Thanks, Monstey.

While a lot of her behavior is cringe worthy, she does make us laugh and smile a whole lot. She gets something called “the zoomies” and from what I’ve heard, it’s something that all labradoodles do. I’m sure other dogs do it as well, but labradoodles are especially known for it. Just about every day, Henri will act like she was shot in the butt with a syringe full of speed or cocaine and she’ll take off running as fast as she can. She does zig-zags, circles, jumps through bushes, and over furniture. She freaks out and growls and snorts the whole time she is running. She looks demon possessed and it is hilarious. Then she’ll suddenly just stop and lay down, looking at us like “what? why are you staring at me and laughing?”

The zoomies

She also does really cute things like this:

So…she’s not all spice. She has a little bit of sugar. I’m just hoping as she gets older more of that sugar comes out. Because the puppy biting is getting really old. Has anybody ever used the bitter apple spray for nipping and had success with that?

Okay, back to playing with the demon child.

6:30am Saturday morning. She woke me up just so she could go back to sleep on me…