I see things in a very black and white manner. I rarely see shades of grey, in-fact, I don’t really even like shades of grey.
I am happiest when things are entrenched in fact and the lines are drawn in a clear and objective manner.
Yes or No.
Allowed or Not.
Right or Wrong.
This way or That way.
Logical or Illogical
Living or Dead.
Possible or Impractical (never Impossible, because anything is possible).
This characteristic of mine is mostly pretty great in my professional life. (For the record, I’m not an engineer). But I have to admit, the human element of my work is also what makes things interesting, sometimes fun and sometimes stressful. Let’s be honest, the world would be pretty darn boring if we were all robots, programmed to do things in a clear and objective manner. And even if we were programmed that way, due in part to varying income levels, education levels and life experiences, we would all have different definitions of clear and objective, and thus our responses would not be identical.
But I have to admit, it makes my real life a little bit challenging sometimes. For example, it made our Recurrent Pregnancy Loss / Infertility life rather challenging for me, in large part because I never had concrete facts, rather I just had educated guesses and sometimes bad advice to guide my decision making process. To this day, I struggle with the lack of answers we had, and I hope for the day that medical science is advanced enough to truly support women/couples like me/us. When it came to the adoption process, my fact based thinking made me struggle with putting my faith into the adoption process and just trusting things would work out.
And now as a parent, I am much more keenly aware that humans, especially children, are not robots. Children do not always function in right or wrong, good decision or bad decision, etc. Instead children, especially toddlers, test boundaries and respond emotionally. Neither of which are are fact based thinking or responses. And let me tell you, based on my toddler’s ability to function in these illogical grey zones, I am slightly petrified of his teenage yeas.
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It’s been a few weeks since I updated the world on my biggest mistake in the last few years – bringing a puppy into our family with a 2 year old. Honest to god, what was I thinking?? And why was I so stubborn in not listening to everyone who told me not to get a puppy with a 2 year old??
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Doodle MPB is now 6 months old. She was spayed, tattood, and micro-chipped lat week. I don’t think she loved the surgery, but who would? And we are now struggling to keep her from jumping and running. She has a lot of energy, so being kept in a crate for the weekend and now being on a schedule of short walks a few times a day is not going well for her (or us).
But spay recovery aside, Doodle MPB is still neurotic. Honestly, I think she always will be a bit neurotic, that’s just who she is. And maybe to other she wouldn’t be considered neurotic, but compared to our last dog who was calm and generally well behaved, she is really truly just completely insane.
But, we are learning to cope with her insanity. Or maybe I should say, we are adapting to her personality….slowly.
It’s almost sad how much she annoys us, when the reality is she is just desperate to be with us. We had a strict no couch rule, and had been working on training her to sit on the floor in the evenings after Little MPB goes to bed and we just want to relax and watch brainless TV. But, no matter how hard we’ve tried, she just wont settle on the ground or on any type of dog mat/be. Which has meant in the evenings when we are done for the day, she ends up in her crate. I want her to be part of the family so clearly this just wasn’t working. So, last week her post-surgery sad puppy eyes, finally made me cave. It only took 4 months, but I started letting her on the couch with me at night and she is settling down better then she ever has! She seriously just wants to be with me, and she thinks she should be a lap dog.
I do have to admit I’m starting to like her a lot more then I used to. Although she still can be very annoying, especially with her jumping and her whining when she’s away from us. But her snuggling is adorable and I do love that she makes me go for a walk almost everyday. She’s actually pretty darn good on her leash already, so I mostly enjoy our walks together. And, after visiting with friends kids who are petrified of dogs, I am reminded of why I wanted a dog and why I am so committed to Doodle MPB – I want Little MPB to grow up knowing animals and having a special bond with his own dog. Of course, because of Doodle MPB’s love of playfully jumping on Little MPB and Little MPBs ability to be knocked over, they only spend limited supervised time together. But, I know that relationship will continue to grow and develop as they both grow and develop. In fact, after she came home from her spay, he lied down outside of her x-pen and pet her nose telling her you’ll be okay Doodle MPB. And she is stinkin’ cute, so that helps too.
As for Mr. MPB and Doodle MPB, in my opinion, Mr. MPB still doesn’t really like her. He used to hate her barking, but when her barking became more like normal dog barking thanks to puppy bootcamp, he moved on to hating her nipping. And once her nipping was no-longer occurring again thanks to our trainer, he moved onto hating her jumping. We’ve made zero progress on her jumping, so he still hates that behaviour (and I’m not particularly fond of it either). I’m pretty sure if we ever tame her kangaroo like behavious, Mr. MPB will just move onto disliking another puppy mannerism. While he doesn’t love me pointing this out (and probably wont love me sharing it with the world), he basically hates her puppy-ness and just wants her to behave like a 2+ year old dog. Which of course she wont be for another 1.5 years. So I think their relationship is a little more strained and needs some work. But that’s not my problem to fix so they’ll have to work it out together. (To be fair to Mr. MPB, he never wanted another dog, I basically forced this onto him. I’m just hoping he’ll eventually come around to her.)
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