I’m about to sound like an absolutely horrible person. So please, if you cannot be supportive, I don’t want to hear it. I will delete mean/hurtful comments. (I hate starting with this types of caveat, but today I just need to protect myself).

.

So, Doodle MPB is now 11.5 weeks old.

I basically hate her. This morning I actually told Mr. MPB that I wish I could return her. Words, I never thought in my life I would even think, let alone utter aloud. Mr. MPB was not very supportive in my moment of weakness, in fact he said something about what am I going to do when either him or Little MPB have a few bad weeks? (Which in my mind implied he thinks I’d get rid of them, which is NEVER an option and not at all the same thing. Quiet frankly I think it was completely inappropriate for him to say that). He blames me for convincing him to get a dog and for picking her. And, he’s right, I spent months and months searching for the right dog for our family, and I picked the breed and I literally picked her from her litter-mates. This is on me, I take responsibility for this. And, while I may wish I could return her, we wont, because that’s just not what you do. But, laying out my most vulnerable feelings and having them thrown back in my face just made me feel even worse about myself.

There have been a lot of tears running down my cheeks this morning. I feel like the worst person alive because, who doesn’t love a puppy?

Honestly, I never in my life thought I could hate a dog, let alone an adorable little puppy. I love all dogs. I mean, I stop in the middle of the street to greet any dog that crosses my path and I just cannot get enough of them.

But, Doodle MPB is not a normal dog, unbeknownst to us. She screams, constantly.

Everyone keeps telling us, give her time, she’ll grow out of the screaming. We were told it’ll just be the first few nights/days. Then people started saying, it’ll just be the first week. We were told use frozen kongs, but Doodle MPB couldn’t care less about them. We try giving her bully sticks, but again, Doodle MPB is only entertained by them for about 2 minutes. We were told to try shaking a plastic container with rocks in it to startle her, and she stops for all of 2 seconds. We’ve tried giving her a stuffed puppy with a heartbeat and heater in it and again, she couldn’t care less. We’ve tried blankets over her crate to keep it dark. We brought in a trainer who told us to ignore her. We ignore her, but at 2 hours of solid crying/screaming/barking, what are we supposed to do? We’ve even googled bark collars but are very aware that they are an absolute last resort and are not to be used on puppies so that’s the only thing we really haven’t tried yet.

And so, here we are nearly a month later and basically she’s a point where she’ll sleep at night without screaming. But during all waking hours she screams. Our house is a miserable place to be and we seem to leave our house more, just to escape her screaming. When I’m at home, I have to hide from her to keep her quiet(er) because if she sees me, she goes crazy. Her crate and x-pen are set up in the kitchen, during the day I literally avoid going to get lunch, a drink or really anything in the kitchen for fear of setting her off again. We cannot take the constant screaming for the next 10+ years, let alone a few more weeks. It’s driving all of us absolutly, completely crazy.

I truly don’t think she’s meant to be crate trained. But I’m also afraid to give a not completely house-trained puppy free reign of our house. Honestly, I think she’s simply desperate to be right next to us. But, that’s never going to happen – it’s not realistic to expect us to keep our dog within 1 foot of us at all times. In fact, it’s basically impossible.

.

We have another trainer coming in a few hours. She actually used to take care of our last dog from time to time – she’s lovely but very expensive. We decided to call her because she is the only trainer we can find that offers in her-home boarding training. At this point we think we need more intervention with the barking/screaming. Honestly, we don’t know what else to do. I hate the thought of giving our dog to someone else for a few weeks, but we are simply desperate.

If you like this post, please feel free to share and please click the follow button on the side or return to myperfectbreakdown.com to follow.