We have a new puppy at our house. A very adorable little West Highland White Terrier who is now 10 weeks old. She weighs about 3 pounds and has very sharp tiny puppy teeth. We named her Kenzie. We chose a puppy from the litter that seemed to be a little quieter and more low-keyed than her litter-mates. THANK GOD!!! Boy, did she have us fooled!
She joins our 9 year old West Highland White Terrier (Yuki). Yuki wants nothing to do with this new interloper and we can see it will take a while before we can have the two of them together. Its been about 10 days since we brought Kenzie to live in our home. Yuki shows a mild interest in her through the mesh of the dog kennel and the sides of Kenzie’s playpen, which is now a major piece of furniture in our living room.
I finally decided that I could probably safely make a run to the grocery store one recent morning after dropping Paul at the college. Life seemed to have settled into a routine somewhat, and Kenzie usually naps in the mornings after the excitement of her wake-up sink bath, our morning coffee and newspaper, and breakfast. We each cuddle her while we have our coffee along with paying some extra attention to Yuki, as well.
I was pretty wrong about this grocery run plan. I came home with a trunk full of groceries including a lot of frozen items, refrigerated items, and fresh produce. It was already 108 outside, so these things needed to be unloaded quickly. I came into the house to check on the doggies and Kenzie has peed all over her kennel. Uh-oh. So I take her out of her kennel and pop her into her playpen until I can get the groceries into the house before I changed her kennel pee-pads. I quickly pulled out all the frozen food and put it all into the freezer willy-nilly, figuring to straighten it out later.
I cleaned Kenzie’s peed kennel with Clorox Clean-ups and put clean blankets into it. I hurriedly tried to get the refrigerated food into the refrigerator before the next disaster happened when I look over at Kenzie who is jumping up and down in her playpen and barking at me in her little puppy voice. I rush over to see what’s going on with her, and I see that she has poo-ed and is gleefully jumping up and down in it, and has it all over herself, her playpen, and her toys. OMG!! She clearly needs a bath – RIGHT NOW! The grocery project will have to wait.
I scooped her up and with one hand and got her bath rig set up with my other hand so I could clean her up. She thinks this is hugely fun – a little play pool, so I was trying to bathe this squirming ball of puppy energy when I noticed that I have dog poo all over the front of my shirt. Jeez Louise! I try to hold her away from my shirt so I don’t get her dirty all over again, I dry her off with a large bath towel as quickly as I can, and put her back in her cleaned kennel, so I can now go get myself cleaned up. I have accumulated most of a load of wash in the machine between her kennel blankets, playpen blankets, my clothes, etc. I dashed off to the shower, as I had an Art Board meeting in one hour. I take a sec to wash up her poopy toys.
I am hesitant to leave her again for any length of time, but I was chairing the Board meeting and I absolutely had to go. I was hoping she would sleep during the afternoon as she usually naps at this time of day. I am thinking that I really need to be a full-time mom to this little creature for several more weeks, if not months. She needs a lot of hands-on care much like having a new baby. At 70 years old, this is an exhausting project, but oh, so worth it. She is a delight for Paul and me – just like her big sister, Yuki, has been for the past 9 years.
Kenzie has taken to chewing up the plastic-backed doggie pee-pads so I can no longer use those. I don’t want her swallowing all that plastic and she makes a total shredded paper/plastic mess out of everything. They were super convenient – like disposable diapers for a baby. I now use those soft newborn baby receiving blankets on the bottom of her kennel, and I found a flannel-lined rubber crib sheet for the bottom of her playpen. I put another couple of receiving blankets down over the waterproof sheet.
Here is a shot of her playpen set-up.
I now have 24 baby receiving blankets in my inventory and I do two loads of wash every day to keep them in circulation. Amazon is supposed to deliver another 2 waterproof crib sheets for the playpen today. I cannot manage with just one, and I’m thinking I should have ordered more.
Kenzie is asleep in her kennel in the kitchen right now. We set her kennel up on a low, folding table, right in the kitchen so she can be in the middle of all the activity while we cook. This is now a dominant feature of the kitchen, just like her playpen is a dominant feature of our living room.
As you can see on the right side of this photo, her clean receiving blankets now reside on the top of the cutting boards. This is a fun arrangement because she seams to really like to watch us cook and clean and deal with the dishwasher, etc. Like a baby or toddler, she wants to be close to us.
The other morning, Paul dropped Kenzie’s sipper water bottle and it broke while he was cleaning it and giving her fresh water. We couldn’t replace it until our local Petsmart opened at 10 am. We gave her water in a small dog dish and she drank some then immediately climbed in the bowl and began flinging all the rest of the water all over everywhere! Yikes! Another emergency project – only this time it was just clean water.
Here she is – fast asleep upside down – a few minutes ago. We think she’s pretty dern cute. Love, love, love.
We know this is only a temporary situation. In another month or so, she will be big enough to use the pet door which leads to a fenced outside yard, where the dogs can do their business outside and have a small, safe yard to play in. We have 6-foot tall Mexican brick walls all around our Southwestern property with Mexican decorative iron gates out front for the walkway and the driveway. So our entire property is fenced in, but the doggies have their own protected area within the property walls. Kenzie is still much too small to be able to manage the pet door and get up and down the stairs to their yard.
She is growing fast, though. Yesterday morning, we decided to weigh her again and see how much she’s grown. She is looking so much bigger to us. We set up a mixing bowl on our kitchen scale and zeroed it out. Paul put Kenzie in the bowl, and she weighed 3 lbs. 10 ozs! That is an entire pound bigger than when we got her 12 days ago!! She weighed 2 lbs. 10 ozs. the day we brought her home.
I know these puppy days will pass quickly and soon she will be independently running around with her big sister, Yuki. We will wonder where the time went and laugh when we look at our photos and videos of her and think how blessed we are to have the love and fun and enjoyment of having these pets share our golden years. They certainly keep us active and involved on an everyday basis. They are lots of work, but bring us, oh, so much joy.
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