What Grem's Been Up To

So, obviously, the puppy's taken up a lot of time. At first I thought we were just puppysitting, like with Diesel and Madi except in our house. I guess that the new crate, Mom moving around all her bedroom furniture, and introducing Ghost as my "brother" should've given me a clue! But hey, how was I supposed to know? 

So when I realized he was staying --I'm not proud of this-- I freaked out. Why did Mom suddenly hate me? Wasn't I good enough? Why'd we need another dog? Where did all my attention go? What the hell, Mom?! I decided I was going to make her understand what I was going through, what kind of awful torture she had inflicted upon me, by just ignoring her. When she let me out in the morning, I wouldn't come back inside. I wouldn't even let her catch me. In fact, I went and hid under the house so that she definitely couldn't get me. That seemed to make her mad, so then I really didn't want to come out, and I stayed away longer.

And then when I was inside, I went on a hunger strike. I love my food, so Mom was super worried. Good. She gave me more attention, an egg, and I scarfed it down. Much better! That's the treatment I wanted!

I didn't take it out on the puppy, of course -- he didn't really know better, so I just played with him. I guess Mom got mad that I was going under the house because I'd teach Ghost to do it, which was bad, but I didn't care. How dare she do this to me! I like other dogs, sure, but sharing my mom?! Hell no! I'm the special one! I'm her "heart dog"! She doesn't need another!

She cornered me in the yard one of those times, and that didn't help. The next time I evaded her even better, and wouldn't come out for anything -- food, toys, treats, baby voice, nothing. I leered out at her from under the house -- maybe she'd get it that I really, really didn't want to share her.

But then she broke down in the middle of the yard in tears and sat down at our picnic bench, and I realized maybe this wasn't such a good idea. I just wanted to knock some sense into her -- I didn't want to make her sad! So I went over and comforted her and let her pet me and bring me inside. And a couple days later I came inside at her call, after she had patched the hole under the house, and she gave me some yummy treats instead of just shoving me back into the house. I guess that's good enough.

But I guess my plan did kind of work, because I remember her saying that of course I wouldn't be happy when my whole schedule was uprooted. She'd been so worn out by the puppy that we hadn't done anything together except sleep! So after my acting out, she started to do stuff with me -- we went to the beach and walked around town, and did training together and played games like frisbee and fetch and flirt pole (my favorite!) I got more yummy food to compensate, but she didn't give me enough to be full because she didn't want me to go back on a hunger strike. 

And after five long and awful weeks, we're back where we started. Sometimes she puts Ghost outside in the yard so we can just have "us" time, and we still go on walks and do stuff regularly. I'm happy that she realized I needed more from her --even with the puppy here-- and she's happy that she realized she wasn't doing what she should've to make it easier on me. We're both better and and back to how we were before... plus Ghost.