Welcoming Home our New Furry Baby

So we did it. We got a puppy. To be honest, I did NOT want one (but don't tell her that). I have been thinking about getting Clayton a puppy for his birthday for awhile. We had finally gotten into a solid routine and I felt financially comfortable getting a dog.

Once I warmed up to the idea of a puppy, I wanted a french bulldog...then my budget told me to shut that dream down. I couldn't find one for under $1800, and as much as I wanted to get a dog for Clayton, that just wasn't gonna happen. And to be honest, he really wanted a golden retriever. But with living in an apartment we knew that it wasn't a great idea to get such a big dog...and I wasn't quiet ready for that big of a dog. After doing some further research and searching for the perfect puppy....I found one!

Welcome to the fam, Mikita the corgi! And yes, if you didn't guess, we named her after Stan Mikita. Her name was almost Patty ( get it ;)) let me tell you: SHE IS A HANDFUL!!! I knew a puppy was gonna be a lot of work, but damn is this one a lot! The 1st 2 days, I cried my eyes out because she was just acting soooo crazy! I finally did some research and got her on a better schedule and she has been way better. She's going through a hard puppy biting phase, but we are working on it and think she will slowly grow out of it!

Puppy Goals

A lot of people around me have been giving me crap for putting Mikita on a "schedule"...I'm kind of sick of it to be honest. It's funny that it tends to be people that either don't have a dog, or didn't bother to train theirs....So yea...not taking advice from them any time soon. But anyway, after the 1st 2 days of having the puppy home and her literally pushing me to tears, I did some research and found that, just like human children, dogs respect and respond positively to a schedule. The next day, we enforced the schedule right away! All I'm saying is, it's helped with potty training, it's helped behavior issues, and it's helped reinforce "calm"/nap time! I have not had a single breakdown since we implemented this! So suck on that naysayers!!

Now that we have a pretty good schedule happening, I've been working a lot on training her! It's never to early to teaching good manners. As I write this, Mikita just turned 11 weeks old and she has already mastered Sit, Come, and Stay (without distractions). We started taking her for short walks around our apartment complex and I'm going to start training her to drop it, because I've found she will try to eat EVERYTHING! And go figure, her favorite thing to sniff out is cigarettes...so that's been fun. Any tips on how to get her to stop picking that stuff up??

More to Come

All in all, we can't complain. Mikita is so freaking smart and has the best personality. She is sassy...but that just means she fits right in with her mommy ;P She has her 12 week shots coming up next week and then we can finally take her to puppy classes and to play with other dogs! Be sure to stay tuned for all our fun experiences! If you want to see more of Mikita or Clayton and me, head over to my Instagram!