Steve's perspective

I've met single people who raise CCI puppies, and I hold them in awe. Like being a parent to a human child, raising a puppy is vastly easier if you have a partner with whom to share all the work. I can't express how grateful I feel when, more often than not, Steve is the one who gets out of bed when (as still happens more often than not) Dionne wakes us shortly before dawn because she's about to burst. These January mornings feel frosty, and I suffer from that much cold. During the day, we try to trade off on who has direct responsibility for her. It can get tedious.

Although I've been writing these blog posts, Steve and I talk about the process of puppy-raising constantly, and this morning he offered to put down some of his recent reflections. Here they are: 

We know little about the process of civilizing children, but we can speak to them in our language by the time they're one or so. We know even less about civilizing puppies.

Tucker is by any measure a civilized dog.  During dinner, he sits or lies at our feet. He rarely begs for food, doesn’t chew the legs of the dining room table or chairs, and doesn’t wander about the house looking for objects to tear apart with his teeth.

Where she has to spend her time during our dinners

Dionne does all these things.  We tried tethering her to my chair, but she chews the leash or puts her paws in my lap or yanks at the tablecloth. So our solution for now is a kennel.  We put it near the table facing us.  She complains at first, wanting to be out with Tucker.  But soon she quiets down, and often goes to sleep after five or ten minutes.

Some day she'll be an angel most of the time. We have faith.

Expecting a puppy to infer that if she behaves badly she will have to stay in a kennel is a stretch. Eventually she will learn good manners and be allowed out with Tucker during our meals. But the process by which she learns such things is a mystery.