Meet our newest member of the family. Our 3 month old puppy named Ice. He is part pit bull and part Blue Healer. He has webbed feet. Which I think is just awesome. He took to the water like he had been in it all his life. The webbed feet definitely helps make him a fast swimmer.
It has taken me about 2 years to finally give in and get another dog after Little Lick passed away. I was not ready for another animal to come and take his place. At least that’s what I thought I would be doing was replacing Little Lick.
I loved Lick and his mother Katie like they were my own kids. I was probably closer to them than I am my own daughters. My daughter’s have their own busy lives. Where as Katie and Lick thought of me and Justin as their entire lives and world.
And Katie was with us for 14 years until she got hit by a car. And Little Lick (her son) actually lived to be 18 years old. Despite only having 3 legs. He had lost his leg when he was 9 months old after running into the road with his mother and his brother tubby (who died while I was locked up). And Lick ended up being the unlucky one that day.
These dogs were with me 24/7. With me being disabled now for the last 14 years, I was mainly at home with them due to not being able to work. So you get really close to something when you are together like that for that many years. And I would take them with me when I did go out most of the time.
Me and Lick really shared a close bond due to both of us being disabled. It’s not every day that you find a disabled owner with a disabled dog 🐶. But it definitely worked. And they were my life. Until they both were gone. And that is one of the hardest things about having a pet is the difference in our life spans. They are not here for nearly as long of a time as we are.
Making it very hard for people like me who end up loving them as though they were human. And to me they were. We have differences in how we communicate. But nonetheless animals feel just like we do. And they love probably even harder than we do.
When an animal is devastated to you, they are devoted. And would gladly lay down their lives without even a second thought. I have seen Lick go after pit bulls 5 times bigger than he was just because they got too close to me. He was very jealous!
Anyways I will get back to my point of this post. Now that I have Ice in my life I am back to experiencing all the lovely things that come along with having a new puppy. Something that I have not been through in a long time!
And while they are cute as shit, they are also a handful! The potty training and the chewing stage while they are teething is unreal! I knew it was going to be hard. Especially with me being like I am now. When Lick and Katie were puppies I had been normal so you can say. I at least had all my walking abilities at that time.
It’s a lot harder to go through the puppy stage with a dog when you can hardly get out of bed or walk across the room some days. One thing that I have found to help us through this was the opening of the old dog door.
Katie and Lick always had their own dog door that lead to the back yard. That was closed off so they couldn’t get out and run the streets. It didn’t always work for Katie because she was an escape artist. That dog was definitely a criminal at heart.
You just couldn’t hardly keep her contained. She loved finding ways to get out of the yard and go running around the neighborhood. She had many people she would go visit and they would give her treats all the time. She was incorrigible!
Now Lick was happy as shit just to be with us all the time. Maybe it was the fact that he was disabled to a degree, that kept him happiest when just staying home with mom and Dad. But anyways I opened up the dog door and went about the back yard to be sure it was secured so that the pup wouldn’t be able to get out.
And it was the best thing I could have ever done in the way of getting past all the puppy accidents. He was doing good at learning to go outside, but there was still a lot of accidents from us not getting the door open to him when he needed it, and him trying to figure out the entire thing.
Once the dog door was open and he learned how to crawl through it, the whole thing was a wrap. He was like instantly potty trained. There was nothing that was keeping him from going out and therefore he has had no problems since then. I think a lot of the problems with trying to get him potty trained was just lack of communication between us and the dog. He had not figured out exactly how to always communicate to us that he had to go potty. And we would be busy doing something and didn’t understand exactly what he was always wanting. So it would many times result in him going on the floor or right by the door to the outside.
Once he had his opening to the outdoors he knew exactly what to do with it. For most dogs are going to choose to potty outside if they have the opportunity. They really don’t want to go in the house. No more than you want them going inside your house. But they have not got complete control over their bodily functions at these young ages and so if they can’t get out there quickly, it’s the floor that gets the backlash.
I just thought I would bring that little bit of information to the table for anyone out there who may be going through the potty training stage and has the ability to make their dog his or her own dog door to a safe area outside. It will be the best thing you can do for yourself and your dog.
Ice is so very proud of himself when he comes in from his bathroom break. And we of course still go crazy telling him what a good dog he is. This way he is still feeling like he is getting some major positive results for his actions. Though he doesn’t get a treat every time now. He thinks he should but he also thinks it should be treats 24/7 around here!
And some helpful things I have found for helping through the teething stage is many toys that most people wouldn’t even think of probably. And most of these are practically free. We have him some store bought toys of course. But he actually leaves most of those in his play basket and pulls out these things.
1. Empty plastic bottles. He absolutely goes crazy over an old two liter bottle. He throws it up and chews it aggressively and has the time of his life with it. It is definitely pretty noisy. But if you can handle the excessive noise,then your pup will be thrilled. Cause I think some of their interest towards the two liter bottle is because it’s so damned noisy!
2. An old bath loofah on a stick. Ice decided he had to have this bath loofah I found outside for his own. So I gave it to him. And he has shredded the crap out of the loofah part and is slowly eating his way through the stick part.
3. Old PVC plumbing parts. I know it sounds weird but I have a lot of old parts that I have accumulated over the years from my trials and errors through diy plumbing. So I let him have one of the drain pieces one day and he has had the time of his life with it.
4. An old rag. Yeah they are just like kids. Remember when your child would sit there and play with the boxes after opening all their presents on Christmas morning? Well they are about the same way. Give them something simple like a rag from a T-shirt you were getting rid of anyway and they will love it.
5. A stick of wood. Ice has at least 4 different size sticks in his toy box. And he will drag each one out and chew on them. Making sure he goes through each one of them. Along with all his other toys. I have found it’s easier just to pick up once a day when he is done for a minute. And the rest of the time I allow him to drag his toys out and play with them. Then when I can’t handle the mess he has made anymore, I will then clean up the living room. Paper shredding is one of his favorite things to do. And while he is proud as a peacock 🦚 I am definitely not impressed by his mess he makes in my house!
So it’s a struggle to keep things looking good while they are going through their teething stage. But it won’t last forever. I have decided to let him have his fun with his homemade toys for now and worry about the clean up once he’s done and ready for bed at night. It makes things much less stressful.
Otherwise I would lose my damned mind trying to keep up with this hound! He is awesome though. A lot of fun that’s for sure. He is very dramatic and loves to play all the time. And he is definitely a rough neck. So we are constantly on him about being easy and no bite.
Here’s a video below of the ice man. And my dramatic video skills lol. I like the song!
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