Life at Home

Welcome to life with the Bumpuss Hounds. I’ll be your host this evening…

So this is life with J-Bear and B-Dog right now. Whenever they are interacting together they are bouncing off the walls. It’d be funny if this apartment weren’t so small and crowded! They are interacting though and that is the important part.

When a lot of families might go into a process such as this they may have this Norman Rockwell-esque vision of the outcome.

I’m here to warn you that that’s highly unlikely to be the truth of what happens when you bring your dog home and there is a chance it might never be.

Having Brooklyn home this past week  has been amazing and exhausting. This week promises more of the same as we get into a very firm training routine. We did a practice track with her this afternoon that was… rough to say the least. She had the scent, she lost the scent, she had the scent, she lost it again, then she used her sight rather than her nose to find her boy. Not perfect, but I felt reassured that I could at least read what she was doing with a sense of almost complete confidence so that I can work on the problems we had. Training will be essential, which means hours carved out of the week to devote to it. Not tons, because a lot of her skills remain sharp by doing every day life things with us, but some of the others will need refreshers and reinforcing.

Their bond is not perfect, either. They seek each other out for fun, yes. They love to play with one another and to cuddle when J is in the mood for that, but they’re still learning one another. The affection is there, and the concern about one another is obvious. J cries, she generally searches him out to see what’s happening. Tonight he screamed over getting his hair washed and she bolted to the bathroom door, peering in with alert interest and ready to work. That’s a wonderful sign. He’s taken to cuddling her and patting her face and holding her paw. She enjoys the way he “speaks” with her when he does that so it’s very encouraging to watch.

Our life is a brand new sort of “work in progress”. Our familiarity with how each member of the family interacts is increasing to more and more comfortable levels, which is great. The more we can establish a strong routine, the better we can handle everything too. This week is a regular week. No days off school, no doctor appointments, no nothing but the usual stuff we do. That will be awesome for Brooklyn and for J.

Now let’s pray J’s little cold doesn’t turn into something worse. She’ll be there to comfort him if it does, which is great, but let’s not get our carts before our horses just yet!

So that’s life in the big city. Our world is covered in a fine layer of blonde fur and I could not be happier to have it so. She is a loving girl and he is so happy to have her, so every bit of work is infinitely worth it.