Sunday, March 29, 2009

The Puppy!

Emmy is afraid of cameras


oh, this post is long overdue. I've just been so busy with the new puppy that it's been hard to find time to write about her! On December 6th, Mike and I strolled over to Parque Las Heras to "look at" the rescued dogs up for adoption because we had begun to think that maybe a new friend would be the perfect cure for Emmy's lonely neurotic anxiety blues.
Emmy is afraid of cameras


If you don't know Emmy, she's always been a delicate flower, thrown into fits of desperate anxiety and violent shaking by thunder or rain, passing trucks, cameras, tv, opening the oven door, the entire world outside of our house, the sound of the water heater or the chirping of birds outside the window, to name a tiny fraction of the many daily occurrences that made every day a horrible day for poor Emmylou. After Zviah died she seemed like she had lost her security blanket and she got even more miserable and terrified and anxious and preferred to spend most of her waking hours trembling in a dark closet or shaking under the bed, hyperventilating, her beady little eyes bulging in terror. When she wasn't under the bed she was relentlessly needy. She wouldn't run and play with other dogs outside, she just ran under a bush and hid every time we took her to the park. Everything we tried to do to cheer her up seemed to make her even more afraid. So we started thinking that maybe we should get Emmy a new friend to try and bring a little joy into her days. It seemed like a great idea for her but maybe a questionable idea for us since we are planning to move overseas (back to the usa, that is) within the next few years. So we were just at this "kind of maybe" stage when we decided to stop by this park on a Saturday afternoon, to visit the rescued pets up for adoption and think about our options...
Inga, Day 1 Inga, Day 1


And then we sat at the park ALL day long, snuggling puppies and cooing and playing and cuddling... and then we just could not let go of this puppy and put her back in the cage and say goodbye, so we had to bring her home with us!!! she was just a tiny, sleepy little pup, beige with a black snout, 5 weeks old. She pretended to be polite and affectionate. She weighed 2 kilos. Mike wanted to have a medium/large dog and we thought she looked like she might grow up to be a big one. We could only guess since all the pups are rescued mutts, who knows! When we walked in the house, Emmy ran at us, excited, and then caught sight of the little puppy in my arms and backed away, shaking, and wouldn't come near her. I thought Emmy would be SO excited to meet her new friend but she did not want anything to do with her! It took her about a week to start warming up.
Emmy is not sure about this new puppy Inga, 11 weeks old


I will have to skip over lots of stories. Too much to type. It took a few weeks for the new puppy to be named, we were indecisive and made a list of cute names and thought about it for a while and Inga was the one that stuck. I think Inga was a good choice, it fits. Inga peed and pooped all over the house, squealed and screamed constantly, kept us awake all night every night, chewed on everything in sight, chewed on our arms, feet, fingers and toes, bit our noses, and had no manners at all. She was ravenously hungry all the time and once tried to kill me over a bag of doritos. She couldn't go up and down the stairs, she would sit and cry until someone carried her. She viciously massacred our plants and turned plant-pots into excavation sites. She was madly in love with Emmylou and we were madly in love with her. She never really showed much interest in us at all, except for biting us and trying to steal our food. She HATED going for walks and had to be dragged, screaming and fighting, down the street every single time.
little puppy puppy nap

Now Inga is 6 months old, basically house-broken, and LOVES walks. She weighs over 20 kilos, she was recently spayed, she has no problem tearing up and down the stairs, she has stopped biting us and humors us with cuddles sometimes, but obviously Emmylou is her one true love and best friend. She still screams and yaps constantly, what is up with that. She screams mostly when she's bored and wants someone to pay attention to her (anyone who has advice about discouraging this behavior, please send it my way).
inga is getting too big!


Emmylou is now just as much in love with Inga as Inga is in love with her. They spend their entire lives snuggling together, biting each other, chasing each other, wrestling and stealing each others' bones. They run carefree at the park, jumping and chasing and shrieking and sprinting and pouncing and wrestling. Emmy still gets afraid and shakes alot and hides under the bed, but I like to think that Inga helps to take her mind off of her worries most of the time and shortens the duration of her terrors when she gets them. Inga likes to bite Emmy a lot more than Emmy likes to be bitten, and I think sometimes Emmy is hiding from Inga. But they are both completely in love with each other. Inga is the most happy-go-lucky, carefree, well-adjusted dog I've ever met. We were worried that Emmy's bizarre anxieties might rub off on Inga but that has not happened at all. Inga is a bold and fearless explorer who loves everything and everyone, except for big dogs that walk up to her in the street. She gets scared of big dogs and when they sniff her she runs away crying with her tail between her legs. We feel like we totally made the right decision to get her as a friend for Emmy and I am still just out of my mind with love for her cute little puppyness and her cute little puppy face. Those eyes!
giant puppy playtime at the park! inga at the park

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1 Comments:

Anonymous smithe said...

halo with my brother .. I see the way the way blogs and join my brother here

5:58 AM  

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