How a puppy turned my life upside down — my first week with a wee cocker spaniel.

My husband and I had been dreaming of getting a dog for a while. We live in one of the greenest cities in Europe, right next to a park and a river, a paradise for animals. And then, COVID19 happened. We spent the first weeks at home wondering if this was a message from above, suddenly we were spending more time at home than ever. What more perfect moment to get a puppy?

The search was long and as it turned out our small country has a very limited pool of pure bred dog breeders. Why did we want a pure bred puppy and we did not adopt? This would be our first dog, and we wanted to be able to train him from the very beginning, with at least some certification of the dog being free from the genetic diseases of the breed. After a few months of searching, we found him. Dylan, a chocolate english cocker spaniel from a Sicilian breeder, was ready for us. And we were ready for him. We read books, watched plenty of online tutorials and videos on out to make your puppy into the perfect well-behaved dog, bought all necessary gear, booked vet appointments, turned our flat into a “puppy-safe” place.

What we didn’t know is how much our life would change with this little farty ball of fur. (Yes, smelly smelly farts).

On friday 19th of June, on our last day of vacation, we drove to the cargo area of Milan Malpensa airport. Dylan flew with his sister Gin all the way from Palermo to Milan. When we picked him up, he was all scared and quiet. In front of us was a 4 hour drive.

The drive went really well. We had stops every hour, hoping he would have a pee, but he was still too scared for peeing. He was a quiet, perfectly behaved and very sweet pup for the whole drive. We made it home after 5 hours at 9 pm, and he immediately jumped on a bowl of his favourite dog food.

My husband lured him with treats in his crate, and he immediately liked it. We were lucky! The first night he fell asleep at 10.30, all three of us were exhausted from the long trip.

There is one thing that you quickly figure out once you have a puppy, the most important quality for a puppy owner is.. PATIENCE. And you quickly learn that.. you don’t have it! But.. you absolutely need it! The other thing you need is an amazingly good partner who will be a great team member and will take his/her share of the workload!

Yes, you also need consistency, being able to survive on little sleep, a lot of energy, and to not be disgusted by the feeling of grabbing a bunch of poop from the floors (sometimes harder, other times softer.. eww).

During his first week at home, Dylan has had a fairly regular schedule:

• 5AM: he is awake and starts crying for us from his play pen. We put him in the pen in the evening, and he usually sleeps in his crate or on the floor if he feels too warm. We place peeing pads in the pen, we usually find a poo and a few pees on the pads in the morning.
• 5.10AM first potty training in the garden, sometimes a pee comes, but often he’s too excited by the garden and wants to chew all leaves he finds.
• 5.10–7AM: lots of active playing, a bit of training with treats, another potty trip to the garden
• 7AM: breakfast, the first of his 3 meals of the day
• 7.10–7.30AM: more play, biting and chewing anything he finds
• 7.30–8AM: a small nap for him (and for us)
• 8–12.30 phases of play and rest, usually regularly spaced in 30mins intervals, a few potty visits to the garden. sometimes a big poop happens in this time
• 12.30: lunchtime!
• 12.40–6PM: phases of play and rest, usually 30 mins each. If he’s having a good day, he can be quiet and play alone for long periods of time, giving us a chance to work. During the garden visits, usually another big poop happens.
• 6–7PM: lots of biting, he’s getting hungry
• 7PM: dinnertime
• 7.10–8PM: play in his pen, more usually he watches us and cries for us while we eat our dinner
• 8–10PM: very active play, sometimes a long walk by the river and many staircases, lots of biting and chewing at this time which gets worse and worse as he gets more and more tired, just like a baby :)
• 10.30PM: we cuddle him to sleep, usually he’s incredibly bity until he suddenly passes out. But he is very sensitive unless he is fully asleep, so we have to tiptoe out of the playpen, switch all lights very softly and whisper to each other not to wake him up.

Now, our schedule before this little chocolate joined us was the following: get up around 8/8.30, leisurely having breakfast and getting ready for the day, starting work around 9, having lunch around 12 and continuing work till 6/7, after which we’d relax/read/go climbing/go out. I used to be a person that could not survive without at least 8.30–9 hours a sleep per night, now I can work all day, play with him, clean the house etc etc, and feel fine on 6 hours! (hopefully this will change with time, as I do value sleep a lot).

In terms of training and behaviour, we have managed to get Dylan to like his crate and spend all night there in his play pen in the living room (he’s off-limits in the bedroom), he can do “sit” and sometimes “down” and he comes when we call him (he does not yet come to his name, but to little sounds, whistling, clapping), he fetches his ball and almost always brings it back to us naturally, this must be in his genes! We also have had friends over to socialise him to other humans, and he has been getting less and less scared with each of them. Today, on day 7, he greeted the neighbour, went to him and smelled his feet, letting him pet him. We’ve been astonished how well he’s done with the collar, which he has on since day 1, and we’ve taken him for short walks and he has been amazing on the leash, following us and rarely pulling on it. Barking is also rare, maybe a few barks per day, mostly happening when his ball or toy gets stuck under a table or sofa and he cannot reach it. During the day, we can often leave him in his play pen while we work on our laptops next to him, we take him out for some play and potty every two hours or so. The worst, most active and bity times are early mornings and evenings.

Tricks that have worked for us for the moments of desperation, when he is so active and bity that nobody can stop him, have been to give him a cardboard box, on which he could destress (the box now exists only in tiny tiny pieces) and an old tshirt, which he also loves to chew on. He has about 6/7 different toys otherwise with different textures and sounds, which he likes a lot.

Despite the drastic sleep reduction, the biting sometimes incessant, the crying, the constant attention, we are completely in love with this pup, he is the sweetest thing and he is bringing so much happiness in our home! He loves us a lot and constantly licks all over our faces and does the funniest things which make us laugh at least 20 times a day.

Stay tuned for updates in the next months on his development and hopefully our longer sleeping schedules!