Quick Update

I'm still alive. Here's what's been keeping me busy:

• I'm learning a new position at work and training someone on my old position.
• Winston got really sick with parvo, then better, then sick again, but now he's back to his old annoying self and destroying everything in the cutest way possible.
• We're having our first OCD show since June next week. So all hours that are not spent working or sleeping or dog-rearing are at ComedySportz.
• I turned 26 last week. I think being an even number is more important than being a perfect square, so I guess that's okay.

Winston.

Time to come clean. Having a dog is horrible. They look so cute and I've always heard such great things about having a dog. But that is clearly all lies. Three and a half weeks into being a puppy mama, and I often feel like I've made the worst mistake of my life. Having a puppy is the most stressful thing I have ever done. I'm in tears at least once a day because I don't think I can handle it any more. I took the day off on Friday because my night/morning was so full of puppy stress that I just couldn't make myself get ready for work and go. All my dreams are nightmares about things going wrong with the puppy.

I feel ridiculous whenever I tell people how miserable I am. The response is always "Oh, well, puppies do that." I've never been a dog owner before, so I don't know if this is just a particularly bad dog or if I'm just particularly bad at being a dog owner or what, but I swear it can't be this hard for everyone or dogs would not be as loved by our species as they are.

Both of my arms and legs look like the picture above. He bites hard enough to draw blood several times a day. Tons of my clothes have been ruined. Housetraining accidents and over-zealous barking can be annoying, but I can deal with those okay. It's the incessant biting that I can not handle. I consider myself a very patient person in general, but I lose my cool with this creature over his biting far more than I care to admit.

And the time commitment is larger than I imagined it would be. I feel like nearly every second of my non-working, non-sleeping hours are dedicated to taking care of Winston. I come home from work, clean up whatever messes Winston made that day while I was gone, make dinner, walk Winston, and it's already bedtime. Everything outside of that suffers. I haven't gone to improv workshop since getting this dog. I'm not spending as much time with Trevor as I would like. Our sex frequency has decreased dramatically. I haven't been working out anymore.

All of this misery for what?

The cutest, sweetest little guy you ever met. Yes, my carpet looks like that most of the time from all the little pieces of leaves and god-knows-what-else Winston tears up all the time, but look at that face. When he's being calm and cuddly, he so wonderful. And he just follows me around the house and I love that. And he is really good about some things. He sleeps pretty well in his crate; he only has to get up once or twice a night now, which isn't too bad, and he goes right back to sleep after we let him out to potty. And he is very good at "sit". None of the other commands we're trying to teach him are sticking quite as well, but I'll just be proud of his "sit".

I guess it's just continuing to take this one day at a time. Things will get better, right?