WARNING: PUPPIES INTERNAL BATTERIES RECHARGE AUTOMATICALLY

Every day I learn something new about puppies.  Mine is four months now.  This Saturday will be his three week anniversary with us.  It’s not common knowledge and you won’t find it in any of the Puppy Manuals nor will the Humane Society, Pet Store or breeder tell you – all puppies come with internal battery pods. 

I am slowly but surely establishing a schedule and a modicum of control over my life – not so much his – but I’m working on it.  My puppy Finnegan works so hard, he collapses and has to nap hard too.   I have to carry this limp silky rag to his sleep condo.

When he wakes, he is a happy mad man.  He kisses, licks, hops, jumps, runs and throws his toys around, biting the squeaky and crinkly ones.  He runs into the kitchen to see if I dropped any food on the floor and comes back out to smell the family room carpet to see if there are any fibers he can pull up.  He finds carpet fuzz delicious.

His next venture is to go to the patio door and paw the curtains apart.  He stands up and taps impatiently on the window.  That’s my signal he needs to go out.  I open the door and he bolts.

I follow and he turns around to jump at me and asks with googly puppy eyes to be picked up.  I do this and am rewarded with several tongue flicks all over my face, in my nose and mouth.  Then he squiggles to get down.  I place him on the patio.  He vaults down the 30 foot patio and across the gravel to get to his grass rug. 

Momentarily he plops down.  I think he is waiting for me and I stopped running after him last week.  He waits and looks for a toy.  I follow to my chair next to his rug.  Finnegan jumps up to offer me more love.  Love given, he wants down and looks for something to chew on.  Then he remembers the rest of the yard and a light bulb goes off.  He dashes to the far side and comes back.  He remembered the board we put up to block his access to the hose, water faucet, small tool shed and finally the gate. 

He goes to the board and hops right over.  I can’t believe we thought an 8 inch high board would keep him out.  If there’s hose or anything around the board he looks at me until I come over and hoist him over the wall.  He inspects everything in that area and enjoys seeing if he can get the big rocks away from the bottom of the locked gate.

He peeks out through 1/8 inch slots to see if there are birds in the side yard.  When he hears the little girls across the street chatting as they get into mom’s car in the morning for their trip to school, he gives a hopeful Puppy “OLA”. 

My neighbor to the East has been jazzing up his yard and bought tons of gravel to recover areas.  The little dump thing makes a lot of noise riding over the gravel out front to the side of his house.  The big splash of gravel annoys Finnegan.  It is his job to bark at the crunchy noise and give the wall an annoyed glance. 

Two hours later, I am pooped.  Thankfully, his battery has begun to run down.  He plops on the kitchen tiled floor and splays his legs out behind him, puts his face on his paws and yawns.  I know within 5 minutes he will be dozing in twilight zone.  I will be scooping him baby style to carry him to his condo – where he will take ½ hour or an hour to recharge.

He summons me with a bark when the recharge is complete - and a whine if I’m not fast enough - and the whole things starts again.  This battery thing should really be in some writing somewhere when you get a dog.