Life's a Little Busier with a Puppy

First and foremost, we're sorry for neglecting our blog the last week or so. We've been quite busy with this little puppy. Let me just tell you that having a puppy is so much fun. I mean somethings aren't fun (cleaning up poop, taking him out in the middle of the night, knowing he whines at home when you leave) but for the most part it's just fun. He constantly entertains us, particularly when it comes to stairs. He thinks he's a lot bigger than he actually is. Plus he's a great excuse to be out and about at least once, but usually more, every day.

Because he's so young, we've got to be really careful about taking him out of the garden at our house. But we venture out cautiously to a little park by our house that is fairly clean and free of a ton of dogs. Once Chukes has all of this shots then we'll go to the two BIG parks by our house where he can socialize with other puppies then just Praeta.

Which brings me to the next thing... we bought the puppy without asking our landlords and we're ready to face the consequences after the fact. We figured we'd have some time before they even realized the puppy existed because we NEVER see them. The problem with that plan is that when we opened the gate to come home for the first time with the puppy, their maid was standing right there and the secret was out.

Anyways, a couple of days later our landlords came over to "give us the receipt from rent." But really they wanted to tell us that they thought the dog was too big to live in the apartment and that someone (we weren't sure who) was afraid of big dogs. Needless to say Ryan and I were taken aback at their assertiveness (not usually a common trait of Ecuadorians). I was particularly taken aback when they were talking to Ryan about it at the door and when I walked by they said something to the effect of we need to speak to the boss of the house (talking about me). Gosh, I hate confrontation like that! Anyways... so we explained to them that we would train the puppy really well and that he wouldn't be in their way and if there was any damage that we'd pay... yada yada yada, all the typical stuff. Then I asked them what they would like us to do and they didn't really say anything and walked away (not in a huff, but just because I don't think they understood the question). So Ryan and I resolved to not worry about it and just work really hard to make sure that Chukes was a great, well trained, well exercised puppy that didn't cause them any harm. And if they wanted to talk about it again in 5 or 6 months when he's actually big then we would.

Anyways, two days ago the gramma (our landlord), her daughter, and her granddaughter came over to have a talk about the puppy. The granddaughter speaks excellent english. Turns out the family just had an English Bulldog (which is a big dog) that died in December and the daughter's family is really excited to have another dog at the house that Praeta can play with. So really its just the gramma that isn't keen on the idea. And from what I can understand of spanish and body language the daughter and the granddaughter basically told the gramma to get over it.

All that to say, the last couple of days have been great! We haven't felt like we needed to keep Chukes secluded. The way the house is set up is there's a small garden right outside of our house and then a bigger one in front of the big house and a long drive way to connect the two. Now we keep the door open and Chukes can run around our garden freely. We take him up to the big garden two or three times a day to play with Praeta (their dog) and usually the daughter and her husband, or her kids, come out to play with the dogs together. It's really been great bonding for the puppies and for Ryan and I with the younger family that we're living with.

So that's the story of Chuki and the landlords. We're hoping that it just keeps getting better and better between us and them and that eventually we all become friends (cheesy, I know... but true).

As far as life for us right now, if any of you have ever had a 6 week old puppy, you know they're pretty much time consuming. We're either playing or walking or training or cleaning pee/poop or napping or feeding or laughing at him. All in all, its a very good thing.

We did get out last night for a couple drinks with Maria Jose at this British pub by our house called Busters. I thought of Caders and I wanted to take a picture but I didn't have my camera! Then today we were going to go to Alice in Wonderland but it was sold out. So we (Ryan and I) went for a nice long walk and drinks and dessert at Tony Romas. Then tomorrow we're planning on going to this english speaking Church that the missionaries I met at Megamaxi told us about. We'll see how finding it goes! And then we're going to try to see Alice in Wonderland again.

Thats about it. If anyone has any tips on training a puppy, we're all ears! Or just general things we should know too...

MULUB,

taylor