No No Dog

My one year old son L has been imitating his older siblings and his Mommy and Daddy as much as he can. He likes to run around the house, play, climb, and blabber. He is also trying to learn different words and figure out how to better communicate, which leads to some hilarious outcomes.

We have a huge 75 pound bernadoodle that is really gentle (nowadays finally). He looks like a big teddy bear, but even though he looks like a big and confident dog (and very cute), he is very needy. He will whine at you if you aren’t physically touching him and sometimes when you are physically touching him, he will whine some more because he wants to crawl inside you. There is no way he is a lap dog, but he wants to be one.

L sees our dog whine multiple times a day and also understands that saying no means to stop doing something. When L is climbing stairs or doing something he shouldn’t be doing, we say no no and he will stop what he is doing for the most part. Now when our dog is whining, L will say no no. It doesn’t matter where L is around the house, if he hears whining from our bernadoodle, he will stop and say no no. It’s so cute and sad at the same time because I think our bernadoodle just wants a lot more attention.

Juggling three kids and a needy dog is tough in isolation. Add the other parts of life - work, health, family, friends, etc. and things quickly pile up. We all try our best to give what we can to each other and as long as we are trying our best, that’s all that we can reasonably do. When the kids are older, I think they’ll also be able to give our bernadoodle more attention (and walks!). Until then, our whiny pup will have to settle for us and luckily he is getting out to a few more hikes during the week with the warmer weather coming. Time to get out and touch some more grass!