Five days ago we got a new puppy! We had adopted one over christmastime who had come to us sick and passed away a fewdays later. It was horrible on all of us and we were completely depressed for some time.
The only thing we knew would make us feel better was another puppy. Problem was the sickness our first puppy had was extremely contagious and deadly and was now all over our house.
Our older dogs were vaccinated, but a little puppy wouldn’t be. We bleached every inch of the house and property that the puppy had been in and even threw out some furniture that she had been on, but still didn’t want to take any risks.
Everyone says it is a one to two month waiting period inside for the sickness to wear away, but six to seven months outside.
We considered getting an older dog who we wouldn’t have to worry about, but felt a puppy was the only thing that would make us feel better. We considered renting a different house to live in until the puppy was fully vaccinated, which seems a bit crazy, although we were really desperate.
We ended up waiting all the way through the winter and spring and just adopted our new puppy on June 12th. She is an adorable beagle from Lancaster, Pennsylvania and is now about nine weeks old.
We were going to rescue again, but were just too nervous about having another puppy on a transport or from an unknown background.
Beatrice is energetic, more than I can sometimes handle, and seems a little bit feisty. She tends to nip and growl when she gets excited, which people say is to be expected. Expected or not the bite marks don’t feel good.
The problem is mostly Homer, our collie/lab. He has always been very touchy and sensitive, but now he is so much worse.
He hasn’t eaten in days and is terrified of the puppy in every way possible. He can barely be in the same room with her, much less tolerate the way she enjoys chasing him.
Gladys isn’t so bad about it. She spends most of her time outside, anyway, now that most of the rain has stopped, so Beatrice doesn’t get many chances to bother her.
Gladys has already been through this before, too. Yeah, we dog-sit often and have even had some lost dogs come to stay at our property, but Homer has never had to permanently live with any dog besides Gladys. On top of it all he has never done well with change.
For now we will just give him extra attention and keep Beatrice as far away from him as possible. Meanwhile we will enjoy all the adorableness of the little puppy and try to keep her sleeping until at least sun-up.
stone post farm 