We picked up two Great Pyrenees puppies on Saturday. They are still little roly-poly bundles of fluff, but I could tell that they had grown since we had visited them just two weeks ago. Everyone was so excited. Puppies to play with! We have never had a puppy before, having gotten our previous dog Belle as an adult dog.
We also had a wedding to go to that day, so we didn't get to play with them much when we got them to our house in town. We made them comfortable in a dog kennel with hay in the bottom, and made sure they had plenty of food and water.
We left the wedding early and let them out to romp and play a little before putting them up for the night. They are very calm as puppies go. They mostly sniffed at things and poked around. They discovered our cat Teasel, who was NOT happy to meet them, and seems to think we have been cheating on her. There was a bit of yelping as Teasel made everything very clear about her availability as a play-thing, and after that she just sat off to the side and stared aggressively at them.
After an hour or so we tucked the puppies back into the kennel and got them comfortable again, and went to bed.
Around midnight, we were woken by loud whining and yelping. I ran out to make sure the puppies were okay. I let them out, and they peed and romped around a little. They seemed to be lonely. They have just been weaned from their mother, and I think they are missing her. I stayed out with them for awhile, listening to a loud game party a few streets down that shrieked with laughter, horrible music, and the stupid things that drunk people shout loudly to each other in the middle of the night. A surprising number of cars drove by. After awhile I was tired and the mosquitoes were biting, so I put them back and went to bed again.
It's always hard for me to get back to sleep again after being woken, but I managed to until I was woken out of the middle of an anxious dream by whining and yelping again. Ethan and I both got up and went to check on the puppies. We let them out again, and they peed and sniffed around. We tried putting them back in the kennel after that, but they immediately started whining again. This time it was the time of night when everything is very, very quiet - except for our puppies.
They clearly didn't want to be in the kennel, and seemed to have boundless energy, so we put them in the back yard and secured the gate, thinking they would be happy to explore. That lasted about ten minutes back in bed before they were yelping and carrying on again. At this point, it was somewhere around 5 am, and so Ethan decided to just get up with them. He sat outside with them and watched the sun rise. By the time I got up around 8, feeling more sleep-deprived than I remember being with newborn babies, the puppies were exhausted and flopped out on the driveway. Mirin was up, and tried to play with them, but they moved away from him and went back to sleep.
We took them out to the farm after breakfast, where they napped most of the day. Just before leaving we tucked them in with the baby goats and drove away, happy with the thought of what a good night's sleep we were going to have without them!
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