I would have owned less furniture

The dog cuddles up to my wife and farts. Then goes to the edge of the bed and digs, for I don’t know what. This is a bed, these are sheets, this all costs money. I watch her keenly to make sure she doesn’t pee. She settles down in the tangled mess she’s made.

This is life with a puppy.

Nobody told me. Our last dog was old and, cancidal tendencies aside, quite civilized. As long as we kept him from murdering other dogs he was quiet and did not chew, eat, piss or shit out of turn which is, I have come to realize, civilization.

Puppies are not civilized. In Lilly’s first month home, she was just a wandering anus and bowels. I was constantly looking for that smell. She would also chew anything and everything, including fingers and feet. We had to make sure my infant son kept his penis covered. It was a mad scramble sometimes to get a diaper on. One time Lilly busted in, grabbed my son’s poop out of his diaper and ran. I had to leave my dirty child to chase this dirty dog, prise feces out of her mouth and clean up the aftermath. Mashallah, it was a firm one.

With two toddlers, the sheer amount of poop I touch on a daily basis is high, but a young puppy increases and diversifies this to a horrifying extent. I have dealt with liquid stools, rock-hard stools, and everything in between. I have dealt with stools on beds, stools in laundry baskets, everything but stools on stools. And that’s not even getting to the urine. We have nice coir rugs which have been pissed on so much that at least the stains even out.

And, if I may return to the chewing, this is not even the business end of a puppy.

I truly did not understand the sheer extent of things that could be chewed. It never occurred to me that one could chew stairs, or wooden furniture. I did not know one could just eat the arm off a chair. It has also been a revelation to me, the rock hard stools that this diet produces. Headphones, wallets, pants, couches, blankets, toys — this all go into the mouth.

We put in a new lawn which was, to the dog, a fantastic game of whack-a-mole. Now it looks like an elephant polo field. I no longer feel any sympathy for guests who have shoes, sunglasses, and handbags chewed. I warn them that dog height is basically everywhere and no one listens. It’s not that I don’t understand, but what can I do? This is a puppy. Despite hundreds of dollars in training, it remains an abominable force of nature.

Do I love the beast? Yes. She is family and hardly the only wandering, screaming anuses in the house. But I just had no idea. I thought puppies would be cute and cuddly and something to play with, I did not realize how much she would toy with me.

My wife keeps trying to give her to guests or deport her to a farm but I resist this. I assume she will get better, and we have so far resisted deporting each other despite having more cause. So we live with this beast who may look cute in photographs, only because photographs can’t bite or shit or run away with something important between their teeth.

Nobody told me how terrible puppies are, but I’ve been told it gets better.