4 Things I Learned 1 Month into Being a Dog Mom

Last month, we brought our first fur baby into our lives. He’s a bernedoodle puppy named Mando and all the work I thought I’ve done to heal myself is being tested right now.

As a first time dog mom, I feel like I’m getting a crash course in love and responsibility in entirely new ways. As the oldest of 3 and having taken on a lot of responsibility in the early part of my life, I thought I knew what I was doing, but there was no way to prepare myself. 1 month in, I’ve documented a few of the things I’ve already learned from this amazing, wild, sweet, needy creature of ours.

1. It’s okay to love slowly.

• My best friend from my college years used to tell me that I was really hard to get to know but once I let down my walls, I had a lot of love to give that was worth waiting for. I shrugged that off at the time because I wasn’t willing to look at the reasons why I was so closed off and untrusting of others.
• It took a lot of therapy, reading books, journaling, to understand the impact my parent’s divorce had on me and to start opening my heart again. When we got Mando, our sweet bundle of puppy love, I honestly thought I had worked through all of my issues.
• Yet, seeing the difference between my husband and I opening our hearts to Mando showed me that I still have a lot of walls up. Even with a creature so open to love, he brought up a lot of fear of abandonment and fear of being unlovable that I wasn’t expecting.
• I had to consciously allow myself to relax into our new relationship and remind myself that he wasn’t going anywhere. I could allow myself to love deeply.

2. Responsibility isn’t always a bad thing

• As an optimist, I only envisioned the positive parts of having a puppy. If you’re like me, you rarely think of the 3am wake-up calls to take the dog out, wet trail of accidents in the kitchen, the constant chewing. At least for me, I was picturing lots of sweet cuddling and cuteness overload on the daily. So you can imagine that after the first week of sleepless nights, the responsibility of this life change weighed on me.
• After allowing myself a small pity-party and a few glasses of wine with friends outside the house, I realized the reason I was having such a tough time with the responsibility of it all was because I equated responsibility with restriction of freedom and a lesser life.
• When I realized this attitude wasn’t doing me any favors, I decided to reframe responsibility as a privilege. Instead of telling myself, “I have to take care of this puppy today,” I started saying “I get to take care of this sweet mess of a puppy today. I get to shape this puppy and this puppy will give infinitely back what I put in.”
• This reframe helped to change my outlook and I’m hoping I can continue to see Mando in this light.

3. Biological needs are often responsible for bad behavior

• Without the power of language, animals need to communicate via non-verbal communication and I get that. However, my puppy is in a nipping phase and his teeth are razor sharp right now.
• So to avoid being nipped at random times of the day with teeth that leave marks, we’re constantly trying to figure out what this dang puppy wants! Is he trying to play? Does he needs the bathroom? Is he hungry? What’s going on in that tiny little brain of his?
• More often than not, what I’ve learned is that nipping/not listening/not behaving usually means a biological need. When humans are hungry, they snap at us. When humans need a bathroom and none is available, we flip a table over and make everyone around us anxious AF. Same goes for these sweet little puppies. It’s communication that they have needs and we’re the ones who need to give it to them. I try to remember this every time I feel sharp pain in my ankles or feet.

4. Dogs can heal you

• I mentioned this earlier but it’s worth repeating that if you’ve had a hard early part of your life, a dog can be a really healing experience for you. Our shadow selves that don’t feel loved or validated or enough, those are the parts I feel healing the most. Every time I walk through the door coming home and I see that wagging tail and a being that is clearly so excited to see me, I almost forget about my husband LOL. This puppy makes me feel seen and understood simply by being himself and that my friends, is a gift of immeasurable value.
• It’s only been a month and I can already see myself transforming by this little buddha of a puppy.

If you’re a dog owner or have any puppy advice, I’d gladly take some! Leave a comment below and make sure to check back in to see how we’re doing soon!