Yesterday was Bailey’s half Birthday! I can’t believe she’s already 6 months old. On top of my normal Friday post, I’ll recap a little bit…this one might be long. J
I first saw Bailey when she was 5 weeks old. She was one of the puppies of a stray that my dad started feeding. My dad told me she had puppies while we were on vacation in February, but I wasn’t interested. Josh and I wanted a dog eventually, but we wanted an American Bulldog and we wanted to wait until next January. We knew we would be buying a house soon and a new puppy would make a very busy time in our lives even busier. At the same time, the “old me” kicked in.
That's little Bailey running like the wind!
I’ll tell you a little story about the old me. As long as I can remember, animals have been my passion. One night, not long after I got my license, I was on my way to my dad’s house. I noticed some puppies running in the road. They were probably 9 or 10 weeks old. The mama dog and one of the puppies had been hit by a car. There were no collars on any of the dogs and they looked so skinny. They were a mile or more from the closest house so I was sure they were stray. I don’t remember for sure how many there were, but I think there were probably 4 or 5. I went to my dad’s house, picked up my sister, went back and made her help me round them up. The whole time she kept telling me that daddy was going to kill me. I didn’t care; I didn’t want any more of the puppies to get hit. Needless to say, my dad wasn’t happy. He told me I had a week to get rid of them or they had to go to the dog pound. We fed them and I started working on finding them a home. Some lady came to my dad’s house a few days later and started yelling at him for stealing her puppies. I have no idea where she lived, but those puppies were nowhere near anyone’s home. My dad obviously gave them back to the crazy lady who doesn’t know how to take care of dogs.
Anyway, when I saw that cute little puppy running around near my dad’s house, I had the image of the mama dog and the puppy in the road stuck in my head. My curiosity kicked in and I picked up the puppy to see if it was a boy or a girl. The puppy screamed bloody murder so I put it down before the mama dog, “Pretty Baby” is what my niece has named her, attacked me. That little pudgy puppy took off running much faster than I would have thought possible. I think I knew I had to save her then. Her mom was clearly a pit mix. In the area my dad lives in, dog fighting is unfortunately very common. If the wrong people got their hands on that cute little puppy, she would be used for bait…that’s even worse than getting hit by a car in my opinion. I just couldn’t let that happen to her. I hinted around at Josh and we talked about it for all of 20 minutes before we lost all rationality and decided that we would take the puppy. We both knew it wasn’t financially the best decision for us…but that puppy needed a good home. With a few sacrifices, we could easily provide one. I called my dad not long after we left his house and told him we wanted the puppy if he could catch her. My parents were coming to visit in 3 weeks for Easter so the timing was perfect. We had a male and female name picked out before we got back home. Once we got back to MD, I called my dad probably every other day to see if he had caught the puppy yet. She needed to be vaccinated and de-wormed. I wanted to make sure she was healthy. Josh and I continued to talk about it and we decided maybe we shouldn’t get the puppy. If he hadn’t caught her yet, maybe it wasn’t meant to be. We were about to spend a lot of time and money on a house. It would be better if we waited until we were settled in. I was about to call my dad and my phone rang. It was my dad. My dad never calls me so I knew he had caught the puppy. I picked up the phone and it was actually my niece. “Aunt Kiss…Papa caught your dog! It’s a girl! Can we name her Daisy Duck?” Haha. I let her down easy and told her we were naming her Bailey. Despite having decided literally 5 minutes before that we weren’t ready for a dog, I couldn’t have been happier to get that call. My dad had been looking every single day for Bailey and he had finally caught her. She was scared of course but it didn’t take her long to warm up to my family and their dogs. She was a little over 6 weeks old when my dad caught her. Of course, this is a little earlier than ideal for her to be away from her mother, but we thought it was the best alternative. Bailey’s mom came to my dad’s house on a daily basis to eat anyway, so my dad let her in each time so she could visit with Bailey and nurse if she wanted. My mom took her to the vet the next day. Aside from having a ton of worms (which we expected) and a hernia, she was a healthy puppy! We started puppy proofing and shopping for dog supplies right away, we had less than 2 weeks before Bailey came home!
Bailey has come a long way from that scared little puppy. She's a STAR puppy now, she greets us every day when we come home from work. Her tail wags so hard that her whole body shakes and sometimes she even hits herself in the face with it. It’s so adorable and it always makes my day just a little bit better J
We’ve been able to teach her:
Her name (obviously)
Sit
Stay
Down
Come (still struggles when distracted or hyper)
Go to Bed
High Five
Play Dead
Roll Over
Shake
Wave
Heel (for the most part)
Leave it
And…she’s partially potty trained. We still average an accident every week or 2 L
We’re currently working on:
Take it
Give it
These are the first steps of teaching her to retrieve, which she needs to know in order to put up her toys and bring Josh a beer.
I can’t believe we’ve already had Bailey for 4 months. She’s growing into a great dog. Of course she’s headstrong, but we expected that. She’s definitely going through a rebellious stage right now. It’s frustrating but it’s part of having a puppy. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a puppy and I forgot how hard it can be sometimes. She’s well behaved for a 6 month old pittie mix. Of course she’s super energetic, but we knew we were getting into that.
The biggest issues we’re trying to address right now are:
Potty training – she’s shown a ton of improvement in the past month but we still have accidents. She’s just catching on to the poochie bells. She will ring them when we’re on our way out with her, but she won’t ring them by herself yet. She still just sits at the top of the stairs. I know she’ll catch on eventually.
Jumping – She LOVES people and other dogs. We’re working really hard to try to get her to stop jumping on them when she’s so excited.
Nibbling/Biting/Pawing – Bailey still tries to nibble, bite and paw when she’s playing. Now that we’ve taught her to wave, the pawing is more frequent, but she isn’t actually slapping us as much…she just waves randomly when she wants a treat or something. Haha. She only really tries to bite when she gets super excited. I think she forgets it’s bad. We just have to be consistent and hopefully it won’t take much longer to break her from it.
Walking her around a creek we found close to our house. She doesn't care to get in it, she just wants to drink from it.
Toys
After Bailey ripped the baseboard off the wall last week we decided we definitely had to get her some more long lasting chew toys. We decided to get her a deer antler and a bully stick. We’ve gotten her a bully stick before and it lasted all of 2 days. This time, I decided to get a larger one. I ordered both items from bestbullysticks.com. We give her the bullystick to chew on when we’re home and the antler when we’re at work. The bullystick is over halfway gone, but it’s lasted much longer than the last one. The antler looks barely touched! We’ll definitely be getting more of these. I just bought one of each this time because I didn’t know how much she would like them or if they would last long enough to be worth it. She hasn’t touched the baseboard since we’ve given her the antler and it still has plenty of life left in it. We’ll buy several the next time to cut down on shipping cost. They have flat rate shipping and it’s free when you spend a certain amount.
This is Bailey checking them out. She was scared of the antler at first. She barked at it. Now she loves it.
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