How We Decided to Get A Puppy

Bruno (formerly Elijah)’s first day at home

We got a puppy back in November, a week before Thanksgiving. This is something we all wanted eventually, but Elle was getting really antsy about it and it ended up on her Christmas list. We decided we wanted to be the ones to get the puppy, not Santa, so we got serious about being in touch with a local rescue place, Lucky Dog Refuge (Stamford, CT) where we had applied over the summer. They had a litter coming in that were a lab/shepherd mix puppies and we decided to go see one of the last available puppies from the litter. A week later, we told the girls we were going somewhere special to surprise them. We took them out to lunch (Elle said “is this the surprise??”) and then to see the puppy. Bruno came home with us! He is soooo sweet, from the moment we first saw him we thought he loved us haha. Most people think we’re crazy getting a puppy while both working full time and having 3 kids at home (7 & under) but we are really happy.

Getting a puppy IS a lot of work, but it’s also a lot of fun. We are crate training, which was awful for more than the few nights that people had warned us about. It took Bruno over a week to not whine/scream/make awful sounds before finally falling asleep. Similar to letting a baby “cry it out” but the sounds were wayyy worse than a crying baby. I also had many nights that I had to take him out to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. We’re now 2 months in (he’s 5 mos old) and he has been sleeping 100% through the night for about a month. Now he goes into the crate without any issues, and can last a few hours in there when we leave the house.

When we showed up to meet the puppy & take him home, we were totally unprepared, so I figured it would be helpful to write down the puppy necessities for anyone considering getting a dog. We went straight from the rescue place to the pet store and picked everything up. The crate was the only thing we didn’t have to buy, we had been given one by a friend.