But Apparently Need Saying: Don’t Poison the Puppy

In her defence, she didn’t actually mean to poison the dog. She was simply having a minor meltdown over the outrageous injustice of not being allowed her iPad at the table.

To put this into context: she has never been allowed her iPad at the table. This is not a new rule. This is not a recently introduced tyranny. This is a long-standing, deeply embedded, “older-than-the-child” household policy. “No tech at the table” was adopted from a boarding school I used to work at and has been in place since before she existed.

So naturally, her reaction was… dramatic.

She decided that if she couldn’t have breakfast with her iPad, then she didn’t want breakfast at all, and flung it across the table. An inch-square piece of toast with chocolate hazelnut spread skittered to the floor.

The puppy—essentially a sentient vacuum cleaner with legs—hoovered it up before anyone could intervene.

Now, for those unfamiliar with dogs: cocoa is bad. Not “a bit of an upset tummy” bad. Properly, vet-call, Google-at-7am bad.

The puppy, however, was delighted with his life choices.

The fae child immediately began hyperventilating, convinced she had killed her beloved pet. My husband, meanwhile, was switching between yelling at the dog for eating the toast and yelling at the child to calm down.

For future reference: yelling at anyone to calm down is about as effective as using kerosene as a flame retardant.

We survived the immediate aftermath long enough to get the fae child to school (via a stop for a regulating hot chocolate and calm down) and call the vet. We were told to monitor the puppy. Because it was a small amount, it should be fine.

Here’s the issue with toxins and dogs—particularly chocolate: there is no clear “safe” limit. Dog breeds vary so wildly that what might be dangerous for a Chihuahua wouldn’t even register for a Great Dane. And even if someone did establish a definitive threshold (which would be wildly unethical and practically impossible), humans would immediately start crossbreeding dogs like some sort of chaotic paint palette and render the data useless anyway.

So the official veterinary advice remains: don’t.

Sound advice.

Unfortunately, puppies are not known for their commitment to sound decision-making. They respond primarily to “walk” and “food,” and even then only selectively.

We thought we’d gotten away with it.

We had not.

Two days later, the puppy wasn’t himself.

Now, this is a dog who usually behaves like a caffeinated land shark. So when he:

• refused treats (deeply suspicious),
  
• sat quietly next to me (alarming),
  
• and did not attempt to chew my hand off (deeply concerning),
  

…I knew something was wrong.

I picked him up—no small feat, given he’s over 10kg and usually powered by chaos—and took him to my husband. The fact that the dog tolerated being held without attempting escape confirmed our fears.

Something was definitely up.

At the vet, he received:

• a haircut (because apparently you can’t check a dog’s eyes if you can’t find them),
  
• a thorough poking,
  
• and the deeply insightful diagnosis of:
  
  “He’s eaten something he shouldn’t have.”

Well.

I am stunned.

This animal—who regularly consumes grass cuttings, bees, poop, gravel, and yes, chocolate toast—has eaten something he shouldn’t have.

Who could have predicted this.

After a stabby painkiller injection, an alarming amount of money spent on prescription tinned food, and something described as “medical-grade yoghurt,” we returned home.

It turns out he loves the prescription food.

He adores the yoghurt.

He is now deeply offended by his regular kibble.

Or at least he was—until I covered it in bacon grease, at which point he decided life was worth living again.

Moral of the story:

Don’t poison the puppy.

Or you will find yourself bribing it with bacon grease just to get it to eat like a normal animal again. For once this advice didn’t come from the trainer (now known forever as three dogs in a trenchcoat) but is probably in her playbook somewhere. 

The Puppy Is Possibly Neurodivergent

I am beginning to think that we have ended up with an autistic puppy. I mentioned this to another dog owner and was informed that all dogs are autistic. Learn something new every day.

He definitely has ADHD and access to the same endless energy supply that the child so selfishly hoards.

Still, he is fitting in rather well for the most part. He is now approaching six months old and has been given a little more free rein to explore on walks. This means that we have discovered an endless list of things that I never knew were scary but are, in fact, absolutely terrifying.

This week the list of Terrifying Things includes:

• Daisies
  
• Pinecones
  
• A new type of dog treat (this needed to be growled at and thrown around the room for ten minutes before it was cautiously licked and determined to actually be food)
  
• The neighbours (also growled at, but they were on the other side of the fence so there was little to be done about them)
  
• And a dandelion
  

The dandelion was so scary that when it was discovered on a walk with Dad it had to be sniffed, pawed and licked.

Then, on a walk later that day with Mum, she had to be dragged back to the exact location and shown the dandelion again, because you can never be too sure about suspicious yellow flowers.

Unfortunately, there are things he has discovered that should be on the “scary and not to be eaten” list that he seems to believe are perfectly acceptable playthings. These include:

• Bees (which he appears to believe are some sort of spicy raisin when chewed)
  
• Herons
  
• Angry dogs
  
• And lakes
  

The lake appears to fall into the category of:

“The ground has gone weird, wobbly and wet… I should bite it.”

At no point did it occur to him to get out of the lake.

I think it amused the ducks, though.

Still, he has got the hang of holding a toy if he wants to play with the child. This is a rule that is enforced rigorously by all members of the household (with the possible exception of the cat, who appears to believe that if we were stupid enough to bring a loud, bitey, blundering thing into the house and then get it a puppy, we are very much on our own).

Our daughter is very good at “playing dead” (see previous post) if he doesn’t have a toy, so he will generally go and find the nearest legal chew and grab it.

Last night his toys had been tidied away, so he grabbed a Dentastix and hoped for the best.

She keeps trying to teach him games with varying levels of success. He sort of understands tag, at least to the level of:

“We are running in circles and you are chasing me.

Now I’m chasing you…”

He also understands that if he falls over on her foot he will get a belly rub or possibly a cuddle with the friendliness of a boa constrictor — a risk he is entirely prepared to take.

This past weekend, however, she has been trying to teach him to play hide and seek.

On first glance this would appear to have the possibility of success.

Except she is very insistent that he needs to hide first.

We tried to explain that he would be much better suited to the role of seeker and would be highly motivated to find her, but she wasn’t having it. In her world she could count, therefore she was the seeker.

We pointed out that we could count for the puppy, but apparently that was just silly.

Every time she closed her eyes he sat (with toy in mouth) approximately one millimetre from her nose and waited patiently for her to open them again. Nothing was going to make him move because:

a) This was his best friend.

b) We had been training him that when we count we drop that number of treats on the floor.

Now we only count to three, but she made it to ten, so he was feeling extremely optimistic.

So hide and seek was a bit of a failure.

The puppy wanted treats.

The child wanted to find something.

And no one got what they wanted.

Apart from myself and my husband, who were struggling to breathe through the laughter.

The puppy is still convinced that counting should result in food appearing on the floor.

Which honestly suggests the trainer really is three dogs in a trench coat.

We are still (how long does the land shark stage last?!) trying to convince our puppy that body parts are not chew toys and that he is not to ‘mouth’ us. That’s such a cute term to have a carnivorous predator with a mouth full of needle sharp teeth latch onto your extremities and gnaw on you. When we asked the trainer (still not convinced she isn’t three dogs in a trenchcoat) about how to stop this without resorting to either a muzzle or water spray bottle or possibly chain mail (for us not him) she suggested that instead of reacting to being impaled by multiple sharp pointy objects we ‘play dead’. By which she meant that we allow the limb he grabbed hold of to go limb and uninteresting while waving a ‘legal’ chew such as a toy or nylabone in his face with the other hand. 

That’s all very well but he prefers chewing on the squishy body temperature bits. She asked us to explain this to our fae, which we did. She locked on to the ‘play dead’. That bit she got sort of, to the point where I heard her snap ‘no’ at the dog, followed by a thump and some scrabbling. When I turn around she is laying on the ground, completely face planted like a planking statue while the puppy scrambles around trying to determine if this is some sort of game, a threat or if some awful ailment has just overcome his favourite playmate. I needed to leave to stop laughing. On the plus side it did stop him mouthing so I guess it worked, on the down side she now makes like a swoons like a Victorian heroine if he even opens his mouth. 

So yes endless treats is a successful training tool but apparently confusion works just as well. 

Because we have questions over how to train our puppy to be a service dog, and frankly how to train it so it doesn’t eat its own poop and to come back when called we hired a trainer. 

She’s a lovely lady who is accredited to train therapy dogs, great. She is local and happy to work with us, wonderful. She only uses positive behaviour training, perfect. However my husband is beginning to suspect that she is in fact three dogs in a trench coat. The reason for this is that the answer to any question, training issue or problem seems to be the judicious application of treats. Needless to say the puppy loves it when she visits. It doesn’t matter what you want to do with your pup it seems the answer is make sure you have an endless supply of treats. 

Do you want your pup to sit? Use a treat. Do you want them to come? Hold a treat? Do you want them to leave something? Hold a treat and THEN give them two treats from the other hand for leaving the single treat alone. Today trainer wanted to teach us ‘positive interference’ this is a technique to use when puppy is ‘mouthing’ (she says mouthing it feels like biting) someone. It’s very straightforward, when puppy is mouthing you to ribbons you chirp happily ‘to the fridge’ and skip to the cooler, where you give pup a yummy treat – ham, cheese etc, to interrupt the behaviour. 

So there you have it, puppy biting? Give them a cold treat. Puppy not biting give them a room temp treat. Puppy crying in crate give many treats. 

So yeah, three dogs in a trenchcoat. 

My husband and I were talking to — or more accurately, in front of — our daughter today when it occurred to me that I’m genuinely not sure whether all the small things we’ve ever been responsible for are naturally incapable of surviving on their own, or if we emit some strange aura that turns them into hopeless little creatures.

Since living together, my husband and I have had two puppies, two cats, and a child. Not a single one would have survived in the wild, despite animal instincts or, frankly, any sense of basic self-preservation.

Our first puppy was very intelligent, very cute (she knew it), and had the energy levels of a toddler on Red Bull. She was a collie–husky cross, which meant half of her wanted to run in a straight line until she reached the North Pole, and the other half wanted to herd anything with four legs. The result was a puppy who ran in wavy lines, refused to walk to heel on the lead, and glued herself to our heels the moment she was off it.

We eventually solved this by allowing her to carry one end of a six-foot stick while we held the other. Don’t ask. It worked. Mostly.

One day, I gave her a sliver of Sunday roast in the garden. It dropped on the gravel, and from that moment until the day she died she attempted to chew every pebble in search of more elusive beef-flavoured stones.

The kittens were even more ridiculous. Before they were old enough to be vaccinated, the shelter instructed us to keep them inside. At night, we kept them downstairs with free rein of the main room, and put a 10-lb lead ball on a chain (as you do) in front of the kitchen door so they couldn’t get in and cause chaos.

One morning, my husband came downstairs and both kittens were gone. The weight was still in front of the only door… yet no kittens. It turned out they had batted the weight aside just enough to open the kitchen door, gone inside, dragged the chain back under the door, and pulled it tight behind them. They had, quite literally, locked themselves in the kitchen.

When freed, they did everything in their power to pretend they had definitely not been in the kitchen and were absolutely not that stupid.

Later, one of them fell ill and dramatically curled up on a chair radiating, “Leave me to die.” After syringing milk into her tiny, melodramatic mouth, we discovered she was simply dehydrated — she had forgotten to drink from the bowl two feet away. She is now a 15-year-old cat, still ridiculous, but occasionally remembers to hydrate.

And the child?

Well. This entire blog is one long catalogue of “where do I start?!”

She tried to walk off a broken arm. She ate rocks (and crayons, and several other non-edible substances). She refused to eat actual food. She sees sleep as an optional extra she will not select because of FOMO. Yesterday she attempted to find the correct piece of Lego by waving a bright pink shark slipper over the pile and hoping it would land on it. (It did not.)

Which brings me to our most recent puppy — the one we bought as a family pet, with vague aspirations of training him as a service dog for the child.

Yesterday he spent the entire afternoon barking, whining, and scratching at his crate door. We let him out repeatedly. He ran outside, played, did his business, and then bolted straight back into his crate… only to repeat the cycle. Over and over. I was losing my mind. He had toys, chews, water — everything.

Then my husband realised his food bowl was still full.

He dragged the puppy back down the stairs, made him look at the bowl before he could sprint back up, and puppy immediately inhaled a bowl and a half of kibble. He had forgotten to eat. Despite running past the bowl all afternoon. Apparently bubbles and his best friend are more important than basic survival.

So here we are: pairing the puppy who forgets to eat with the child who forgets everything, and hoping they will somehow balance each other out.

A recipe for success, right?

How do we keep ending up with them?!