Things They Don’t Tell You About Being a Dog Mum

Bailey stole my heart in January this year. She’s a sassy, chewing-obsessed Beaglier and I absolutely adore her. However, there are some things I wish people had told me before my partner and I decided to adopt her.

The moment we met Bailey is one of my favourite memories. I remember when the breeder picked her up for us to pat, she laid her tiny head on my partner's arm and looked up at us. She was so small and quiet, and we just knew, knew that we had to adopt her and give her a happy and loving life.

The weeks and months following that moment were a rollercoaster, to say the least.

Firstly, the crying. Oh, the crying. I wish someone had prepared me more for the separation anxiety we faced at bedtime. It was definitely hard. Each night I struggled to stop myself from opening the bathroom to let her out. Her crying was so loud for weeks, and it didn’t feel like it would ever end. In fact, four months on she still cries nightly just not for as long now. She’s also a scratcher. She loves to scratch the doors at bedtime and when you live in a rental apartment that isn’t an ideal scenario. Luckily for us, she wasn’t much of a howler; otherwise, we might have had some letters in our mailbox from the neighbours.

Leaving Bailey at home after the first weekend we picked her up was a tough time for both of us. I came home halfway through the day with my partner just so we could check up to see how she was going. Of course, all our fears were thrown out the window when we saw her sitting in the middle of the yard looking at everything around her with curiosity. She was happy, quiet and enjoying her new home.

One of her worst and grossest habits is definitely eating her own poop. It’s not as bad now that we live in an apartment and we’re picking it up each time she does it (usually in the morning before work). But when we lived with a yard when she was younger, it was a lot harder as she was continually pooping and we weren’t home to monitor the situation. She would come inside after having a nibble and decide that was the best time to jump on the couch and put her mouth in our face. Oh, boy was that smell disgusting! I’m so glad we’ve mitigated the issue now because I would not be able to deal if this was a lifetime habit of hers.

The first week of us moving into an apartment coincided with the week we had her desexed and how she acted during recovery the first week definitely wasn’t a good representation of things to come. She was good we were in awe, pooping and peeing outside, not making a mess of the house while we were at work. But then one week later… miss destruction was back! She had gotten on our desk, knocking glass jars off, pulling books off the bookshelf and shredding them and toileting inside every single day. It was a nightmare. Each night we came home we would just hold our breath before opening the door and finding out what lovely surprises Bailey had left us. As I’m writing this, we’ve been living in the apartment for four weeks now, and she’s finally out of her rebellious stage. We combatted the shredding of book by one, moving them into the cupboard and two, leaving old muesli bar boxes, empty toilet rolls and a couple of lengths of toilet paper on the shelves. When we come home at night now, we can see she’s taken the bait and played with them instead of other items in the house. She’s also toileting outside each day. It’s so nice coming back to a lovely smelling home and happy pup.

Her favourite place in the apartment is the side of the couch that rests on the window ledge. She’ll sit on the edge, or walk along the window sill (sometimes I think she was a cat in a past life) and looks down at the street just watching. She’ll sit there moving her head side to side watching the cars and people happily.

She’s such a funny pup. I’ve seen it in other people’s dogs but never really thought much about dogs having personalities until Bailey came along. She’s sassy, you say her name and if she’s busy doing something (like sniffing) she’ll look at you from the corner of her eye and go back doing what she was doing before. She is also very vocal, making tiny noises when we talk to her (secretly I think she can understand us).

Adopting a dog is very much like having a small child in the house, you lose sleep worrying, you lose your mind trying to figure out why they won’t listen to you and follow your rules, and even though your life has changed, it’s an unforgettable experience.

I’m not going to lie, I spent the first few weeks crying because of the lack of sleep and the need to discipline her was stressing me out. But she created so many memories, some bad and some good and I honestly wouldn’t change a thing.

Adopting Bailey and becoming a dog mum was one of the best things I've done.