Why Oscar is my perfect Boyfriend.
He wakes me up with a kiss every morning
Every night he spoons me and keeps me warm
He stays right by my side at all times, he will never stray
He is a very good listener
He argues back on occasion, keeping me on my toes
Can guys be so ugly they are cute?? I don’t think so
He loves taking baths and being clean
When I am mad at him and tell him to stay…he never does, he always follows me to try and make up
He has nice legs
When I am busy doing other things he is occupied by a simple bone
He sees me at my very ugliest and still loves me just the same
His world revolves around me
He doesn’t bring me flowers, but he brings my leaves and sticks after he goes to the bathroom
He poops and pees outside
He will always do what I want to do
He is funny
He is sweet
He is amusing
If I am sick, he will lay in bed with me all day
His schedule is always free to spend time with me
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
Friday Treats
So every Friday Oscar gets some kind of bone (we get Lucy one too)...or I just get one and they torture eachother with it. Lucy loves stealing his bones and then laying by him and licking it in an ever so tempting manner. Oscar sits and stares at her with his head between his paws, he looks so discouraged. He knows he can't get it because at times he is deathly afraid of Lucy..she def bosses him around. Every now and then he musters up the courage to take it back. When he does he walks around with it and then plops down right in front of her to chew it...as if to say "neener, neener, neener". When Oscar has the bone, Lucy stares at him and whimpers in an ever so pathetically manner. I imagine her saying, "Mommmmm, make him give it back". Today they each got a bone for Friday treats...but they both want the same one. They do this back and forth routine for hours while another fresh bone lies less than 2 feet from both of them. Children.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Finding "THE ONE"
So it all started when I turned 24 and my maternal instinct kicked in a million times worse than it had been—I needed a baby. Since I was clearly single and not really into being a single mother (little did I know, I kind of would be) I decided I HAD TO HAVE a puppy. So I started looking on craigslist and I started researching when adoption days were held at Petsmart. I started obsessing over it. I stayed up most nights until I could barely hold my eyes open, looking for the perfect puppy. I knew he had to be small because my roommate and I live in an apartment. The breeds I was considering were a mutt of course, Papillon, Corgi, Cairn terrier, and a Brussels griffon. My roommate also wanted a puppy but wasn’t nearly as obsessed about it as I was (until she met Lucy). So in my quest to find the perfect dog, I came home one day to find that Amira had been tortured by this woman at work who was toting around puppies for sale. Amira bought Lucy immediately. A one-pound white and brown spotted Chihuahua. She was so cute and it only made me want my dog even more! That’s when I found him; he was on craigslist. I wish I still had the post, but she took it down the minute I inquired, desperate to get rid of him I suppose. It was a 4-month-old Brussels griffon who needed a home. He was so cute in his pictures, his flat little face with big eyes. I called the lady and she told me, “This dog is VERY timid and scared and needs a patient owner. He is purebred and was bought from a breeder and the owners gave him back after 2 months and now he is very timid.” My nurturing side immediately kicked in and I wanted to take this little guy in and become him caring mother. I called my mom and told her that she needed to drive down in two days to drive 2 hours with me to see this little guy. I left out the fact that if I purchased him; he would need to stay at her house for a month before I moved into our pet friendly apartment (Amira was able to take Lucy with her to work because she fit in a coin purse). Two days later, we drove for two hours and I was so excited…I couldn’t wait to meet him. We pulled up to this mansion on the top of a hill and knocked on the door. We heard so many dogs barking and my excitement was at an all time high. A lady answered the door and behind her I saw two puppies ducking and running across the hall and then one of them stopped in mid run and stared at me for a moments glance and then darted off; that was Oscar. I still remember exactly how he looked when he stopped and stared at me, it was as if he knew I was the one…the one that would put up with all his shit, and the one that would love him unconditionally…no matter what. It took 45 minutes to catch him. Him and his sister darted under beds, chairs, and tables. His sister looked different than him, redder with a longer coat. He was very scruffy and had long legs. Finally I caught him and when you held him in his arms he laid there calm, like a little baby (he was actually scared shitless and too scared to move). The lady left my mom and I alone with him and we stayed there for an hour and a half. I went back and forth, wondering if he would get better. Asking my mom, “Do you think he will get better”. We would put him down and see if he had warmed up at all, and he hadn’t. We knew he was so ugly he was cute but we didn’t know if he would be a social, loving dog like I had wanted. After two hours, we drove down the hill to withdraw three hundred dollars so I could buy him. On the ride home I held him in my arms and we thought of all kinds of names; ewok, scruffy, geezer (he looks like an old man), and finally decided he looked like Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street and so we called him Oscar. I immediately called Amira and told her about him and how he was timid but I would give him so much love that he would come around. My mom agreed to keep him for a month but was afraid of the wrath from my father when he came home from his business trip to find a strange, ugly dog in the yard. When he met Amira for the first time, he had his tail between his legs and hid under every chair in the house. I was definitely a little sad. Lucy was so friendly and loving and my dog was a big grinch, well actually grouchJ I had to say goodbye to him and my mom said he would try and make him normal in the time she had. We both agreed we didn’t want her to be too loving because we didn’t want him to get attached to her and then have to be taken away AGAIN. I agreed to visit every weekend. An hour after my mom left she called and said when she brought him into the house he ran under the bed and wouldn’t come out. She also said that he has to have one eye peeking out at her at all times but if she came too close he would growl and go farther under the bed. I was crushed. I started feeling like I had made the wrong decision and it had only been an hour. My mom reassured me that it would be okay and I decided to give it more time. Throughout the next month the stories just got worse. He wasn’t coming around and when I would visit I couldn’t even catch him to pet him; my own dog. It was hard for me. February 1rst of 2008 my mom came to drop my dog off to stay.
I bought blankets and dishes and toys and treats…when my mom came in she was carrying a terrified dog. She put him down and he ran under the table cowering. I tried using treats to get him out but it was no use. I became pissed. Like a child, I stormed to my room and threw myself down on the bed and started crying. Who was this dog? Why did I make such a mistake in choosing him? He was never going to get better! My mom felt bad and tried to see things in a positive light and told me it would just take time. When she left I chased him into my room and shut the door. I tried playing with him and petting him and he hid under my bed. I sobbed in my pillow. I wrote in my journal while I was sobbing (looking back it was soooo pathetic) things like: What have I done! I am stuck with this beast! He will never come around! And I was so upset and my life had ended, all over this little dog. My poor mother, in the next four months she would receive endless calls. Calls at every hour, even until the late hours of the night, if me sobbing on the phone and saying that I couldn’t go on any longer, that I didn’t know what else to do. Now we laugh about it and my mom says she honestly feared that I would kill the dog and then take my own life! She had never heard me so miserable. After that first day I decided to keep a journal and I would write down his progress each night. Well he did start to get better and better and better…but only with me. He became obsessed with me. He couldn’t even take naps because he had to follow me every step I took. He laid next to the tub when I took showers (still does) he laid next to the toilet when I went to the bathroom (still does) he slept right next to me every night (still does) and he didn’t even need a leash…he wouldn’t leave my side. He had become so attached to me but he was anti-social with everyone else, even Amira. Lucy and him had become best buds and they would play and wrestle all night, but with other dogs he would run and growl and hide under cars. I loved that he loved me, but he was a true embarrassment around other people. This doesn’t even begin to cover the real problem: me leaving to go to work. I thought I could leave him behind a baby gate like we had done with Lucy, but when I got home; he had jumped it and chewed several of my shoes. I thought I could leave him in my bathroom but when I got home he had chewed the paint off the door and pooped and peed everywhere, it was smeared on the walls. When I would get home he would be squealing and salivating at the mouth and then he would pass out from exhaustion. He definitely had separation anxiety. I took up advice from a trainer at Petsmart who said to crate him and if it was still bad, put him on medication. I was crushed. I bought a crate. Being the coward that he was, he loved it! It was like his little cave to hide from the world. I bought pretty bedding and set it up and he was happy as a clam. That is until I left for work. When I came home that first night, walking up to the door at midnight after work, I heard a noise that sounded like a young woman being tortured. As I came closer to my apartment, I realized it was Oscar. I opened the door to walk into a smell that smelt like old, molding crap. I looked at Oscar and he was covered in his own feces and it was all over the walls that surrounded his crate. He was screeching. I called my mom sobbing. That was the first time of over thirty times I would come home to find Oscar covered in crap and howling. I was losing it. I bought a tape recorder and left it on while I was at work…the noise that I played back that nights were those from the movie the exorcism of Emily rose. I was losing it. I became depressed.
You see, when you get a dog, your lifestyle does change (if you are a good pet owner). I couldn’t just get off work and go to the bar right after…I had to go home and let Oscar out. I couldn’t take off for a weekend and go to Vegas because I had Oscar. I definitely went through postpartum dog depression. I felt my social life slipping away and it was all for a dog who wasn’t even good. Not only did I have the regular dog issues to deal with, but also Oscar had a million issues on top of that. I would lie in bed at night and start posting an ad on craigslist to give him away. Then I would start sobbing and I would delete it. It wasn’t that I was so attached to him yet, but that I knew no one would put up with him and I didn’t want owners to keep giving him up, I had to have faith in him and I had to be strong. So I just kept putting him in there, making sure he went to the bathroom before I left (not that it helped) I would stress about making him go, being late to work was not uncommon. He wasn’t potty trained and peed on my bed about 25 times. He peed on my floor, in Amira’s room, in the living room.. He pooped in my room, chewed everything he could find and still hated people. I took him with me everywhere to try to socialize him. I took him to dog parks, petsmart and on walks…he was getting a little better. For about 4 solid months I dealt with this and I was in a depression. My mom felt bad for me…because she said I had lost my life. Everything I did revolved around Oscar. It’s all I could think about and I was stressed. I was getting sick and I had headaches and I didn’t go out. It makes my eyes well up when I write this because I think back to how I was back then and I really was so miserable. I thought my life was over. I honestly knew I couldn’t get rid of him but I knew my life was over. I would just lie in my bed at night and cry and beg that he would change.
He was a smart dog though, I taught him many tricks. And he listened to me. Everything I told him to do he did. He was a good companion; he wouldn’t leave my side. He started coming around with Amira. She would text me while I was at work “Oscar came out of his crate and sat on my lap!!!” and I felt like it was the happiest day of my life. He started being comfortable with Amira and her boyfriend and would go up to them because Lucy was. But when strangers came around he would run in his crate. Then other not so happy times I would get a text from her saying she was trying to catch him to put him in his crate and he would just start peeing. I had my guy friend check on him while I was at school and he couldn’t get him out and when he would grab him; Oscar would pee all over him. It was so hard.
Looking back now, I can’t say the exact day that Oscar started changing…but it happened. He stopped screeching when left in his crate. He stopped going to the bathroom in it. He was less hesitant to go up to strangers; he let little kids pet him. Slowly, very slowly, but surely Oscar started to come out of his shell. His tail started standing up, with ears perked; he looked so much cuter like that; happy. He started going up to my friends and licking them. He was almost potty trained but still had some accidents and he was chewing less. Then, just about 3 months ago, Amira and I moved into a new apartment by the beach and that’s when I really started to notice he had changed. Now, Oscar is 100 percent potty trained. In fact, I just open the door and tell him to go potty and he runs down the stairs by himself, goes pee and runs back up. He is even smart enough that if I tell him to pee and he doesn’t have to, he fake pees just so I get off his back. Every morning he runs to his crate and he sleeps in it until I get home and knows that even though I am leaving, I will be back. He always has his tail and head up on walks. He approaches dogs and plays with them and he will go up to any stranger and lick them. He is happy. The interesting thing is that there are some people he is still timid around. He will not go near my ex or my dad. Instead of thinking he is a bad dog for this, I think he is genius and has wonderful intuitionJ He just looks like a different dog, so full of happiness. Amira says her favorite part of the day is taking him on a walk on lunch because he is so eager to get out the door and he just prances around happy as can be like he is king of the world. He is my king of the world. I love Oscar unconditionally and I can’t imagine my life without him. He brings so much happiness to my life. He has changed my lifestyle in some ways but I am okay with that. I learned to balance things out and that I can have a social life even though I have him at home. When I think about what my life would be without him, I could cry. And he still isn’t perfect…he digs and eats Amira’s trash, chews corkscrews and gets into everything…but he will never be perfect and that’s just him. He has the biggest personality in the world and he makes me laugh everyday. I feel like I carried the weight of five years in just those couple of months. It might sound dramatic but it was rough. I would have gone through it though, all of it for the dog I have now. I bought 5 books on Amazon for help, I bought two crates, 5 different bedding, two visits to the vet, puppy training, stress relief shampoo, countless occupy toys, tape recorder, different foods he couldn’t eat, skin rash shampoo, new door paint, a potty training pad, potty training saw dust, a doggie night light, new bedding for my bed, new shoes, and oh so much more that keeps goingJ I would do it all again for him. So that’s the story of how Oscar came to be and now you can follow along with me on my blog. It is going to be about my life with Oscar and Lucy and Amira. It’s going to be heartwarming, funny, and entertaining so I hope you follow along.
I bought blankets and dishes and toys and treats…when my mom came in she was carrying a terrified dog. She put him down and he ran under the table cowering. I tried using treats to get him out but it was no use. I became pissed. Like a child, I stormed to my room and threw myself down on the bed and started crying. Who was this dog? Why did I make such a mistake in choosing him? He was never going to get better! My mom felt bad and tried to see things in a positive light and told me it would just take time. When she left I chased him into my room and shut the door. I tried playing with him and petting him and he hid under my bed. I sobbed in my pillow. I wrote in my journal while I was sobbing (looking back it was soooo pathetic) things like: What have I done! I am stuck with this beast! He will never come around! And I was so upset and my life had ended, all over this little dog. My poor mother, in the next four months she would receive endless calls. Calls at every hour, even until the late hours of the night, if me sobbing on the phone and saying that I couldn’t go on any longer, that I didn’t know what else to do. Now we laugh about it and my mom says she honestly feared that I would kill the dog and then take my own life! She had never heard me so miserable. After that first day I decided to keep a journal and I would write down his progress each night. Well he did start to get better and better and better…but only with me. He became obsessed with me. He couldn’t even take naps because he had to follow me every step I took. He laid next to the tub when I took showers (still does) he laid next to the toilet when I went to the bathroom (still does) he slept right next to me every night (still does) and he didn’t even need a leash…he wouldn’t leave my side. He had become so attached to me but he was anti-social with everyone else, even Amira. Lucy and him had become best buds and they would play and wrestle all night, but with other dogs he would run and growl and hide under cars. I loved that he loved me, but he was a true embarrassment around other people. This doesn’t even begin to cover the real problem: me leaving to go to work. I thought I could leave him behind a baby gate like we had done with Lucy, but when I got home; he had jumped it and chewed several of my shoes. I thought I could leave him in my bathroom but when I got home he had chewed the paint off the door and pooped and peed everywhere, it was smeared on the walls. When I would get home he would be squealing and salivating at the mouth and then he would pass out from exhaustion. He definitely had separation anxiety. I took up advice from a trainer at Petsmart who said to crate him and if it was still bad, put him on medication. I was crushed. I bought a crate. Being the coward that he was, he loved it! It was like his little cave to hide from the world. I bought pretty bedding and set it up and he was happy as a clam. That is until I left for work. When I came home that first night, walking up to the door at midnight after work, I heard a noise that sounded like a young woman being tortured. As I came closer to my apartment, I realized it was Oscar. I opened the door to walk into a smell that smelt like old, molding crap. I looked at Oscar and he was covered in his own feces and it was all over the walls that surrounded his crate. He was screeching. I called my mom sobbing. That was the first time of over thirty times I would come home to find Oscar covered in crap and howling. I was losing it. I bought a tape recorder and left it on while I was at work…the noise that I played back that nights were those from the movie the exorcism of Emily rose. I was losing it. I became depressed.
You see, when you get a dog, your lifestyle does change (if you are a good pet owner). I couldn’t just get off work and go to the bar right after…I had to go home and let Oscar out. I couldn’t take off for a weekend and go to Vegas because I had Oscar. I definitely went through postpartum dog depression. I felt my social life slipping away and it was all for a dog who wasn’t even good. Not only did I have the regular dog issues to deal with, but also Oscar had a million issues on top of that. I would lie in bed at night and start posting an ad on craigslist to give him away. Then I would start sobbing and I would delete it. It wasn’t that I was so attached to him yet, but that I knew no one would put up with him and I didn’t want owners to keep giving him up, I had to have faith in him and I had to be strong. So I just kept putting him in there, making sure he went to the bathroom before I left (not that it helped) I would stress about making him go, being late to work was not uncommon. He wasn’t potty trained and peed on my bed about 25 times. He peed on my floor, in Amira’s room, in the living room.. He pooped in my room, chewed everything he could find and still hated people. I took him with me everywhere to try to socialize him. I took him to dog parks, petsmart and on walks…he was getting a little better. For about 4 solid months I dealt with this and I was in a depression. My mom felt bad for me…because she said I had lost my life. Everything I did revolved around Oscar. It’s all I could think about and I was stressed. I was getting sick and I had headaches and I didn’t go out. It makes my eyes well up when I write this because I think back to how I was back then and I really was so miserable. I thought my life was over. I honestly knew I couldn’t get rid of him but I knew my life was over. I would just lie in my bed at night and cry and beg that he would change.
He was a smart dog though, I taught him many tricks. And he listened to me. Everything I told him to do he did. He was a good companion; he wouldn’t leave my side. He started coming around with Amira. She would text me while I was at work “Oscar came out of his crate and sat on my lap!!!” and I felt like it was the happiest day of my life. He started being comfortable with Amira and her boyfriend and would go up to them because Lucy was. But when strangers came around he would run in his crate. Then other not so happy times I would get a text from her saying she was trying to catch him to put him in his crate and he would just start peeing. I had my guy friend check on him while I was at school and he couldn’t get him out and when he would grab him; Oscar would pee all over him. It was so hard.
Looking back now, I can’t say the exact day that Oscar started changing…but it happened. He stopped screeching when left in his crate. He stopped going to the bathroom in it. He was less hesitant to go up to strangers; he let little kids pet him. Slowly, very slowly, but surely Oscar started to come out of his shell. His tail started standing up, with ears perked; he looked so much cuter like that; happy. He started going up to my friends and licking them. He was almost potty trained but still had some accidents and he was chewing less. Then, just about 3 months ago, Amira and I moved into a new apartment by the beach and that’s when I really started to notice he had changed. Now, Oscar is 100 percent potty trained. In fact, I just open the door and tell him to go potty and he runs down the stairs by himself, goes pee and runs back up. He is even smart enough that if I tell him to pee and he doesn’t have to, he fake pees just so I get off his back. Every morning he runs to his crate and he sleeps in it until I get home and knows that even though I am leaving, I will be back. He always has his tail and head up on walks. He approaches dogs and plays with them and he will go up to any stranger and lick them. He is happy. The interesting thing is that there are some people he is still timid around. He will not go near my ex or my dad. Instead of thinking he is a bad dog for this, I think he is genius and has wonderful intuitionJ He just looks like a different dog, so full of happiness. Amira says her favorite part of the day is taking him on a walk on lunch because he is so eager to get out the door and he just prances around happy as can be like he is king of the world. He is my king of the world. I love Oscar unconditionally and I can’t imagine my life without him. He brings so much happiness to my life. He has changed my lifestyle in some ways but I am okay with that. I learned to balance things out and that I can have a social life even though I have him at home. When I think about what my life would be without him, I could cry. And he still isn’t perfect…he digs and eats Amira’s trash, chews corkscrews and gets into everything…but he will never be perfect and that’s just him. He has the biggest personality in the world and he makes me laugh everyday. I feel like I carried the weight of five years in just those couple of months. It might sound dramatic but it was rough. I would have gone through it though, all of it for the dog I have now. I bought 5 books on Amazon for help, I bought two crates, 5 different bedding, two visits to the vet, puppy training, stress relief shampoo, countless occupy toys, tape recorder, different foods he couldn’t eat, skin rash shampoo, new door paint, a potty training pad, potty training saw dust, a doggie night light, new bedding for my bed, new shoes, and oh so much more that keeps goingJ I would do it all again for him. So that’s the story of how Oscar came to be and now you can follow along with me on my blog. It is going to be about my life with Oscar and Lucy and Amira. It’s going to be heartwarming, funny, and entertaining so I hope you follow along.
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