Back to School, With a Puppy

This past week we went back to school, which meant figuring out a whole new routine with Cordelia.

Our mornings now include breakfast, getting everyone ready, and making sure Cordelia gets a good chance to potty before the day really starts. The night before, we started making puppy popsicles for her so she would have something special each time she needed to spend a couple of hours in her crate.

Because our work and school schedules are staggered, Cordelia only has to spend a couple of hours at a time in her crate before one of us is home to let her out. It sounds like a lot of coming and going when I write it all out, but Cordelia actually did great.

I think she may have even enjoyed having some long puppy naps without all of us constantly interrupting her. She settled into the routine much more easily than I had worried she would.

The harder part has sometimes been the evenings.

By the time we are all finally done with work and school, I am tired too, and I do not always have a ton of energy left to entertain a puppy. The evenings already feel short once you fit in dinner, housework, and all the normal things that need to happen. Now we are also adding puppy playtime, training, and what feels like an endless parade of potty breaks while we all keep learning how to communicate with each other about when she needs to go outside.

Overall, I think our first week went really well. Cordelia handled the change beautifully, and we are starting to figure out what this new version of our routine looks like.

The next thing I want to work on is finding a consistent way to fit a little training into the evenings without making it feel like one more chore we are all too tired to do.

We are still figuring it out, but I think that is probably what this stage is going to look like for a while.