Veda, as you all know, is my little baby wonder dog. She has grown to be about 17x her ‘8 week old’ size. (psst- that’s not ‘normal’, if her sister, Trinity, does the same, she’ll grow to a 300+ pound lab mix… also not normal!)

Veda learned a thousand tricks in her first few months. I remember how shocked people were when my tiny little 3-4 month old puppy would sit, jump, speak, lay down etc. It seems like anything we have time to try to teach her, she has the motivation to learn.

Except to speak to go outside. By the time she was 4 months old I began having her speak at the door each time I took her for a potty break. She would speak on command, but she would never do it without prompting. She’s always been ‘bashful’ about barking at us (hence the ‘louder’ command she??has learned… what a weird dog).??Instead she prefers to follow me around and give me a ‘look’. I get this ‘look’ first thing in the morning and sometimes even in the middle of the night. She had a short run where she would come to my side of the bed, rest her face on it and then snort in my face to wake me up, then she would ‘look’ at me to tell me she needed to go outside. I was pregnant and sleep didn’t always come easily, so I guess it was a heavier sleep when it did.

This must be miserable for her, waiting around for me to look at her all the time so she can make her potty expression? Jeez.

With the new baby and the new dog, though, we really needed to streamline some things around here so I again, ten months later, began working with Veda (and Trinity) on speaking when they want to go out. In contrast with Veda, Trinity knows very few commands (it’s difficult to teach her because Veda is almost always there when I am with Trinity, doing the commands and then trying to steal the treats when I keep requesting the same thing again and again) but has finally begun picking up ‘out’, ‘go’, ’sit’ and a couple of others (though ‘no’ and ’stop it’ show no signs of penetrating her vocabulary- but you know, she’s blond with the pink cupcake belly-sweater to prove it (yes, I WILL upload pictures)…).

So, as I said, we went to the door at scheduled times, I leashed ‘the girls’ as we call them and asked Veda to speak. She did, and out she went. By the end of day 2 she was going to the door/top of the stairs, speaking one-two times and looking for the nearest parent to take her out.

And tonight Trinity has begun to copy-cat her. I’m not sure that she knows what ’speak’ means, but she is coming to understand that barking one-two times at the door gets her a trip outside…

and they’re both abusing it.

I will take them out to potty in the morning when I get up, and 15 minutes later one of them will go to the stairs, bark and look at me like, ‘You have to do it because otherwise you accept the idea of me pottying on the floor. Lets go, foo’!’ Then the other comes clattering across the hard wood floors (thank you, baby), skidding to a stop, usually overshooting the stairway and scrambling back in the direction she came, and giving me the same, ‘If you don’t do what I say, you’ll regret it’ child-of-rage look.

I feel like I’m being held hostage by my puppies, and really they make quite the little duo. Trinity can be cute as a button (she is??a giant and still wiggles so hard??her feet slide on the wood??floors when??one of us comes home)??because of her exuberance and Veda is as intuitive as a dog gets (she stopped jumping on me the DAY I came home after my surgery, and then learned she could jump on my hip instead to get close to me).

I do love my naughty little puppies and watching them grow. So far having dogs has proven more difficult than motherhood, and it complicates it infinitely, but I love them and, when I know they’re safe, most of their little stunts.

Smarties.