Day 57 A.M. & P.M.

Gone are the Cuddle Days of Summer — the Land Sharks have arrived with a vengeance and I am completely outnumbered.

Puppies speak a very different language than we do; their language involves teeth. The assault on my pajama pants is not bad behavior — it is a Bid for Connection in the language of a puppy.

Keep that term in mind because if we correctly translate the language of a puppy, we will behave in ways that foster and support engagement. A person who responds to Bids for Connection with negativity will have a puppy who stops trying to engage.

This does not mean we accept the teeth in our shins because trust me — they are not very good at grabbing just the pants. What it means is we correctly interpret the intention (Bid for Connection) and respond to that with redirection and engagement.

Prevention is also important and I have two ideas for this.

First, don’t wait for the puppy to make the Bid for Connection — initiate engagement with something you deem suitable. For example, hold an appropriate toy and let the puppy chew while being petted or play a very gentle game of tug (gentle being the operative word and keep puppy head level or below her shoulders).

Second, get the chews out first by giving the puppy a bone or a bully stick, for example, before starting human time. I feed breakfast, and then let them have chew time — this makes the start of the day easier for all of us.

It strikes me that Puppyhood is a chance to put our commitment to honoring Diversity to the test. After all, expecting a small baby puppy to only speak our language — and not their own — is a wee bit ethnocentric, wouldn’t you say?