Beware Petland

One of my friends just got a new dog. Not only that, but it's a puppy that is only ten weeks old! She's never owned a dog before, and had no idea what she was getting herself into. The only thing she could tell me was that she'd always envied me with my Scottish Terrier, and that a fever had sort of come over her at Petland. Oh, and did I mention that she's a 1L too?

So now she has to try to keep up with her studying, learn how to deal with living with a dog (and she's already got 2 other pets), learn how to train a puppy, and housebreak it. I'm thinking, this is a pretty bad time to start all that...especially right when she was complaining how Property is getting harder what with the green book and all.

This is how she got sucked into spending >1k on her little chihuahua. (All right, I'll admit it's a cute little thing, but if I had to housetrain a puppy I would NOT do it again.) Supposedly she just went to Petland to look at some birds with one of her other friends, and she happened to make this remark, "They have really cute chihuahuas here." Apparently one of the workers there overheard her say that, and dragged them over to see their newest arrival. The clincher for Petland was when they brought out the little puppy so that she could play with it. Then everyone there took turns convincing her how it was such a great idea to get a dog, and that it isn't really that hard to take care of a dog, and potty training it wouldn't take that long.

When I heard her say that, I said, "Excuse me?!!" I had the hardest time getting my puppy to "go" in the right place. I was cleaning up its goods for about 3 months after I got it. Besides, that's not the only hard thing, you've got to shower a puppy with lots of love, attention, take it out to exercise, make sure you're instilling good habits, socializing it properly so that it doesn't end up like that dog in the Benke case, etc. It's most definitely not easy, and anyone with a dog could tell you that! I also think that it's really hard balancing a new puppy with the workload we've all got.

What's funny is that she totally freaks out about poop. I just look at her and think, uh, it ain't that pretty, but all animals gotta do it. She even offered to pay me to housebreak it. The only thing I can tell her is she's lucky she picked a really small dog, so at least the poop won't be too big.

So the moral of the story is, don't let one of those Petland workers get a hold of you! Before you know it you'll be walking out of there with more than you could possibly want.