Its just like having another baby...

..... although it isn't, not quite.   For one thing, you don't stand outside in the garden at 5am waiting for your baby to do a poo, or have to de-lego your living room.  Doug and I have the same "parental" conversations along the lines of "only X accidents today" or "she slept through last night", and for the first week we had Coco, there was that dizzying feeling you get of trying to fit your regular routine around a new arrival; on day one, I rushed the kids out to school feeling as if we were massively late, only to arrive at the school gates a few minutes early.  In fact, with the house-training and de-lego-ing it feels more like having a toddler or pre-schooler - she still requires a lot of your attention, but is also quite happy to snooze away in her basket and be left alone.

The house training is as frustrating as toilet training the kids was - because I'm around most of the time, Coco mostly goes outside and she is getting the hang of using the training pads that I've put in the two places (one upstairs, one downstairs) that she seems to like to poo/wee on.  On the whole, she will either whimper or fuss about a lot if she needs to go, and then we can get her outside in time, but sometimes she just does something without warning.  I keep the boys' bedroom closed, but if she gets in, she will almost always do a wee unless I can get her out in time.  Coco also gets over-excited when it's their bedtime and there's quite a lot of movement up and down the stairs; it's almost as if she knows she isn't the centre of attention at this time, and on a couple of occasions she has pooed outside the bathroom in what is almost a "oi, back to me!" protest.

Obviously, things will change somewhat when she can go outside (other than the back garden).  She has her second injection tomorrow and then we have another two weeks before she can go out into the world - the boys are really looking forward to taking her for walks and last night we had a discussion about her coming with us on the school run.  But equally, we will be able to take her out first thing in the morning and last thing at night for her "constitutional" (as my mum used to refer to it), and I'm hoping those two walks will deal with her toilet needs without having to resort to our back garden too much, especially not in the middle of the night :)


And that's possibly quite enough about dog poo for the moment.....