You want an update of the Beagle puppy? He 7ish months now. If he doesn’t stop eating crap soon, including that crap, I’m gonna lose it. 🙄

So the girl child is the least interested in walking him. She was the most interested in getting a puppy. She’s 13. Surprise! 🎉💥🎊

They love each other though and if I have the right sort of mentality to encourage and positive reinforce her and bla blah BLAH then she might take him or play with him. But it’s a lot of work to convince her to do it and I’m not into it anymore. FED UP.

The teen boy walks puppy every lunch. For an hour! On his own! Because he wants to! 😃 I’m pleasantly surprised but hold back saying anything because teenagers, especially boys in my experience, think moms should say nothing unless it involves words like burgers, wings or pizza. And pasta. So I say nothing and smile at myself when he takes that pooch and heads out into the wild city park by the lake or marina for an hour. Good for him!

The kid’s dad is the one who spends the most time with Tucker. He does the biggest, longest walk every morning for at least an hour. He also is the one who meets most of the other dog owners – Tucker apparently has several girlfriends now because of the morning walks. 🙃 He also allows Tucker to be draped around him while he’s typing away on a device on his lap. I don’t know how he does that, I find it slows my typing down significantly if I have a dog attached to my body. But it’s a non-issue since I prefer sitting at a desk or table to help keep my posture from adding to my neck and shoulder pain. Whatever floats his boat, right?

I walk Tucker also, but since I’m not living at home full-time I’m less involved with the pooch than the rest of the family. When I am home, I do my part, and I enjoy interacting with the little troublemaker. Mostly. 😉

Speaking of trouble…Yesterday, I had major drama with him at the park. I came home in tears. However, in hindsight things look less dire and I am a blogger whose aim is to entertain, so hang on to your hat if you choose to read on.

Disclaimer: I will talk about and show disgusting things. You have been warned.

I use a harness on Tucker. It has a ring to clip the leash to. The harness is a little loose but I’ve noticed he’s grown into it in recent weeks.

The sidewalk is salted but still really icy. Tucker’s paws are unprotected at the moment but we’ll get him a protective balm. My guess is he will not allow booties put on his feet.

The ice makes for an unsteady walk…so I choose to walk on the strips of grass beside the sidewalk, which only increases the constant sniffing and tugging and stopping, preventing us from reaching any sort of destination in a timely manner.

We finally get to the lake which is 5 minutes from my house but took 13 minutes to get to. By the second beach, I’m tired of his tugging. That Beagle nose picks up every scent and there are so many scents, we have almost no forward motion. I mean, I get that he needs brain exercise too with all the sniffing, but physical exercise will make him tired and tired dogs are happy dogs and anyway long story short – there was very little walking happening.

Plus, the beach was full of goose poop and dog poop from stupid dog owners who think it’s ok to leave their dog’s excrement lying everywhere in public parks, plus there was garbage with food residue and…blah. Tucker was happy. Me? Not so much.

So, I am on high alert. He sees so many things he wants to sniff up close and I’m watching closely that he doesn’t eat any of it and we’re constantly battling for control, him to stay and eat crap, me to pull him away before he eats crap and…

…of course he gets loose. Slips right out of his harness. 😬

This is why I titled this post the way I did. STUPID PUPPY. Because he is. Ugh.

So picture it. I’m standing on a frozen beach, there’s people, dogs and wildlife/fowl around, and not far from where he got loose there’s still that dead pig or whatever lying discarded among the rocks which I mentioned previously I think. Given how cold it was, the dead animal was frozen solid and not emitting scents (at least as far as the human nose goes) and lucky for me, he didn’t notice it.

He did notice he was loose. He looked unsure at first but wanted to turn it into a game. “Chase me” he seemed to say with his expression.

Stupid puppy. 🙄

Anyway I did not want him to pick up some scent that has him running off into god knows what direction given there are at least two coyotes in the area (I saw one less than a meter away from me a couple of weeks ago) so I simply dropped to me knees where I was on the pebble beach, and ignored him.

Every time he looked at me I said “Tucker, come!” to no avail.

Tucker in the meantime ate all sorts of crap, including to but not limited to whatever animal poop was around, sea-weed-like icky green stuff, zebra-mussel shells mixed with sand, dirt and little tiny pebbles, bark…garbage if there was some (there probably was)…

SIGH

After a while I bribed him with my gloves. My hands were frozen, but he likes to steal gloves, hats, socks, laundry…so I offered it up to him.

He was too smart. He knew I was going to put him back in the dreaded harness.

So I moved the harness and sat on it so he wouldn’t see it.

Then I continued to ignore him some more.

At one point, he went up to a kid and a woman and I told her, if he lets you pet him take him by the collar I’m trying to get the leash back on him but she just gave me a look and moved on.

Fine. Whatever. I’ll just sit on the frozen beach all day and freeze to death. WHO CARES.

Finally, Tucker came within about two meters of me. He wanted to play.

Here I was thinking how am I going to get this little troublemaker back without him turning it into a whole thing? Or worse, running off distracted?

Then I saw him pick up a small stick. Which gave me an idea.

I looked for a bigger stick (ha!) which I found behind me, and as I picked it up I saw a rock formation that looked like a bowl – three rocks made into a semi circle with a deep part in the middle, like a bowl.

I walked over to it, put the stick in the bowl part, and started stirring it around.

WELL.

This action peaked little Mr. Tucker’s interest. He came over very slowly, ears forward, forehead all wrinkled, and he stuck his head close enough to the rock bowl to sniff the stick.

I gently took him by the collar and attached his leash back on him. Gently so as not to spook him and have him run off again. Then I took the harness, slipped it on him, and attached the leash to it, as well. Now I had a double-security system and I didn’t give a flying fuck how uncomfortable it made him.

Next, I dragged him up away from the beach, thanking my lucky stars he didn’t see the dead pig or whatever that thing was, and as we trekked through some tall grass, he suddenly made a beeline toward a bush and buckled his body. I’m like, what now, is he pooping?

Nope. Not poop.

PUKE.

Except. The puke looked like poop.

AND. He tried to eat it.

Because of course he did. He loves to eat disgusting stuff. 🥴

Here’s the thing. I have a blog. And, the readers who read my blog want to know all the gory details of my drama which includes things like oozy abscesses on guinea pigs so I may as well include puke-y puppy barf. You can thank me in the comments.

Of course TUCKER had other ides. TUCKER wouldn’t let me take a photo of his puke. So I tied him to a tree which inevitably pissed him off even more.

I tied him anyway and then snapped this photo.

You’re welcome. 😛

Anyway we were less than halfway through our walk and I just didn’t care anymore. I took him and pulled him home. He was all worked up. He jumped at me, he bit his leash, he did this dance around, he got tangled numerous times, and I just didn’t pay any attention to his shenanigans.

When we get to the entrance of the park there was a salt truck that made a big racket which caused him to pause for a minute then he decided he did not want to walk on that sidewalk but rather on the other sidewalk and given the mood I was in I refused because I’m just as (im)mature as he is so we battled the remaining 5 minutes which turned into 10 minutes until we got home.

Then I burst into tears. I almost never let some stupid puppy cause me to cry but I was just so fed up I couldn’t help myself. 😥

My shoulder still hurts from all the tugging and shenanigans.

There’s your update. See you in the comments.