Where's the Puppy Love?

As if the arrival of our very first child wasn't going to be crazy enough, my husband and I decided to get a puppy last winter. I was 6 1/2 months pregnant and knowing we would soon be sleep deprived zombies buried up to our thighs in diapers; we decided what would really make the chaos complete was an adorable little furball to chew up our furniture and pee on the floors.

It was pretty much love at first sight when we saw this puppy, and luckily he loved us back. I mean HELLO! who could not love that scrunchie little face? From day 1 Chief aspired to be our lap dog. I happily gave in to his desires. My husband, Mr. Doom and Gloom, warned me that one day I would no longer be happy about a full sized dog sitting on my lap. I blissfully ignored him and continued to encourage Chief's lapdog behaviors. Of course, the fact that Andrew could not say no to those big sad eyes and would also let Chief sit in his lap did not help his cause.

For 2 months Chief basked in the glory of being the center of our lives. Then came the fateful day we brought the baby home and Chief's quality of life has drastically gone down hill. (According the Chief, anyways.) No matter how much love and attention we shower onto the Chief, the minute we start paying attention to Karston (and lets be honest - the minutes we pay attention to Karston far outweigh the minutes given to Chief), Chiefs heart is filled with despair, which is clearly visible on his little furry face. Our 50 lb puppy can't understand why we have replaced him as our lap friend.

To win his way back into our laps he has resorted to 'trickery.' He's always been a tricky puppy. When we would tell him to get off the couch he would hide his head under a pillow, the old "if you can't see my head, I'm not on the couch" trick. As he got taller he would put his front paws on the ground, leaving his back end sitting firmly on the couch, the old "if part of me is on the floor all of me is on the floor" trick. In order to steal our hearts away from the baby, he has pulled out all new tricks.

He is not allowed in our bedroom, so whenever we are in their with Karston, Chief will very pathetically sigh and plop down across the threshold. Keeping his head down (so as not to arouse our suspicion) he slowly and carefully army crawls his way towards us. Seriously, with this kind of stealth he should be a ninja dog.

I'm not sure if this is a ninja dog, or a ninja rat...either way I'm pretty sure my dog could out ninja it

My favorite trick of all however happens to be the "oops, it was an accident" trick. Now that he is no longer encouraged to reside in our laps he waits very patiently for us to sit on the floor. He very obligingly sits down next to us and then suddenly he is falling and quite accidentally/on purpose finds himself in the middle of our laps. He really is quite brilliant.