First Steps

Because I'd lived with dogs before, I knew there were some VERY IMPORTANT STEPS to be taken with our puppy.

First, the little shit machine needed to be house and otherwise trained. Second, we needed to find a vet to give her her necessary shots. Third, she needed a place to sleep. Fourth toys. Fifth food. Sixth friends. More or less in that order.

The order in which these steps actually occurred: 

Place to Sleep 

We bought Molly a dog crate/bed and lined it with a pillow, a hand-crocheted blanket and an old shirt of mine, but she preferred to sleep in Bruce's old gym bag, stashed under the bed.

 Food, Toys 

The gift toys came almost immediately with the arrival of the dog.  None lasted very long, except for the green chew toy, which still exists and is in the possession of Molly's nemesis (more about which later).

Vet, Shots, Friends

This is our friend Angie, now Molly's friend, too.

Molly with her new friend Sandra.

And much, much later than the rest of these, we got Molly house trained.

Most of Molly's training was almost too easy. Russels are smart. By the end of our first month with her, we were calling her our little evil genius. I trained her not to bite in less than a day. She instinctively knew how to retrieve. From about the third try, she came when called. 

But, man, was she hard to house train. We got her at the end of September when she weighed all of three pounds, and it quickly became too cold to put a puppy that small outside. So we elected to paper train her and then figure out in the spring how to get her to go only out of doors.  

The shake out from that decision was we spent the winter hollering at the dog to not pee all over the place and, along with those plans to train her to go out of doors, we made plans to have the carpets cleaned come spring.

Click here to read how living with a Jack Russell puppy is like living with a movie star.