9 Gross Things About Living With A Puppy

It is a universally acknowledged truth that puppies are the best. Puppies who talk, puppies who dream, puppies who play soccer, puppies who Instagram—they are all perfect, and so are all of their brothers, sisters and cousins. They are so cute, and so sweet, and so snuggable, and you want one so badly. So you plot and plan, waiting impatiently for the day that you, too, can be a puppy owner. And then finally—finally—you get to bring home your very own little ball of fur, and it’s just as sweet and soft and small as you imagined it would be. Sweet, soft, small...and unbelievably gross. Perfect and angelic! Buuuuut also horrifically disgusting.

It's unavoidable: No matter how much you wanted a puppy, nor how genuinely happy you are to finally have one in your family, you will quickly discover that puppies are sort of awful. Yes, they are adorable, but they are also self-absorbed, soulless monsters who pee on everything and never clean up after themselves. You realize suddenly that their cuteness is part of an evolutionary imperative to help their species survive—because without their cuteness, no domesticated dogs would survive past puppydom. Their owners would simply give up after two weeks and release them back into the wild.

Luckily, your puppy will eventually grow out of these behaviors. Ok, maybe not all of them, but some of them. A few them...definitely a few. She’ll outgrow one or two, for sure. Until that blessed day, please enjoy some of the worst, weirdest, grossest things that puppies do to test our love.

1. Your new puppy will scream all night long, without stopping, for five days straight

Crying at night is not gross, per se, but it will be one of the hardest, most maddening things you’ll have to handle with a new puppy. It makes sense that a puppy would be freaked out during its first few nights away from its litter, and that it might take a few days for your dog to get used to its new environment. Those justifications will not matter to you at all when you are wide awake at 4AM for the third damn night in a row, listening to your puppy wailing like its in Texas Chain Saw Massacre. You will be completely amazed when you get up in the morning and realize that the howling banshee who kept you and your whole apartment building awake all night is in reality a three pound ball of fluff.

2. There will be pee everywhere, in random places

Your un-house-trained puppy will pee on everything: the couch, your shoes, the rug, the bed—wait, how did she get on the bed? You have no idea. Your puppy is a peeing ninja.

3. Your puppy will have teeny, tiny razor teeth, and she will bite you with them

Puppies are like piranhas. They have little baby razor teeth that will slice your skin like paper in a shredder. “Play time” is a blood bath.

4. If something on the ground is dead, rotting, or otherwise disgusting, your puppy will roll in it

The grosser it is, the more determined your puppy will be to roll in it. If your puppy has just has a bath, the determination will triple.

5. Your puppy will eat poop. Your puppy will eat a LOT of poop.

Inevitably, your puppy will eat poop—its own poop, other dogs’ poop, cat poop, any kind of poop. You will try to stop her, and you will fail.

6. When your puppy is not eating poop, she will be eating everything else

Your puppy’s favorite game will be “Can I swallow this?” My parents’ puppy has had to have his stomach pumped three times: twice because he has eaten piles of rocks, and once because he swallowed a whole fish hook. Cute, right? A goddamn fish hook.

7. Your puppy will hump things

It does not matter if your puppy is male or female—it’s going to hump things. Furniture, toys, other dogs, you. And your dog will go out of her way to do so in situations that are as embarrassing as possible.

8. You will become obsessed with your puppy’s bodily functions

When you are in charge of house training a dog, you become intimately, obsessively aware of its bodily functions. Did she poop? Where? What did it look like? When you’re the one cleaning everything up, details matter.

9. You will have to pull something out of your puppy’s butt

Your pup will inevitably swallow a hair or a thread, and it will get stuck on the, ahem, way out. Your puppy will freak out, and you, like a responsible puppy parent, will have to pull it out. Outwardly, you will be calm. Inside, your brain is overloaded by the sheer grossness of what you are doing.

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