The Pet Life: Pupdate

Hello Darlin’,

Today was full of excitement! In this family we celebrate all of the small milestones - and this was certainly one of them.

Today Boris conquered his fear of going down our stairwells.

Today, he ran up to our attic in a full on curiosity expedition which was instigated by a chase from his siblings. Usually, Boris only likes to venture up there in the heat of his curiosity when I’m working in my office, which is quickly followed by him begging me to come rescue him from the “scary stairs”.

We have spent weeks genitally coaxing and hovering over the top step, starting at the middle, or one of the landings. Some of the scenarios worked out successfully, but if he had to go at it from his own at the top, he would hop back and run away.

But today was a new day. As I watched him get left behind by his siblings, he began crying and wiggling towards the top step. Before I moved up to pick him up, he began to belly crawled down the first few steps and by the last bit he was hopping down like a champ, looking for his brother to keep up the chase.

It didn’t stop in the attic, either. He decided to run down the main stairwell and immediately ran back up all of them, all the way back to the attic bedroom. It was like watching these two play tag. One big barrel and a string bean running up and down, up and down, again and again.

He did the full two stairwells five times within a span of ten minutes. In-between that time he was bouncing up and down between the landings.

This was a small victory for us puppy parents - it’s almost like when they take their first steps. We were cheering, clapping, taking a ton of photos, tearing up. All the normal pawrant reactions.

You have to celebrate these small moments and live in them, for someday, these memories will be the only thing we have left of them to cherish.

Until next time,

M.E.