News and event information for Williams Lake, BC - as it happens.

By Daven Mapson

My family’s new Shih Tzu puppy is incredibly adorable.  The ‘Christmas surprise’ is only around 15 inches long, and she will not grow much more.   Her little face is amazingly endearing, and her tail is always wagging.  She seems to have an underbite: her tongue is hanging out all the time (sometimes we think she does it just to be cute.)  

('Ginger' runs around looking for a loving hand to give her a belly-rub or a chew toy.  She always finds one.)

But getting a puppy is not all cute faces and wagging tails.  Ginger is only 3 ½ months old, after all, and needs to be taken out every hour.  When we got her, we had no snow (what was up with that, anyway?) and we didn’t need any special system, with the three older kids in our family cheerfully taking her out.

But with the sudden cold snap, no one was willing to take her out in the freezing cold and snow! In our house, however, it was not so much ‘training the dog’ as ‘training the kids’! Eventually I made a chart, and Ginger will hopefully be housetrained soon. But she still leaves a puddle when she gets excited.  We have to warn our guests, who are apt to pick her up and get… ‘leaked’ on!

Ginger is a very ‘chewy’ puppy.  By this I mean that she chews a lot. One of her favourite chew toys are ears, but when she gets excited, anything or anyone is subject to her small, partly toothless, jaws.  She dashes around, making grabs with her sharp little fangs.

Surprisingly, Shih Tzus do not bark, except when they really don’t like something.  However, she play-growls and pants and generally acts lovable.  But she chews fingers, toes, socks, shirts… You get the picture.  Oddly, though, Ginger doesn’t really destroy much, though she has developed a taste for my brother’s dart gun projectiles.

Despite the chewing and having to take her out in the snow, Ginger is a great pet. With her long hair growing in all directions on her face, our little Christmas puppy is bugging our cat, destroying our foam darts, and making it hard to imagine life without her.

Why do they say, ‘It’s a dog’s life’?  Dogs have it great!

Daven is a youth columnist who is 13 years old

| More...