Hey!

Sorry, I haven't blogged much this week, it's been a hard, one thing after another, mixed with exams, I ended up just giving in to my anxiety and depression and not doing anything, too exhausted.
I'm really trying to get myself out of that rut, so I'm just going to do an easy, no prep, effortless blog post because blogging does distract me and it makes me happy, and happiness is something I really need right now.  (sorry for being a downer)

Another thing that makes me happy is Wallace!

Wallace is 9/10 weeks old now and he's been living with us 2 weeks today!
He has such a character, and thee most beautiful eyes!

In case you don't know, Wallace is my puppy and he's a Dogue de Bordeaux.

I cannot get over how clever he is, I've had dogs all my life and I've trained them and taught them tricks, but he is learning things so easily, effortlessly and incredibly fast!
He can sit, straight away when you ask him to and he can also do 'paw' and I believe he's beginning to learn 'other paw'.
He does his business outside or on the pee pad, sometimes he can be a little shit and we'll let him out to pee, he'll play in the garden, then come back inside to pee on the pad... He knows to pee outside, but for some reason, he occasionally does that.
And all of his poops are outside too! I still find it so weird praising a dog for pooping, 'Well done for not pooping indoors!'.
He's also clever in different ways too, he can figure things out so easily, baby gates, the two baby gates we've had so far he knows how to escape through them, we wanted ones that we didn't have to screw and fix to the wall, but he knows his way around them, so we've had to buy one that is fitted to the wall, hopefully he won't be able to escape this one!

He's good on a night too, he's currently sleeping in my parent's room, however, we don't want him to get used to that though, as we want him to be a downstairs/ outdoor dog, which means the halls, living room, and garden are his.
In order to transition him back downstairs and sleeping by himself, we've invested in a dog crate, myself and my Nan, got our dog, Tilly, a crate and it was one of the best things, she didn't like it at first, naturally, but she learned to love it, she would get in it  by herself, once it got late at night she'd just climb in, the reason we got Tilly a crate was because she was terrible for chewing, all dogs chew but she chewed a hole in the wall... not on the edge, but directly in the middle, I honestly can't think how she managed that.
Anyway, we're getting Wallace a crate as he's bad for chewing too, but I think he's chewing a normal amount in comparison to Tilly.
He has plenty of chew toys, which he uses and plays with, but he'll still go for the furniture, corners of walls, the settee, chair legs, anything he can get his teeth into, and yes, we do stop him, we also bought a spray, which is meant to stop dogs from chewing, it doesn't work and everyone I've spoken to about it had the same experience with it too, that it just didn't stop their dog chewing.

That's why we're getting the crate, to stop chewing, so he can learn to sleep downstairs and also to learn to be by himself, because he hasn't been by himself yet and it's really tiring, we're all on puppy shifts, which is hard when I work and have exams, my brother just got a new job, my step dad works away, my mum works but has recently cut her hours down. It would be nice to leave him in the house by himself, even just for 3 hours, it would take a lot of strain off us all, we wouldn't want to leave him for long periods of time anyway, as that's not fair on him.
I just want to emphasise that we all have time for him, we thought about getting a dog for a long time,  we make sure that he gets the attention and care that he needs, but we don't want him to get too dependent on us being there 24/7 and develop 'separation anxiety' where we can't leave the room without him.

Wallace is such a sweet boy, he has such a loving puppy face, I feel he does display affection, but he can quickly go from enjoying your company and relaxing, to wanting to chew and play fight.
He loves to play fight, he'll just bite your arm ( Not aggressive, just playing, we tell him to stop though and push him away) He'll stand back and bark at you if you tell him to stop, as if to say, 'Common human, play with me!'

They're the only two things I can complain about, the chewing and the play biting, other than that he's so sweet, the vet said he's going to be ' a gentle giant', his temperament is calm, I can already tell that when he's older, he'll be the type of dog who's more than happy to relax in the living room, watching TV with everyone, just the perfect family dog.

He's been a part of out family for two weeks and we all already love him ridiculous amounts, I feel he's brought us closer, as we all have that mutual thing that makes us happy, sharing pictures of Wallace, telling each other about something cute that he's done, we're all bonding over him.
He's the positivity we needed.

I can't think of anything else to tell you about him, he's just great! He's going to puppy classes once he's had all his injections, just because they'll be other puppies there and we want him to be social with other dogs, he's fine with people, he greets everyone with a wagging tail. Also, we may be good at teaching/training him, but these people are ex-police dog trainers, so they're over qualified to train Wallace and discipline him, hopefully, this will have a good impact on him.






In that last picture is my step-dad, the only dad I have, the only dad I want, I'm looking forward to writing my father's day blog post!

Thank you for reading my blog post, I'll be sure to share more adorable puppy blog posts, but if you can't wait for his pup updates, then I'll be posting more regular pup-dates on my Instagram - cammynicolex
This weekend my boyfriend and I are on puppy duty, so we're going to take this opportunity to get some professional pictures of him, I'll be sure to share them with you! x