First Week of Coco

         When we brought Coco home, he was a little more than 8 weeks old. He was like a 12 pound soft toy. We already had bought some chew toys and food for him and were anxious to play with him. We set him free in our basement first. He was sniffing around trying to know the new place. And suddenly this cute soft toy turned into a poop machine. He was pooping all over the basement and we were running after him to stop him from doing that and showing him the wee-wee pad. It was a feeling of learning everything about this for last 2 months and suddenly you have a pop-up quiz. Only difference being, if you don't get it-you will have to clean the carpet.  It was a fun filled first hour. I was more apprehensive about him than he was about me.

         In the night, we kept him in his crate (which has plastic sidewalls), and kept his crate in our bedroom. He started his whining, and continued for about 30 minutes. After he realized that there is not going to be any response from us, he slept. He had to pee and poop every 3 hours. Every three hours, the COCO Alarm used to go off and it was my job to grab him from the crate and taking him to the "appropriate" pooping place. Both of us did not quite sleep on our wedding anniversary night (as we were picking up after our puppy).

This continued for every single night in that week. My wife and I had to completely modify our sleeping schedule to sleep as early as 9:30 pm, so that he will cry till 10 and then we all can sleep along with our neighbours.
The day after we got COCO home was Friday (working day). My wife decided to work from home. I went to the office but then was continuously on phone with my wife to check if Coco was doing okay. I was so nervous to leave that cute soul home in the crate. My nervousness was arising out of having an animal in our house (which I never had in my life), the caring worrisomeness I developed after realizing how helpless that puppy is without us!

Meeting Coco

Dog and me........that was a combination as volatile as adding a cube of sodium in the water. I grew up in a suburb of Mumbai, India. As a child I was bit by a rat, chased by a stray dog (and his team of dogs) which never allowed me to have any positive bond with the animals.
The city of Mumbai is filled with a lots of stray dogs who live on the food either thrown away by someone or provided to them by kind hearted people. I never had a pet and was never comfortable with having any other living organism other than human being around me. I never troubled or harmed dogs but I always maintained a safe (at least 100 ft) from them. I had all the dogs in the world bark at me even if they are walking on the other side of the road.

Then I met love of my life when I went to the engineering school. Everything was going great till I came to know that she had a pomeranian! His name was Milo. Hmmmmmmm. "By law", you cannot hate your girlfriend's dog. Somehow he always used to bark at only me when I used to go to her place with all of our friends.
Then we both came to US for our graduate school in Oklahoma. During our school Milo died. I saw my love so upset that day, that I decided to get her a dog at some point of time, but did not know when (& how are me and the dog going to co-exist). Finally we moved to Virginia for our jobs. We bought our first house. I went through the mind-squeshing process of deciding to get a dog.
One day, in line with all the normal couples, we had a fight on something (no need to mention that I was at fault), I had to come up with something to cheer her up. I used that opportunity to present her an idea of getting a dog. I had no clue what breed, size, source of the dog to be taken. But that made my honey happy.
Then started the search by my wife for a breed of dog that is friendly and who will not be aggressive towards a dog-feared soul like me. She also made me watch all the dog training shows like Ceaser Milan. After 2 months of research, we decided to go for a Golden Retriever. We started checking out all the shelters in our area, but they were not ready to let us adopt any dog since we were both working in 9 to 5 jobs. Finally we decided to get a dog from a breeder. After checking out multiple websites for about 2 months, my wife found out that a total of eight puppies were born at a breeder's place. We went to his place driving almost 3 hours from our house. After reaching there, within a matter of 5 minutes we found ourselves surrounded by eight extremely adorable cotton balls. We were given a choice to pick whichever we want. To me all looked same and equally cute. They all were born on the last day of 2008. Finally, we selected one tied a violet colored ribbon around his neck and left for home. We decided to pick him up on a special day after a week when he was legally allowed to be seperated from his mom.
Then started an interesting period of thinking about what name we shall give him, where should he be kept, where shall he be peeing and pooping since we don't have a big back yard. We did some preliminary shopping including some toys, food and a crate and decided to call him COCO; " for his color".
We went to pick him up next week on our 2nd wedding anniversary :). I had to tell the breeder to take Coco's mama away while we are taking him in his crate. I just did not have a heart to bare that separation. We got him in the crate, and put him on the backseat of our car. Then started a log ride home filled with whining, whining and whining.