The start of something scary but exciting...

Odin enjoying a day out a Thetford Forest

Day 1 of 'The Odin Chronicles'!

Scary stuff, I haven't had a blog in years and it's a shame because I remember at school I had so many. Mainly about make up, fashion, hair, etc, anything NOT related to muddy dog walks and dog training, lol. Quite the opposite really, I'm a changed woman.

Let's start by introducing myself...

Hey, I'm Jess, I'm weeks away from turning 29 and I live with my other half Dan and my bouncy 19 month old German Shepherd, Odin in Suffolk, UK. We LOVE Odin, utterly and completely whole-heartedly love him. He's our first dog and we love nothing more than exploring with him, the muddier the better! Beaches, forests, new dog fields, woodlands, we love it. When we first got a puppy we had this perfect vision in our heads of how it would go. We would start hard training from Day 1...i.e. no sleeping on the bed, no jumping on the sofa, no jumping up on people, he'd be great with other dogs, the list goes on. But alas, as first time dog owners we were naive, we took absolutely everyone's advice when it came to raising our pup and in our naivety thought 'Yeah that sounds right, we'll do that'. Famous last words. Now when I tell you we did our research, we did our research. First time dog owners wanting a GSD? You have to, you need to be prepared. So, I looked through many upon many puppy ad's, looking for the best local breeder, we bought books, magazines, watched YouTube videos till the early hours, looked up different trainers, we genuinely put our heart and souls into preparing for Odin's arrival.

It was hard knowing what was right and what was wrong sometimes, there's so much conflicting information out there, how could you possibly know what was right? It's like raising a kid, right? Parenting has about 1000 different approaches, you just need to pick the right one for you.

We had it all planned out, our schedules, how we would work raising a high energy puppy around our work schedules and how we could ensure he had the best quality of life possible. I was working as a restaurant manager when we got him and Dan was working in the plumbing trade so it worked quite nicely. I would be with Odin in the day, I'd leave around 3pm and Odin would be home alone for a few hours before Dan got home at 5pm I had days off in the week to spend training and being with him, Dan had the weekends. We only had one day a week where we needed care for him, so we did some research, asked around and what came up....Doggy Daycare, how cute! (Not!)

Okay so here we are, planning out the weeks ahead of Odin's arrival and I get him booked in with the daycare after he's had his vaccinations to go to a 'Meet & Greet'. As me and Odin plodded along to the daycare I was on the edge of my seat, wondering how he would get on, hoping and praying that he would be okay, not be shy or nervous, not feel overwhelmed and would just fit right in.

The guy at the daycare was incredibly welcoming, he showed me around, talked me through a typical day and explained everything he could to me, answering any questions I had. I asked 'How will this affect his socialisation?'. His response.....'It will be AMAZING for him, he will learn how to pick up on other dog's social cues, read their behaviours, learn how to play, how to just generally be a dog'. He'd also said that Odin was great when he went in with the other dogs and he had no problem with getting him enrolled.

I walked away from that feeling great, our new pup had passed the test. This was going to be great, we had his care for the 1 day we needed a week sorted, he was socialable with the other dogs and had made a great first impression. I was so excited, so far, so good. Our new puppy had absolutely no issues whatsoever in the world, he was the best behaved puppy in the entire world.

Little did we know, day-care was about to be the biggest regret of our lives.....