Meet Hilde

Blog? Meet Brunhilde.

She’s my parent’s new puppy. And she’s awesome.

She’s a little bit bold, a little bit clumsy, and all daredevil.

Hilde had a rather rough introduction into our lives. Within three hours of bringing her home, she was already adapting well – running around with that excited bliss that only puppies really have. But then she tried to superman dive towards a toy, landed wrong, and immediately started screeeeaaammmmmiiinnnggggg.

Turns out clumsy-girly-dog had landed on her elbow and broke the little nub on it.

So Brunhilde, in the span of three hours, had her first car ride, met her new family and sister dog, explored her new home, aaaaannnndddd broke her leg, had her first emergency vet appointment, and got her first cast.

She also got her name as she howled like a Wagnerian opera star.

So yea. Not a great first day.

But luckily, we seem to have gotten the most resilient and spirited dog on the planet, because within hours of her little elbow being set and casted, she was already back to puppy business as normal. She figured out not just how to walk but GALLOP with the cast (which she wasn’t supposed to be able to do so soon), but also how to circumvent the cone to chew on the gauze.

And so we entered two weeks of puppy care hell, where we were tasked with keeping her off the leg except for when she had to go outside to make, and also with keeping the cast 100% totally and completely dry (which was a nightmare, because of course it started raining while we were at the vet, and then didn’t stop for two weeks).

Well, Hilde had other plans.

We managed to navigate the rain well enough. Figuring out how to commence with normal housebreaking training (we forego the inside pee-pads in favor of teaching them immediately that outside is the place for peeing) while keeping the cast dry was not easy, but we did it. A combination of the little plastic boot the vet’s office gave us, Glad Press-n-Seal, and an infant raincoat did the job.

It was Hilde that we couldn’t figure out how to properly navigate.

We apparently got the most strong-willed dog on the planet. Everything she wasn’t supposed to do, she did, regardless of the insane safeguards we put in place, and regardless of the fact that she was literally NEVER without one of our eyes on her. I basically moved into my parents house and became nocturnal for two weeks as between the three of us we figured out how to have her monitored 24/7.

And yet still, she managed to figure out how to contort herself around the cone to chew on the cast. How to maneuver her hind legs to scratch at it. How to trick us into going outside 80 thousand times a day since that was the only place she was allowed to walk around. Someone (read: me – except for the two days my brother came home from NY to give me a much needed break and let me get some work stuff done) had to lay on the floor next to her crate all night so we could keep her from pulling her Houdini contortions and getting at the cast overnight.

Even with the constant hyper-vigilance, puppyface magoo still somehow managed to go through 5 casts in two weeks.

And she looks so innocent, doesn’t she? Not at all like the master of subterfuge that she really is.

But in the end, it seems it was all worth it – because after two weeks the vet took the cast off, proclaiming that we did a good job and that it had healed well.

So now Hilde is a free puppy. And we couldn’t be happier.

She’s pretty happy too.