The mother-daughter relationship can be a wonderful thing. You see your daughter going through the same things you did when you were her age. You remember the self doubt and the feelings of wanting to fit in. You feel an emptiness when she gets to the age when you are not her top priority any more. And you feel absolutely destroyed when the two of you fight.
My mother and I used to fight a lot. I guess all mothers and daughters fight and I guess they all have said, like my mother used to...."I hope when you grow up you have 10 daughters exactly like you, then you'll see what I have had to deal with."
I think that statement lives in Dixie.
Dixie is still a baby and as such, she is still cutting her teeth. She bites and chews whatever she can get her paws on. That's fine when it's her dog or her toys, but she also bites Tony and I and the furniture.
I have two bookcases in my office (um...I mean Dixie's playroom....) that are old, but are still quite use-able. We have Dixie's cage in front of them so there is still room to navigate around the room. Well, Dixie navigates alright...she has been moving her cage and chewing on the bookcases. She wedges herself in between the cage and the bookcases and just pushes the cage until she can get all the way in and then the "feast" begins.
I caught her today and sternly and in my best "this is your mother talking, you better listen" voice, said "NO!!!" She ignored me. I got up and said, "NO!!!" again. She continued to ignore me and went right on chewing. I went over to her, picked her up and said, "NO!!!" again and put her in her cage for time out.
Well, that's when the fight really started. She barked and barked and barked. It was as if she was saying, "you can't do this to me, I'll call Child Protective Services--let me out!!" She barked and I barked right back. It was quite a fight. I left her in there until she settled down and stopped barking. I let her out and she came over to my chair and sat there looking up at me, making little whining sounds, saying, I thought, "I'm sorry, Mommy." I picked her up and put her in my lap and she promptly nipped my arm, making it bleed. Clearly, the fight was not over.
I again said, "NO!!" which is starting to be the most used word in my vocabulary and put her on the floor. "Back in your cage, " I said to her, which is when she took off running around the room. I couldn't catch her, so I had a better idea. I put her stuffed dog in the cage and locked it and said to the dog, "you are in time out until Miss Dixie can behave."
I must admit, this threw Dixie for a loop. She stopped running and went over to the cage, looking curiously at her dog and then at me. She started to pull the dog's arm through the bars of the cage, but she couldn't get it out so she tried again, this time by pulling on it's ear. She pulled and pulled, but "Cage Puppy" stayed put.
After a while, she settled down next to the cage, near her dog. I got up and opened the cage door, while Dixie ran past me and pulled out her dog. She decided she was hungry at that point and went to the kitchen for some food, pulling her dog along with her. I think she was afraid to leave it alone with me!
The mother-daughter relationship can be a wonderful thing....but if this is how we fight when she's a baby, how will I survive her teenage years?
The crime
The punishment
The real victim!
Dixie put her dog in front of her food and ate over it. She seems to be telling the puppy not to worry, she won't let that mean old Mommy lock her in the cage again!
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