Poor puppy parenting

For the most part, we figure we're pretty good dog parents. We feed her, get her lots of exercise, only yell when we're REALLY mad etc. Dakota does have to stay alone in the apartment for about 5 hours every day while we're at work and school respectively but we fill up her Kong with peanut butter and leave her lots of toys and she has always seemed to do fine. Every once in a while we come home to find a chewed up letter or pen, but for the most part her time alone in the apartment has been uneventful.

Well today while Matt and I were eating breakfast I said, "Wouldn't it be fun if we could somehow see what she actually does all day? I mean, then we could know if she actually plays with her toys or just lays down and sleeps?" Matt of course used his super-technology alert smarts to point out that we could do just that using some special feature on his video camera. So we set it up today and left for our day at work.

Anyway we came home tonight expecting all kinds of awful thing: tearing up letters, barking out the window... But we didn't expect what we actually got. Dakota just walked around the kitchen all day whining and crying and pawing at the door. It was like she was in a panic all day just wasting away for the moment we'd return.

So now I am riddled with guilt! Now when we leave her at home for five hours I won't imagine her playing with her toys and taking a little nap, I'll see her running in panicked circles crying her little brown eyes out. Now how are we going to be able to leave her? Sucky. Sometimes technology doesn't help. Better to not know. :)