Oops

Okay. Instead of writing an entry I went for my yearly mammogram on one side of town and then I went to a fundraiser for a co-workers' animal charity on the other side of town.

I am also learning that Rocket isn't really this preternaturally calm puppy, Rocket is a puppy that normally gets a lot more exercise  then he got the last couple of days and when  he does not get a lot of exercise he is just like all the other puppies. Note to self,  look into doggy treadmills or arrange for nasty storms to not blow through and bring hours of puppy unfriendly rain and also never make appointments or plans after work, or make appointments but not also plans or plans but not in addition to appointments. Lesson learned.


Happy Halloween!

Naked.

Today was at long last Flu Shot Day. I knew  flu shot day coming for months. I cut out for lunch a little early and went across campus for my flu shot. While I was walking (in the rain) to the building I discovered that I couldn't find my card! Where was it? Didn't I just see it? When was the last time I used it? Didn't I have it over vacation, brought along for emergencies? Did I leave it at any one of my doctors offices during any one of 10,000 appointments last winter? This was not good because I have an appointment Tuesday and I need my card and the nurse wouldn't give me a shot if I didn't come across with the card. Paper nurse.

I had to go home to take care of Puppy so i wasn't a total loss to head home to fetch my as it turned out, out-of-date card back up card, return to get my shot, hopeing that the bored nurse wouldn't really look at the card. She didn't and I got my shot. I got back to my car and went through my wallet again only to find the correct un-lost card in my wallet stuck to the back of another insurance card.

BCBC are cheap bastards who make cheap bastard cards. They aren't even cardboard, the cards are made of cheap typing paper that sticks to better quality insurance cards and makes you think you have lost the card.

On the upside, I made it home to take care of Puppy earlier than normal an thanks to the quick action, he was dry when I came home. He has been such a good boy that in honor of it being cold, I'm going to put his bedding in the crate.  Poor little guy is naked!

Speaking of his nakedness, lets hope he can hold it all night so we aren't outside at 1:45am in the cold and rain. But, if you are going to have cold and rain I'm glad it's the kind we're getting and not the kind they are getting back east. Think positive thoughts for our people in The City who have never really experienced real weather.

Doggy yoga

Lake Johnson

I was going to sit down and start this earlier and I would be done by now and half way through my shower but I remembered that  earlier, I had decided to save time and make up a batch of treat dough and then I made dinner and then I forgot about it.

Well. Cookies made. Not as many as I would like but the turkey is just a fatter cookie all around and the beaks are very hard to get right, without a beak they end up looking like peacocks in silhouette - not a bad look, if you are making peacock dog treats but a big loser if you are going for turkey.

I'm going to have to make more because I won't have any to spare when it comes time to bag this batch up. I'll make a second batch but they won't be turkey shaped and I'll get more of them and more is better.

What I really did today was take Small Dog on his first trip to Lake Johnson!  We waited and waited and waited for Sandy to ruin the weekend but she never showed. I did get my front closet cleaned out and winter ready, though so that was a positive. Once at the lake, we didn't spend anytime in the lake but we did spend a lot of time lake adjacent and he seemed very comfortable with that, so progress made. He did however love, love, love running on leash through the forest  and leaping over tree roots and down trees and going up and down hills, all the good sniffs to sniff!. He had a great time and then we walked on the paved path and he met a lot of people and seven dogs and I didn't have a stroke! Yay!

He is going to go in the damn water though at some point, the breeder told me it was okay for him to swim in the winter if I got him dry and warm when we were done and also said that a good swim in the winter won't do him any harm at all. After all, hunting season is in the winter and he would be in and out of the water all the time.

I got him the little sweater at Big Lots because it was getting cold and he hasn't quite grown into his real winter coat yet. Its also going to double as his Halloween costume - Lars, your ski instructor.

Friday Cat Blogging

 

I will win.

Flashing Back

I called the dog "Daisy" twice today. I chalk this up to having to tell a record number of people a couple of days ago that Daisy died in June. It was cancer and it was fast. There are weeks that depended on where we go for our walk, this happens several times but it hasn't happened in a while and then it was three times in less than an hour.

Ouch.

I am assuming it was cancer because I turned down the vets offer of doing a necropsy. I didn't really need to know what officially did her in, well, officially it was a needle full of whatever they euthanize animals with but I knew what he meant. She was gone and I didn't want her body violated to satisfy anyone's morbid curiosity, all be-it professional curiosity. It was a natural death.

What led us there was a lethal combination of end stage liver cancer and an out of control infection that might have been another immune disorder like the Addison's.They wanted to treat the immune disorder with more prednisone in the short run until they figured out which immune disorder it was - their version of thinking positively... but it was going to have to be a short term fix because she was experiencing high speed liver failure  and she was dying too fast for the pred to fix anything.

After my uplifting conversation with the vet, I just knew she wasn't coming home with me, once there, I sat outside for an hour before I could bring myself to come inside to all her stuff. Her old stuff. Sometimes I miss her so much it like being slapped.

When I am asked about Daisy, I always tell her friends : It was over really fast for her and it was a blessing. She's happy and in a better place. It was awful for me but she didn't suffer, so its okay.. And now I can add to that,  She's happy, and now I'm happy because of Rocket.

Busy, busy!

I left the house to walk Puppy at 4:30 and didn't get back to the house until 6pm. Then I made him dinner and begged him to eat said dinner (he did, eventually) and while he had his post-dinner "quite time", I got the dough togther for pumpkin cookies. The recipe I found online was a lot nicer than what I've made in the past. It included peanut butter, ginger and and cinnamon and it wanted ground allspice  it didn't get, but I included powdered milk and some brown sugar as not really substitutes. I came out with 109 for the Craft Fair and fifty or so for Puppy and friends.

Puppy helped me with the actaul cookie cutting and was a real help while we waited for them to come out of the oven. I also found out that he is a climber.

Next up is the turkey gravy cookies. The turkey cookie shape is larger and I'll end up with fewer so I'll make a double batch because while pumpkin can look like anything, turkey needs to look like turkey. I have standards.

While Puppy and I walked, I took pictures

still working on getting him to look at the camera. He was distracted by a lady on her cell phone walking a grown dog the size of a tissue box.



Treats!

I had a brief moment of panic there but my DNS server is now speaking to me or my modem or whatever it is a DNS server speaks to. It was giving me/us the silent treatment. Passive aggressive bitch.

My phone is back now too, it was a bad few minutes. I did everything I know to do: turn off everything that can be turned off and unplug everything that plugs. Repeat as necessary.

Before the Cataclysm, I took Baby Puppy to the store. I have done this before but this time I didn't have him in his box and also it was after dark. I think one time I left him the car before this it was daytime and he was box-bound. I didn't even think about it, I had a wild hair to go to the store and I decided o bring Puppy with me - after all Daisy loved going in the car and she never seemed to have a problem waiting for me when I went shopping. Puppy is not Daisy.

The biggest difference is that Daisy was much older, I thin k she was born much older than Puppy and I took for granted that since Daisy was a big being-alone-in-the-car-fan that all dogs welcome the opportunity for a short road trip and the chance to do some people watching.

I got about ten yards from the car when it became clear that Puppy was not interested in people watching. I came back to the car and tried to decide what we were going to do. My first idea was to take him out of the front seat and move him to the back. In the front seat he was held fast with his seat belt but once he moved to the back seat he would be off the reservation and up to no good. I then thought about the seats, they have been latched up for the last while and I made the command decision that they didn't need to be up and could now return to their down position. I needed their seat belt latch and it was not reachable in their up position.

Down came a seat. This was harder to do then I had thought while trying to keep one hand on the Puppy to keep him from exploring the parking lot. Once the seat was down, this new configuration intrigued the puppy. he discovered that the seat is a new and exciting addition to his world as well as it makes a perfect dog bed when fully reclined.

Puppy discovered the wonders of people watching from his new favorite place and I did my shopping.

I needed to go shopping ebcause in a moment of weakness I agreed to make dog treats for the combined campaign  Craft Show and Dessert Auction. I had originally also volunteered to bring a cake but in the mean time they have lined up a lot more desserts so I am going to withdraw from that and concentrate on the treats. I was at a loss as to what kind because Christmas is coming and I am going to be making a lot of treats and I don't want to burn out prematurely.

SO what am I not going to make for Christmas? And then it struck me, the sale is November 5! Thanksgiving Treats! I booked it to the store and bought a single bottle of  turkey gravy and a small can of pumpkin and I all ready have the extras I'll need for both varieties and I am set! Yay.

I know,  you care so much, but I do care! I'm only going to make two different kinds and they are fun shapes so it won't take any time at all and keep me entertained! They will be baked and in bags ASAP so there won't be a lot of stressing about it.  I'll give the sale the largest cut but I can keep some for Puppy and the other dogs at work and it can be a win/win all the way around.

Waste Not Want Not

Okay. I feel better now. I was just sitting down to do this entry when I thought : Did you know that potatoes do not have the same shelf life as a twinkie? They don't! I did not know this.

I do now.

I went and visited with my potatoes and was shocked that despite being stored in a grocery bag in the basement that they had insisted on aging, some had even gone bad! I had fermenting potatoes down there and didn't know it. Now all the weirdness in the basement makes sense now, everything down there was drunk off their asses! A lot of things make sense now.

So I had to make some tough decisions . Some had to go and go far and go now. Ick. Some were kind of okay and some were more than okay - the all blues were the champion's, as advertised. They are a "late season" variety and  have a much longer shelf life than the early and mid season spuds. Late Season but  not all season .

The ones that were kind of okay agreed to take part in an experiment: I planted them, I threw away the soggy with growths but saved the ones with growths that were still solid but not really fit consumption . These guys were not going into the pot regardless so its not a real loss and in a couple of months I might end up with more spuds. This is why you grow your own, they aren't chemically treated like store bought and they are eligible  to grow up to  become Seed Potatoes.

Since I planted a variety of spuds I'm just going to harvest them in mass around New Years , roughly 73 days from when they were planted which is plenty of time for new potatoes and possibly some fully mature spuds as well , some will be more mature than others but I'll have fresh new potatoes. It will take some care along the way, covering them when it gets really cold, adding dirt  as needed, but it will be interesting to see if my experiment works.

The handful of survivors sat on my counter for a couple of days, aging. I finally decided it was kind of a do or die thing for them and I needed to do something. So I did. I made mashed potatoes! I realized I had  a lot of garlic and some real butter and while I didn't have milk, I did have heavy cream - it was frozen, but still good. I just defrosted it and added it in.

The handful of leftovers didn't make much, but they made enough that I can dine on lovely lavender mashed potatoes for the next few days

Mother and Child reunion

This weekend I took Rocket back to Puppy Paradise so he could get reacquainted with his Mom and hang out with his sibs.

It took Mama a little bit of time to warm up to her boy, but she eventually forgave him for coming back into her life and they had a nice time together. His two sisters welcomed him back to fold immediately and they spent the afternoon chasing each other around and puppy wrestling. I was really relieved to see that there was so difference in the three dogs size or weight although the breeders were surprised he was not a bigger dog yet. He has a brother who has five pounds on him and that was two weeks ago. Tonka was always the biggest one in the litter while Rocket was in the middle and still is. Rocket - Dog of Consistance!

When th dogs wern't running in the fields they took a dip in the pond - Rocket's first swim!

Rocket was the one standing by the edge of the pond asking about the specs on the life preservers. He did after all that, go in and he did swim, like he was born to it. He swam all the way out of the pond and into the dressing room. He has some progress to make. But on the up side, he did swim and he did not sink. I think he would prefer warmer water. We're going to work on getting him more water positive.

 

After the pups swim class we took them into the forest. Rocket excels at running in the forest! He had a great time wit his family

 



They call these dogs  the Gray Ghost for a reason, also the cell does not to care to take pictures in low light or when the subject is moving. Tough for the cell camera.

Here's Rocket looking all cover dog for Field and Stream.

Rocket and Mama Dog Bella together.

Friday Cat Blogging

 

Hi, remember me? Your cat? Here first?

This is traumatizing.

RIP Big Tex   ,  warning the pictures are awful. They think it was an electrical fire and not the work of a vandal.

Photoblogging the Midway

NC State Fair 2012

Potty Training

Plan B. Now when I catch him peeing I respond immediately with a very unhappy face and a sharp and loud: "NO BAD DOG" and then I hustle him into the yard where I praise him enthusiastically for peeing outside and give a high value treat, something I had stopped doing as we go outside every half hour (my question is, how can he possibly have any more urine in his body? We go out religiously by a timer every half hour from four pm to ten thirty pm, plus  we go on walks! and I cut off fluids three hours prior to bed time! Where is it coming from?) and there are so many high value treats I can keep on hand and once you have run cheese through your clothes washer, well, the washer remembers it ... an additional change in our routine is when I come home and find he has peed in his new and unimproved bedding free crate, I give him a bath ASAP.

I don't see the bath working over lunch but maybe I'll just give him a brisk rub down with a wet wash rag. Something has got to give! Its been four weeks of this and according to the literature, son should be trained by now.

In order to cover my bases and not blame young dog for something that isn't his fault, I looked up Doggy UTI's , because a UTI can cause dogs to have accidents. No such luck, he doesn't have a UTI because he doesn't have any of the symptoms. The symptoms of a UTI sound suspiciously like the Clap to be honest, I had never thought about it. I'm sorry ma'am, you don't have a UTI, those cranberry pills are not going to help, you have Gonorrhea.

I did a search on Google  -" My 13 week old puppy isn't housebroken" and got 950,000 responses. Its good to know I'm not alone but it doesn't make me feel better. I found a suggestion that I should wake us both up in the middle of the night and take him out - sounds  intriguing but if I get him up post crate pee, we'll just wander the yard in the dark for no reason and I'll have to clean out the crate and now its a lot later than 3 am and I have to be up in two hours and now he would be awake at 3am and he doesn't suffer silently or for brief periods. It would be great if he would let me know when he wakes up and needs to pee but he only does this if he needs to poo - this is a huge win for us both, but I would also like it if he let me know about needing to pee too.

But what I don't understand is that he used to be better at all this! He was dry his first two nights at home and his box would be dry when I came home at lunch and often in the morning - but I used a lot of bedding and it easily worked as a sponge and his crate did end up with an odor that would make your eyes water.

Post a good long soak in straight bleach and a couple of hours left in the driving rain, it doesn't stink anymore. I am also very speedy in my response to it when it gets wet - often! Now it gets hit with a bleach/water mix, some Natures Wonder and a dash of apple cider vinegar because the smell is supposed to discourage peeing. Thus far see "often". I did see another suggestion when I was following my search that said I should scatter food on the bottom of the crate after I clean it so that they crate smells like food , I guess another alleged pee discourager. We'll see.

We came we saw we peed on our food. Damn it. He's just going to be the world oldest un-housebroken dog.

Downtown Dog

Downtown Dog

We had a long walk and then a nice bath so we don't have an entry.

Depressed.

The puppy is never going to be potty trained . He peed on the futon while I was on it! We were just outside! He peed while we were out there!  He's just never going to get trained, maybe its  a medical issue maybe its an emotional problem, but wherever the problem lies, he is never going to be potty trained.

Its been weeks of tiresome in and out and in and out and rushing to get up in the morning and running home at lunch and rushing home again after work and he's dry for a day and then he's not. I'm going to have  a dog that just never gets housebroken.

Daisy was housebroken.

Ger er' done

What did you do this weekend? I did entirely too much. I did not go to the fair but I did spend a huge amount of time stuck in fair traffic.

My real non-fair related traffic goal, was to get rid of all the potted plants before it gets too cold . I have waited too long in the season and ended up having to deal with cold dirt and colder water or I've avoided the cold water and just put the planters up without cleaning them out properly and while its not a big deal, after a few months the dirt drys out and its kind of a non-event, I don't like leaving them dirty because I fear dirt germs.

It turns out that even if I do wash them out,  dirt remains  and I would imagine, the dirt germs, because while I am all about spraying them out, it turns out I am not all about scrubbing them or making sure they are completely dirt germ free. So, in the future, I will probably not bother with the washing out part because as it turns out its kind of irrelevant and in a the months they are in the basement, I would think the dirt germs would die off.

This is an issues because I have a lot of planters. I knew there were many of them but it wasn't until I saw them all together that I really grasped how many there are in "a lot"

It just seems like a lot of them. The big wooden one I put back into services because I decided that

This Plant

Needed a new home. I went online and was assured that I could re-pot it  in the fall without doing much damage to it. It is either a great idea or I have doomed this plant to a slow and painful death. It survived in that smaller planter for years and over wintered like a champ and now out of nowhere I am noticing it has a base as big around as my wrist and seems to have started a family! and now I decide to replant it? Its going to be very suspicious about my motives.

I needed to replant the plant because its really outgrown it old home and I had this much larger wooden planter available and I decided to go for it. Also, I didn't have anywhere for the big wooden planter! I mean, I did but no where that was easy to get to. My list for next weekend includes cleaning out the shed so that it doesn't go all winter in the condition its in now, and besides next weekend I need to get the tiller and right now that is not possible. So the list now is 1) clean out shed and 2) till gardens.

While I was winterizing, I also decided that it was Time To Bring In The Ferns. It still warm during the day but the nights are getting colder and ferns are set up to deal with cold weather. So now they live indoors. Little Fern moved into Ferns old digs at the backdoor while Fern now lives in the front. I don't know what I'm going to do with Fern if it gets any larger. I don't have any other entry ways for it to spend the winter in.



Small Fern

Isn't he cute? He's just a little guy! okay, he's more like a medium sized guy. Do you remember Fern? Fern has grown.



Fern

The ferns were the only beings that really enjoyed the summer weather . Fern clearly was in ecstasy for months. He's like Jurassic Fern now.



That doesn't look like too much. Not like this weekend when I was just really over compensating for having such a blast last weekend. Wicked girl.  Friday night when you were out doing whatever it is people do Friday night, I hear its fun, I was cutting up and de-seeding five watermelons, very labor intensive by the way and not as much fun as it sounds. Why yes, I am old and boring but I had seven watermelons in my refrigerator and they were not aging well and they had to move out before things got even uglier than they were. Some of the smaller melons didn't make it. This year is also the first and last year for that variety. I thought I was getting the same kind I bought he first year but the flat was labeled wrong and I got a smaller, lesser variety and that was annoying as well as disappointing. Next year I am getting a more traditionally sized oblong variety. Damn it.

I took the melon to Alphagal and she kindly turned it into Watermelon Jelly. Los of watermelon jelly. I will take custody of my jellies next week. I hope its good.

Oh, and I spent Sunday afternoon going door to door for the Obama Campaign . Go Team Win! Vote Early!











Dear Lady I'm Going Door To Door With,

How is it no one has shot you yet?

Friday Cat Blogging

How often is too often?

We are officially two hours into our new potty-every-hour-on-the-hour routine. SO far so good, no accidents as yet but he spent the first hour in his box because I also have to eat dinner and since I am the big dog, if I  want to eat with both eyes on my plate, I will.

We went out to pee. He scratched on the door and I took him out. He peed. I'm not going to argue with him when he says he wants to go outside. His scratch is my demand, I want him to know what that cue means - he scratches and we go out. Period.

The new schedule is getting tweaked. It turns out the upstairs sink has a leak. The best way to keep the leak from leaking is to not use the sink. So now, I am going to do my morning toilette in the downstairs toilet. Its going to make taking the puppy out ASAP both easier and more of a chore because I was rather enjoying the whole two mornings of leisurely getting up and getting dressed and putting on real shoes and then taking the dog out ASAP fully dressed. Now I'm back to doing it in my pajamas and flip flops.  I'm going to learn to love it though because since I took him out so fast, he didn't have a chance to wet his box and that is easy to get used to.

Dogs to get house broken at some point right?

Its a good thing that Rocket is not a sexual being because he's doing some puppy yoga right now that that's just really, really disturbing. If humans could bend themselves like that ...  well, lets just say, the world would be a much less busy place. Very peaceful, very quite , no lines for anything ever. We would all be very, very calm because if we could do that, we would find it much easier to love one another because we would be so in love with ourselves.

I'm not sure this new one hour regime is working. We have fifteen minutes left and we've all ready been out three times! He did ask to go out, so that's good but maybe I've just taught him that he has to go every half hour! Maybe I've created a tiny bladder-ed monster?

Or, he isn't scratching to  say "Hey Mom, I need to go outside!" he's scratching at the door to say "Hey Mom, the  cat is right outside!". So. Who is teaching who what scratching on the door means? I thought he was all working the program and letting me know he has to go outside because peeing inside is wrong, and in real life, Rocket thinks it means the kitty is out there and he want sto go torment him.

 I am sneakily teaching him that scratching on the door is a ticket to the back yard - a win for me, because in the long run, it will teach him how to let me know he wants to go out. The way he does that now is to pop a squat where I can see him and then I hurl us both into the yard where he finishes up. Progress?

Merry Septembermas

today is 10-11-12! Cool, yes?

I have a confession to make. I went into Wallyworld last week and walked into a wall of Christmas. Instead of being disgusted by this early display and ts-king in general about rushing things and the lack of respect for the season and turning the whole thing into a collecting of chotchkies. I'm not a "reason for the season" person and I am all about "Happy Holidays" but come on, September!

But sadly, I saw all of it and said Wow! Christmas! Yay! and even worse, Is this all? They did not have a great selection of lights and I didn't see any Christmas cards. Frankly, it was a disappointing display.

With places like Wallyworld you have to strike while the iron is hot because they don't re-order and its all about carpe -ing that light up whatsit because once its gone its gone and you have lost that whatsit. I hate losing that whatsit.

I can not buy any whatsits this year. I am in a no whatsit zone for the immediate future. This would be okay except this is prime Christmas whatsit season and they are everywhere and I want all of them. I need more Christmas whatsits! I need the gorgeous lit up tree I saw at Big Lots a month ago - I'm totally sure another more affluent Big Lots consumer saw that puppy and snapped it  right then. If i could have found a price on that puppy when I saw I would have snapped it up when I saw it too. even as cheap as Big Lots is, its a danger sign if you can't find a price on something, as Big Lotts can be a bit proud of their stuff sometimes.

I should be horrified by all this Christmas in September nonsense but I just can't find the outrage that should be there, its just wrong. On the upside, I did find most of the Wallyworld Christmas stuff really, really tacky and none of it appealed to me. I guess we'll see how I feel as it gets closer in but right now I'm feeling pretty good about what I've all ready got.

In and out

Last night I discovered that I waste a lot of time over the weekend. On Monday night I in a couple of hours I did three loads of laundry, changed the sheets on the bed, put away my trip stuff mostly as well as took the dog out forty-thousand times and still had time to hang out on the futon with Rocket. Pretty much what I would have gotten accomplished over your average weekend.... Except I got all this done on Monday night and I had all ready worked all day and was coming off a very busy weekend. I woke up Tuesday feeling like I had been run over by a truck.

I was rewarded Tuesday morning with the shocking surprise of my morning paper! I had almost forgotten that my morning paper was supposed to be there before I went to work. I had the privilege of reading the Tuesday paper on Tuesday! I had been reading things on a 24 hour delay which made me feel like a time traveler.

My plans for the real weekend include doing some Obama work and fully tearing out the garden and putting the trellis and hoses and timer away for the winter. I would also like to go to the breeder and let Rocket run around and visit with his people.  I would also like to winterize the front porch and add the dirt to the garden. If I could find the time I would also like to get my collected lawn clippings and the "new" dirt tilled into the garden soil so it can get to work. There will be no winter over growth this year.

I'm also going to act proactively and bring in the ferns before I really have to. I don't want to miss my window and end up losing them, so in they go.

Speaking of in and out. how long do I have to maintain this every-half-hour-out-to-potty forced march? I Know its not forever but how long do I have to keep doing this? I'm okay with it but its going to get cold soon and I'm not sure how okay with it I'm going to be in a few weeks. I'm thinking that I'm going to extend the "every" to maybe forty-five minutes , Huge difference. I have been very religious about it and there have been very few accidents - always my fault because I lost my faith and got lazy about taking him out. I have no idea how long he can really be trusted to not pee or heaven forbid , poo in the house. Both sins he committed while I was gone,but I have no idea how much time had elapsed since he was taken out and if it was because he was at the end of his rope or if he was just taking advantage of the situation.

Project 45 minutes starts tomorrow.

25 years later.

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Cat Stevens - I love my dog.

Friday Cat Blogging

Friday Photoblogging

I don't know if I posed these last summer but I liked these so I am posting them now.

Dog in Space

Rocket had his very first big boy bath tub bath tonight and he ... pretty much hated it. True, at first he really, really hated it but by the end, he still kind of hated it.

I don't know how someone with so little fur can  get so dirty that he  can stink so bad. He reeked of male dog urine about three minutes after  his first bath last week. I decided that it was the bedding's fault so I pulled it entirely and now he sleeps like an penitent monk. A stinky penitent monk. I discovered it wasn't that his box smelled it was he that smelled up the box. I just don't get it, even when Daisy  with her layers and layers of fur was a dirty dog she didn't stink, she might have had an odor but it didn't effect the whole environment. Rocket gets toxic.

So, enter Mr. Bathman. Weimaraners are born water dogs. They love water! they were bred to retrieve ducks from the water. Water is their friend - right up until  the advent of baby Rocket. Rocket thinks water is super, as a beverage, but really feels that any other use of the material is inappropriate. He does however seem to have a future as an agility dog, a sport that weims excel in, he loves to climb and seems to have really good balance for such a young dog. it would be nice for him to have a "thing" to do, dogs like to be kept busy and agility would certainly keep him busy and in shape - however, agility does require lots of gear and I don't want a lot of gear. Perhaps his calling is more along the lines of therapy dog. More giving less gear.

And he just peed the carpet! He didn't even have the good graces to go hide in a corner and let go, he walked right in front of me and struck the pose! I take him out every half hour, not "like" clock work, clock work and still he pees on the carpet. This is disheartening and I probably did the wrong thing, I shrieked and then called him a bad dog - in my defence I did catch him in mid-pee so it wasn't a mystery to him why I was shrieking or why he was a bad dog, and he was all of a sudden outdoors- where he continued the pee and was  roundly praised for it. This whole school of training that preaches of rewarding the good behavior while ignoring the bad is not working. I need more ammo.

I think I'm going to join the Triangle Weimaraner club in hopes of meeting other weims that might be an example to Rocket about How To Be  Weimaraner. I think he's going to need to be tutored.

Checking IDs

The new schedule worked much better this morning. Rocket didn't let lose until we hit the drive way and that was just fine. He slept dry all night. Here's to hopeing for a repeat! The rest of the morning wasn't as  to schedule as the paper didn't arrive on time but we're all going to work on it. I also replaced the long walk with our normal walk and it felt better.


I was so pleased with his over night dryness that I let him have one of his soft toys in his box when I went to work.  That was a mistake. I feel bad for him in his hard crate with only hard toys to snuggle up to! It makes me feel like a bad dog mommy. I also feel like a bad mommy because I had him being older than he actually is. I was telling people he was 14 weeks old when in reality, he is only eleven weeks and change! Three weeks is a huge amount of time in puppy life and I think I should cut him some slack on some of his behaviour, a little slack, not much.

I still feel bad though! I've been like You are 14 weeks old! Why aren't you better potty trained by now?! Why don't you come when you are called more uniformly?! Why are you so much hard work!? When I was really saying Why aren't you more like Daisy? - Which is shockingly unfair to Rocket and mean of me.

Poor little Rocket just always looks at me when I get in these moods and says Because I am only eleven weeks old and I am a BABY! You wanted this! You worked for this! This is what you dreamed about! Deal with it! And I will. I will do better by him.


He is chewing  like crazy so maybe he's a little ahead of schedule, he's in Early Chewing, big time chewing is supposed to be a post twelve weeks old  bench mark and he's all ready chewing on my furniture and having aching gums and refusing his perfectly good kibble - just like one of those teething twelve week olds, the big kids. and like those big kids, right now he's very excited about gnawing about a frozen hand towel. next stop, frozen carrots!


And since he is younger than I had thought, I can also give myself some slack about his food issues, He is eating roughly what an eleven week old is supposed to be eating so I can chill on that a little. I am however going to phase out the expensive food and phase in another (cheaper) brand because its ridiculous to spend the big bucks on food he doesn't like and then forcing him to consume it. He's going to end up on either Pedigree or a high end Purina like Purina Pro Puppy formula. I learned about PPP on a weim forum and Pedigree from a former vet tech at the rec center who came to admire Rocket and talk Dogs. He was happy to see me working with Rocket and I was happy to pick his brain on dog food.

Yay for Doggy socialization!

Cha, cha, changes

I decided that with the addition of Rocky that my blissful old morning routine - originally designed  to best serve an adult dog - was not suitable for a puppy. My first idea was that instead of doing my morning toilet and then taking Rocket for a walk and then feeding him and getting my tea and reading the paper, was too clumsy and wasn't serving either of our needs.

My brilliant idea was that instead of all that, I would get up and before anything else I would take Rocket into the back yard to go pee, then I would  deposit him in his downstairs crate and have time to get my morning routine underway . In theory, if the universe co-operated, we would eat our breakfasts together and then I would take him for a single morning walk. Post walk, it would be time for him to go back to his crate, leaving me time for make  up and leaving the house.

It seemed like a really good idea.

 I did get up and take him out. At 1:30 am. He had all ready peed his crate but apparently prefers to be the only island in the sea.  I think this is a good plan, as we share this preference. So, 1:35 am, I am cleaning out a wet crate and redepositing him in it. He doesn't think this is as good idea as I do. I am pleased that he woke me up to take him out but I wished he had woken me up say, fifteen minutes earlier, but grateful that he woke me up when he did. Maybe he's noticing a theme.

Hours later my alarm goes off. I sprint out of bed and grab him out of his crate, we run downstairs. I put him down long enough to turn off the alarm and he is again an island in a sea.

The trip outside is a bit anti-climatic at that point.

We return inside and I deposit him in the downstairs crate and I start my day. The paper is late and the dog is screaming. I am not happy as the no paper thing is putting a crimp in my plan. While I Wait for the paper,  I feed Rocket, I drink my tea and watch him eat and re-read  the Sunday paper. Curse.

I take Rocket for his pre-planed longer, single walk. I don't like it, it doesn't seem right and I immediately prefer the old, shorter walk. We come home and the paper has arrived. I put Rocket up, he complains, I put on my make up and go to work. Early. The paper is unread, maybe I'll read it Tuesday while I wait for Tuesdays paper to arrive, late.

Tomorrow we try again. Tonight, I cut off water earlier and mean it.  We go out every half hour until 10:30 and then we go to bed and try out the new schedule again.

Monday

Is everyone surprised as I am that is it October?

I did  as little as possible and still got a lot done, for instances I attended  my nieces birthday party and still found time to do laundry and watch four episodes of Say Yes to The Dress . Time well spent, I think. I should have gotten more done, like vacuuming  and tidying the house, shopping for food, packing to go away next weekend... So many things to do, so many other things to do instead.

I did decide on what I'm going to wear to my reunion, so there is that off the list. I went shopping for a skirt and top, could not find the top, bought a skirt that was okayish, came home discovered a skirt I liked better in my closet and then went out again to find the perfect  black light weight cowl neck sweater - which, shockingly, I was able to find; although now I do have some trepidation that my outit is perilously closer to "office casual" rather than the stated really genuinely non-helpful "casual", I am sure there will be women there in cocktail dresses making me feel frumpy and other women there in jeans making me feel really over dressed.  It doesn't matter what the dress code is: I will feel bad about what I'm wearing. Also I don't think anyone needs to know that they last time I wore that skirt was to my Grandmothers funeral.

Do you know what "they" don't tell you about life with a new puppy? You can't run errands, you have to go home at lunch to take care of puppy and have to come directly home after work to do the same. There are no errand running at any time that might be convenient. I need to go to my bank, my bank and the US postal service works standard business hours instead of the more  me friendly "Puppy Training Hours", in the much more useful "Half Hour increments between 4-11pm", because that is  is as long as I can take my eyes off the puppy.

I just dropped about a half a box of breakfast cereal on the kitchen floor. This is Gawds way of telling me "Just Because You Are Hungry, It Does Not Mean You Need To Eat.  Tubby". It is also the first non-pee related mess I've cleaned up in weeks.  I first tried to clear the mess with paper towels and carpet shampoo but it just made it worse.  It turned out it this kind of mess needs to be swept up and does not actually require an emergency application of  watered down bleach or an intervention with Natures Miracle. Who knew? Also,  spilled cereal doesn't leave a stain or an offensive odor.

I know its  training progress if the dog  whines to go out the door but what about if the dog whines to go out at the cabinet door under the sink? Is he really not very bright or is it a very clever way telling me he's thirsty? Its a little worrisome either way.