Dunno what's up today, but I woke up with a headache and no energy. Pounded down a shitload of Advil, took Elise to my sister's house for a playdate, came back and played on the computer for a while, hoping to get some writing done. Nada. Zilch. The Big Butkus. Okay, I don't even know if I spelled that one right, but it sounded cool, and that's what counts.
After about an hour, I gave up and went to take a shower. Finished that, sat back down to write, still nothing, so I gave up altogether an
d went back to bed. Woke up at 4pm, hustled into the truck to go pick up Elise, got lost... Yah, I'm that good. I can get lost in neighborhoods I've frequented for years.Worse yet, forgot Trevor. See the picture? That's a Garmin StreetPilot c550. I named mine Trevor. Trevor is The MAN. Trevor takes care of me.
(Trevor is Trevor because I chose the English dude's voice. He has problems with Spanish pronunciation, so words like "CAL-a-VER-as", the name of the main street in Milpitas, become "ca-LAV-eras" in his hands, but that just adds to the flavor. Oh my Trevor-poo.)
If I had had Trevor with with me, I would not have taken 30 minutes longer and a quarter tank more gas to get to my sister's house to pick up Elise. As it was, I saw the back-up on southbound 880, decided to get off at Brokaw Rd (stupid stupid stupid... I ALWAYS get lost when I take Brokaw) and that was all she wrote.
Got home, had a snack and decided I needed to be in bed again. I'm just about at the point of deciding I need to be in bed again, again.
Anyway, on with news of Charlotte, Dog of Destiny: tonight for the first time she put two and two together, and actually whined at the backdoor to go out poddy! What an amazing dog! It took our other dog Sophie months to figure this out. With Shar, we've had a few poddy accidents, but really, she's ahead of the game at 9 months old, and you always have to expect the first year is going to be difficult as the puppy matures enough to handle the whole poddy situation.
She walks calmly at my side under the "heel" command, with or without the prong collar, she stops when I do, and she'll sit if I tell her to. We're practicing getting her to sit automatically every time I stop.
The only time we need the prong collar is when something sets off her prey drive, and she launches herself after it with no thought and no warning. A couple of times now I would have been dragged (and I weigh 240 lbs!!) if the prong collar hadn't stopped her short. As it is, I had the leash wrapped around my right pointer finger, and her lunge after a motor scooter dude probably put a crack in the bone. That was on the 4th of July, and today my finger still hurts just a bit when I squeeze it. Yah, yah, I know... "then don't squeeze it!"
Sophie has proven a bit problematic. She's the screamingly insecure dog in our pack, and bringing Charlotte into the family has disrupted Sophie's perception of her own rank.
By way of example, insecure dogs are always looking to up their position in the pack. One of the ways they do this is by protecting their food. If a higher ranking dog wants food, he takes it from a lower ranking dog, and the lower ranking dog isn't allowed to try to stop him. When a lower ranking dog wants to up their position, they try to protect their food by biting whoever tries to take it.
Twice now, Sophie has done this to Elise. Yes, this sounds horrible, and it was pretty awful, but to be fair, I've told Elise to never take food away from Sophie, and she forgets. Sophie doesn't dare do this to me or Jeff, but she thinks of Elise as a fair target, and I just can't get Elise to act like an Alpha. She keeps wanting to play with Sophie because Sophie is "so cute". Two days ago, Elise was in the kitchen and I was on the front porch talking to our neighbors. I heard Sophie do THAT bark, and then Elise started screaming and yelling. I rushed in to find Elise holding her eyebrow and Sophie cowering on the floor, because she knew she'd blown it. I did the Alpha thing, lots of screaming and yelling and rolling her on her back, and I got Elise to hold her down as well and put her hand on Sophie's throat. Then I put Sophie outside to exile her from the pack for a while, but I'm afraid Sophie will never be entirely trustworthy, and certainly not ever around kids.
Charlotte, bless her heart, is such a different story. She has so much good will and so much common sense. I've never met a dog who was more motivated to work with me when we're trying to learn something new. I'm working on getting her to let me pick up her feet and groom her and mess with her mouth and other stuff of that nature, for her AKC Canine Good Citizen certificate. She's already better than my old man Jake, when it comes to standing still for brushing, and I think she may be ready for her test in a month or two.
On August 6th, I've got an appointment at my daughter's gym class, for one of their summercamp days, to take Charlotte to the day camp and talk to the kids about Therapy Dogs, and about taking care of dogs, and stuff like that. I wanted to do this as another opportunity to take Charlotte into a situation where she had to be surrounded by people and kids, to get her used to busy, crowded environments. Here's some info on Registered Therapy Dogs, just for the heck of it. Given how much Shar loves people, especially kids, and how much commonsense and smarts she has, I can't imagine not sharing her with people who really need what she can offer.
Anyway, longer than I wanted, as usual. In a quick note, Jeff has been handling the garden this year, and tonight we had corn and carrots with dinner, that came fresh from our garden. Woo hoo!! Go honey!
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