Random photos

Just random photos to help our fading memory …

Coated not with fur but with braided snowballs

Exhausted after being spayed

Vocabulary & grammar

I noticed that Kelly seemed to understand me when I asked her to play with her toys (i.e., to entertain herself instead of bothering me). This isn’t just some body movement on my part (I don’t think) because she responds similarly when others make the request too. She does know the names of many of her toys like “blue rope” or “carrot” because we’ve been using it consistently with her. Still, the collective noun “toys” seems to have the generic meaning for all or any of her toys.

Turns out, recent research in a well respected scientific journal shows how 2 dogs, Rico and Chaser, have thousand-word vocabularies AND can understand common nouns and grammar as well. Very nice article & movie clip in the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/science/18dog.html

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/01/18/science/1248069571561/a-dog-nouns-and-verbs.html

Diapers

I put on my first diaper, ever. Took about 15 mins to figure out how to put it on.

Kelly’s period might have begun late yesterday but we didn’t really realize until today. Oreo came to visit & all that excitement might have brought it on–but then it happens when it’s time.

This is the first time she’s in heat, and hopefully the last. The plan is to spay her a little after her 1st birthday.

Sociology of pets?

Hey, this is a really nice blog … VetTech2B

http://vettech2b.wordpress.com/

k9Kelly is about how we’re (our family) affected by a single dog, Kelly, but VetTech2B is about how a specific human life has been changed by dogs (and pets generally). It’s about finding liberation, respite from the rat race, and finding more meaning in life than making $200 million from Wall St bonuses (no, she didn’t I think).

Food (?) toy

We got something called the Busy Buddy Bouncy Bone Toy for Kelly & she did not like it at all! The toy is a nylabone (plastic?) shaped like a bone, and in the middle is a rubber ball. Sandwiched between the bone ends and the rubber ball is an “edible” gnawhide treat. We still can’t figure out what the edible part is made of–it smells like a rubber spongy plastic and maybe like the inside of a new car. I suspect it’s the toxic (?) plastic fumes that have been sealed inside the package with the rest of the rubber-plastic toy.

Kelly started to bark & back away from the toy when we introduced it to her. She thought it might be an alien monster. (Actually, edible part smells just like her green monster toy I blogged about a few weeks ago) After a minute or so, she even backed away from the kitchen. This is something you don’t even want in your house, let alone eat it.

Looking at the label, we just see the standard stuff like sorbitol, … (come to think of it I can’t remember all those names). I’m almost sure it’s what we put into human processed food too but then maybe worse. And, the plastic & rubber parts do not have any labels about what it’s made of.

It’s just a terrible thing that we’ve got all these artificial things in our lives. Manufacturers are right, we cannot put labels on everything, but then we should not put everything (I mean artificial-synthetic-chemical materials) into our food products.

Articulating preferences

Kelly expressed some interesting choices today in terms of what she wanted to play with.

I was trying to carry her down some stairs into the family room (her usual play room) to play fetch with her toy flip-flop. Instead, she backed away when I tried to pick her up. Then she’d approach me again to tell me she did want to play, then retreated again when I tried to pick her up. After that, she turned around & ran a few steps into the living room and toyed with another rope toy. She picked up the rope in her mouth & invited me to play with her. I asked again if she preferred to play in the family room, but she refused. She just insisted on playing in the living room, and I HAD to be a part of that.

Hmmm, do we make choices so early in life? Maybe. I multiplied her 14 weeks age by 7 to get some idea of human age & that turns out to be just under 2 years. But then the “7x” multiplier is just some old housewives tale to convert into human age, right?

Vet visit

Went to another booster vaccination today. Relatively painless this time. Kelly was a little nervous but some biscuits helped calm the nerves. The booster will give us a little more confidence in coming into contact with other dogs but the doc warned that it really takes another shot in 4 weeks + 1 more week for the vaccine to really kick in.

Weighed in at 5.5 lbs — a nice growth of just under a pound over 3 weeks.

What was a little surprising was the amount of dirt in the ears! It took Dr D 10-12 cotton swabs with an antibiotic ointment to clean & protect in case of an infection.

The highlight was the vet: “What an impressive set of whiskers you have!”

What'chya looking at?

Pushing boundaries

Kelly’s been pushing all her boundaries since we got her, and today it took a jump.

I tried to see if Kelly might like to do some jumping when she plays. The last couple of days she’d been less and less excited about her play time–Fetch was getting boring. So, I laid down a rolled up rug across the floor. It stands about 3+ inches, maybe about a third her height now. I threw her toy to the other side, and she just jumped the rug across her path in full running stride. It didn’t even slow her down.

Later in the afternoon, we went out to the yard for her regular poop break. She usually strains on the leash (again pushing boundaries) almost all the time. She just wants to wander off to explore. In reaction, I keep her leash a little taught so that I can both feel her strain & thus react to restrain her a little quicker. Today, though, she would strain at the end of the leash but kept a fixed position for a few minutes longer (instead of the usual of running a different direction as soon as there’s a restraint). When she did this, I relaxed the tension on the leash. Only this time, she’d wait for this release in tension then spring up & run off at the 180-degree direction, throwing my balance off & she’d get away & move further away then I might have allowed.

Sneaky little girl to have so quickly figured out how to use her new talent in jumping to push her boundaries again.

Forgot to brush my teeth

Getting to a routine seems to be what works best against accidents in the house. After fighting for 2 weeks (see older post), we finally decided to make a routine & stick to it religiously. Now a week later, we’ve been able to avoid all accidents; touch wood.

We sat down to work out a daily morning schedule to get ready. It’s got about 6 steps with tasks for each of us (2 guardians & Kelly). While one tries to put dishes away (from the previous night), another is out in the yard with Kelly. Then Kelly gets to play for a few minutes before returning to the crate while I get cleaned up & breakfast ready … and so on. Everyone has a set role & assigned task. I dutifully printed the schedule in a flyer form in 3 prominent places so we could glance at it quickly & stay on schedule. One in the kitchen, family room, etc. I felt pretty organized.

One day though, I realized in the afternoon that I had missed brushing my teeth. In all that discipline to get Kelly ready for the day, I had missed one step; a step I didn’t write down.

Routines are way harder to create than I expected. I thought they just happen. I guess though they’re hard to create, are easy to follow, and maybe difficult to break (?). Somehow, when a routine gets blocked (like forgetting to brush teeth) it just feels odd without your realizing what’s wrong.

Pee & poop time analysis

We’ve been keeping data on the times that Kelly has had accidents in the house as we try to housebreak her. Now with enough accidents recorded, we’re trying to use the data to better understand when they occur. We’ve got to learn from our mistakes.

Most of the time, we’re not consistent in terms of time-of-day when she’s out. She wakes up at slightly different times each day & subsequently we let her out every 2 hours or so. The only consistent times of the day are towards our dinner time about 8pm and until we go to bed about 11+.

Except for a nasty day on the 14th, it looks like the accidents (red diamonds) occur very close in time to when we let her out (blue diamonds). She surely can hold her needs for longer durations so it must mean that she hasn’t finished before we bring her back into the house.

Maybe others have better ideas but here’s what we’re now trying to do or have done so far:

1. Use the same area for all pee & poop (about 6′ x6′)

2. Stay firmly in one place & let her move only within the length of the leash (ie, she’s restricted to remaining within a circle of 6-foot radius). I’ll wait until she wants to be picked up & return into the house  (I use to bring her back in when she started playing).

3. Go regularly. We’re trying to get her to go every 2 hours (+/-), but maybe we’ve got to stick to fixed schedule times rather than durations.

We’ll also begin tracking her meal times as well but we’ve been religiously letting her out shortly after meal times so I think the meals might not be disrupting her regularity. Meal times are relatively consistent within a half-hour each day: 7:30a & 7:30p. Her lunch is more inconsistent, varying between 12n – 1:30p.