You've heard of Dopey Dog and Deputy Dawg now meet Sleepy Dog

This is Rocket after nine hours of day care and one hour of CGC class. I let him sleep  after we got home for a while but eventually I decided that he really needed to be awake for at least a few minutes before bed time, so we went for a walk around the block. On our way out I heard what sounded like very young puppies? but I couldn't place them. One of my neighbors was out visiting with friends and I took that maybe these very young puppies were either with them or they knew about these crying babies and would take care of them presently.

On the way back I heard them again and my neighbors guests had left. I asked him if he knew where the unknown babies - after listening to them we decided they are kittens - and he said he had looked and couldn't find them. We think they are under the newly empty house, or in the shrubbery. I think they are in the crawl space under the house because the sound seems to move around and neither of us with our flashlights or the dog with his dog nose could pin them down.  My neighbor said he's going to call the recently relocated neighbor and tell him about the kitties. He also mentioned that the house may have all ready been sold. Well, the sign in the yard tells me otherwise but it would be great for the house to have people in it so fast. It would be super to have that really be the truth but more importantly,  baby kitties need to be tracked down and rescued.

Garden Day 3

Around 7pm or so Sunday I got the idea that I needed to go to the grocery to get some BOGO bottled teas that I mainline. I hippity-hopped out the store on the far other side of New Bern Avenue, bought my teas and started for home.

Sometime after that something very unfortunate happened on New Bern Avenue. To other people, specifically, two other cars and an other motorcycle. All at once. Together.

Did you know that if you live at one end of New Bern Avenue and for whatever reason you are prevented from getting there on New Bern Avenue, you are going to need to move because there is no way to get home now. I gamely took one of the side streets and very quickly found myself lost.

Did I mention it was now dark and raining like hell?

I finally ended up feeling my way back forty minutes after my journey began, but I did not enjoy myself.

So. Its Garden Update Time!!!

I mowed the yard and next time it looks like I'm going to be sweeping dirt.

Looks much better from this angle

Kind of slow going on the bean tee-pee, but some progress is being made.

 Peppers and tomatoes are hanging in there. Tomatoes are doing their thing.

 

 Old School potatoes are holding there own.

New school potatoes growing a developing.

Watermelons resting before their big growth spurt.

 

Vertical herbs are all ready being useful and tasty.

Vertical carrots are trying really, really hard.

Sunflowers are perking along, sprouted and on their way.

 

 Not dead yet!

Corn is sprouting and I just planted some more.

Blueberries are still white. I'm not sure what's going on with them.

Also? Still alive damn it.

Friday Cat Blogging

Friday May 17

I marched into work with my bright red glasses and  one person noticed! Uno! They are bright red and plastic and significantly different than the old glasses. Significantly. As in I looked in every mirror in Sears as I passed though because I looked different.

Not different enough apparently.

My DVR has nothing set to record. Nothing. Well not "nothing", it has TDS and Colbert but nothing  else. No interesting design shows no new fish tank show - emphasis on "new fish tank show", plenty of fish tank reruns but I can't bring myself to be interested in re-watching fish tank construction. Once you know for sure it doesn't leak, there isn't much drama. Even my wedding dress shows are on hiatus. I have no one to feel superior to.

I'm sitting here realizing that Rocket has the worst gas of any creature ever. Period. I blame a combination of bargain wet dog food and the boiled eggs I've been feeding him for this. Its always been shockingly bad, but now its so frequent that its hardly shocking. I feel I should start to eat very gassy foods just to let him know what its like to share a roof with a faulty catalytic converter but I'm pretty sure that he wouldn't care and would most likely, be critical my efforts and offer tips and suggestions to better foul the air and how to most efficiently empty a room.

Speaking of clear rooms. I saw flowers appear on a couple of my potato plants and I decided to go spelunking ( flowers are a sign that the spuds have "set" and the plant is no working on growing under ground verses growing my leaves and branches)  I found no spuds the bin I explored and a single in the ground. I am hopeing I didn't go down far enough  or I wasn't as near to a plant as I thought. Another thought, if you have a choice between carrot seeds in tape form or lose carrot seeds, pay the extra and get the tape kind. For real.

New Glasses!

Walk like a...

I had a light house cleaning scheduled for Tuesday evening so I planned for Rockets walk to start a little earlier and end promptly, we were to walk to Fayetteville Street and then we were going to turn around and come home. Period.

I wanted to be able to get myself and him fed and the house cleaned early enough to allow for some quality reading time and maybe, if there was time, a trip to the grocery to pick up more powdered cheese for Rockets food, we're out and its not pretty. Boy dog needs to gain some poundage and not having the magic cheese is not helping that happen.

We left the house late and then got side tracked once downtown by a very nice shop owner who invited us into her store and then preceded to shower Rocket with treats. Treats he would not eat. It wasn't until. she started to seriously work his ears that he finally deigned to eat her very nice dog treats. Brat.

We left there and proceeded to Fayetteville street and then kept right on going the wrong direction. Because I suck. But because I have no self control I was able to finally check out the building they have been working on for months to take it from a horrible fifties era update to return it to its original glory. Its not quite glorious yet, but its going to be gorgeous. And we kept going.

And we went further downtown and I decided that I would like to go find the street I saw a couple of weeks ago in the car but didn't have a chance to really explore. I did find it and I did find out that The Fiction Kitchen is not a bookstore/diner. Instead its a vegan restaurant! It doesn't have anything to do with books or reading or real food, what a waste.

We met lots of people and Rocket would have made the CGC trainer proud. He actually sat with out being told to when people stopped us to pet on him and talk baby talk with him and was so calm and collected over and over. The real test was on our way home (much later than scheduled). We met a lady holding a teeny little yappy dog in her arms...

She wanted to pet Rocket and Rocket is of course, all about being told how pretty he is and despite being excited about being pet on, I wasn't worried about him. I was worried about the yappy little beast in her arms! That dog-thing was inches from Rockets' tender nose and I just knew it was going to freak out and either startle him into therapy or just haul off and bite him and cause a scene and a new set of issues for Rocket.

Instead the beast was very polite if a bit tense, but Rocket was incredibly gentle and not only did he remain seated, he stayed that way when the little dog licked his nose! So Proud of Rocket! What a good dog! It was just the sweetest thing to watch. My dog is a good dog.

We made it home only forty or fifty minutes later than I had originally scheduled and I got the cleaning done and made it to the store and got a little reading in. Score.

CGC week 3/Book Sale Bounty

We had a great time at CGC.No breakthroughs or any real change in skill level but we got to spend the time with Rockets brother Tonka! What a nice dog! So gentle and gracious and sweet - these are not common attributes of your average male dog, much less your average male puppy. It was so nice to see them together and I hope we get to see more of him and his people, also really nice folks.

Remember the book sale? Well. I did a count - this year I came out with 36 books, with three out for gifts. I have a good mix of paper and hard back with titles ranging from a scholarly discussion of Lobsters to a mini book about dream symbols to a book about how stooopid Shrub was to a bunch of mystery/detective books to more biography's than I would have thought I would have been interested in.

By the numbers I came out with

3  Dogcentric
3 Cookbooks
14 Detective/mystery
6 biographies
7 Non-Fiction

So far I have started Someone is Going to Die if Lillybeth Doesn't Catch the Bouquet by Gayden Metcalf and Charlotte Hays. Its about southern social mores  and its funnier than it sounds. I haven't really sat down and read a book since I brought Rocket home. The next one I want to start on is Laughing Without an Accent by Firoozeh Dumas, I read an earlier title she wrote but wasn't able to track down her second book. She a very funny Iranian American woman.

I could go with I want to be a lady plumber a collection of short stories by Reinhold Shubert. A first edition, signed and dated (September 9, 1968, I was less than two weeks old) by the author with a message that reads "To The Patients and their Special Friends. with Best Wishes".  I could find next to nothing about this person online, the book is worth about $10. I bought it for nothing so I made a good kill anyway.

I might go with any one of my fourteen detective novels or I could go with The Secret Life of Lobsters or either of the two titles I picked up by Haven "A Girl names Zippy" Kimmel, or English and How it Got That Way by Bill Bryson or Shadow Divers about the divers that found that  mysterious, not supposed to be there, U-boat off New Jersey or maybe the John Grishon novel Playing for Pizza about a baseball player playing in Italy or perhaps The History of Coffee or Pack of Two, The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs by Caroline Knapp or I could read through Chinese Cooking for the American Kitchen...

So much to read so little time to read!

Doing nothing and doing badly.

I started the weekend with a plan : I will do nothing all weekend. Period. No plans, no list, no expectations of getting anything accomplished.

I failed miserably. I got up earlyish Saturday and mowed the lawn, with the manual mower because the grass wasn't that long and it was early and I decided that having to waltz with the extension cords sounded like more work then I wanted to do. I went over  the yard twice.

Then I did laundry, a lot of laundry and to add insult to injury I put it away!. Things were not going to plan at all! I did some assessing and decided that my DVR was getting dangerously full and I really needed to get it cleared out a bit. Finally, something I was supposed to be doing! I took a lot of pride in opening up so much of its memory. It was a tough job but someone needed to do it.

After recovering that all that I got around to getting my new timer hooked up. This started out being fun but ended up being less fun because even though its the same manufacturer, they made upgrades to the product and now its much, much better and I will totally take advantage of its new functions later on in the summer when I go on vacation - but for the time being, its a lot harder to get access to the manual hose function and I had to figure that out. I mean, for real, it was a lot harder than it sounds.

After that, I needed another rest and lunch and I wanted to check on the dog. He was fine, sound asleep, but fine. he slept a lot on Saturday. I don't know if it was the cumulative effect of four days at doggy daycare or his first dose of Prozac but whatever the underlying cause, he wasn't anxious or bothered by anything. Because he was unconscious.

I found some more stuff to launder- and put away! And then I got a wild hair to  wake Rocket up and go check out the green-way near my house,  it turned out to be lovely and we had a great walk and we will be going back. Soon it was time for dinner and more TV. It was a good day, busier than I had planned, but a good day.

And then it was Sunday. Due to all my hard work on Saturday, Sunday I should hve been back on track. Instead I went to the book fair - ZOMG! So many books! I didn't even know it was Book Fair Weekend until Saturday night and by that time it was almost over. Its a four day event and I am usually there at lest three times. This year I didn't make it until $5 A Box day, the bitter end.

Despite the fact I really don't have any room for more books and I haven't really been reading a lot since Rocket came, and it was the last day of the sale - I still managed to somehow fill a box to over the rim. I also have arms one half inch longer than I had on Saturday. Then even more off my plans, I went to the mall with Alphagal and we looked at cell phone upgrades! My new phone is going to be awe-some! I mean, I really need to make a list next time so that I could actually stick to my plans.

Friday Cat Blogging

S.S. Mood Stabilizer or The Good Ship SSRI.

My dog is on Prozac. Well, my dog will  be on prozac,  its just the kind of pill he takes - I thought that Prozac was Prozac, a lot I know as it turns out; There are caplets and tablets.

Rockets prescription was for tablets. Caplets are $4 a month, tablets are $95 a month. Clearly, some discussion needs to be had because I'm not paying $95 for pills.  The script was for a pill and a half per day, caplets can;t be half a pill, tablets can but sadly won't ebcause $95 a month! I think the dose was a little high anyway so I am hooping that the vet just drops the dose enough that I can get by with one caplet a day until he needs more. The pharmacy was a little surprised too, so maybe taking it down a little will be a good thing. I had all ready been advised by nurses at work to not start him off at the full dose right away. RNs trump DVMs. Sorry  vets.

This took an hour to suss out. I left Rocket at home alone because this was supposed to be a quick back and forth trip and it wouldn't be a problem. The good news was that he didn't bark, the bad news that he did pee the futon.

My hope is that whatever kind of pill he ends up on, that one day he can be alone and not pee on anything and do so in silence and just be. I want him to be as happy as he is when I can be with him when I can't be. Poor dog.

Walk like a...

I was setting out on a trip to the post office with Rocket and we ran into a nice man who lives down the street from us. We see him regularly and he always waves and talks to Rocket, today I thought he would like actually touch Rocket for the first time.

The man told me he was afraid of Rocket! He's known Rocket since he was a tiny puppy, I had no idea he was scared of dogs because he's always been so sweet to him. I even had Rocket to sit and be still in hopes our friend would be more comfortable and then Rocket yawned and that freaked out the guy because all he saw was this huge mouth and these great big teeth.He pretty much ran away at hat point. Rocket is so much smaller than his parts.

I feel really bad about the neighbor being scared of baby dog, especially since he has known him forever and I had no idea the reason he never really stopped to visit was because he was scared of him! I always thought he was just in a hurry to get to where ever he was going. I feel bad now.

I was thinking about that while we walked, I needed the walk more than he did. He has spent the last few days at daycare and he is wiped out. I however, have not and I needed a walk. Do you know how to make your dog a great lose leash walker? You can go the hard way 1) find an obedience class and then drill, drill, drill your skills or you can take the easy way 2) arrange for your dog to run flat out 8-10 hours a day three or four days in a row and then take him for a walk! Flawless lose leash walking, textbook Good Dog.

Of course, he is also textbook  Exhausted Dog, but its about looking Good, right?

Garden Day 3

I haven't checked for progress, and its a good thing because today I got a treat - Actual Progress! On all fronts!

This is the corn. I planted, per the instructions, nine seeds. I got three, I will be planting more, hopefully with better results. But I'm glad to see any come up.

Some of the sunflower's, another surprise. I didn't think they were going to come up, I just had this feeling after I got them in the ground. But they pulled through, I hope they keep going.

More surprises! Most of the beans seem to be either coming up or clearly trying hard. This is the worst plot in the yard and I need to keep a close watch on it to make sure it stays wet enough for growth.

This is the morning glory I transplanted. It grew more leaves! and seems happy where it is now. I took these in the early evening with a flash and the color isn't exactly accurate, they aren't that yellowy.

Growing well, at least one plant has flower buds all ready. I need to add more dirt to a couple of the bins.

The old school potato garden, still doing well and exceeding expectations.

The vertical herbs are chugging along, I need to add something to them though, see the yellow parsley. I blame too much rain.

The watermelons are all still with us.

You don't need to buy expensive hanging baskets every year, do it once and save the baskets.

Odd color due to time and flash. So far, so good. Noticeable growth and good progress.

The cost of doing business

I was driving Rocket back from CGC  where Rocket was used as the "example dog" twice! He is very good at lose leash walking and slightly less terrific, but better than others, at casual meeting.  He does not jump and he doesn't force his attentions on dogs who don't want to visit with him. He loves people but not too much.

He was also held out as an example of doing good Doggy Sit Ups - You go from a sit to a down and stay before starting over, he doesn't love "down" but I learned today that the breed is not big on "down" over all.  It was a good class and the instructor worked with us a little after class on Supervised Separation, his worst subject.  We almost never get extra attention because Rocket can pretty much do the skills and he doesn't jump around or refuse or bite. Good behavior is not nessarly its own reward, if he was bad we would get more attention and we need more attention.

Class was over and it had been a long day. Rocket was tired and I just wanted to go home. We couldn't go home. Rocket needed more wet food and I need deodorant. My idea was that we would pass a Wallyworld on the way back, because there's a Wally on every corner or at least every few miles and no doubt I was pass at least one on the way back.

No, I didn't. There were no Wallys. There was a Sam's and a couple of big box home improvement places and a giant wine store. I would have to drive to my Wally. Far and out of the way and not at all convenient. I started looking for grocery stores and found one.

The price difference for convenience is .98 a can. and I certainly hope that Rocket can tell the difference! This shite had better be made of Kobe Beef  and locally grown artisanal vegetables and the Kobe beef cut by hand by blind baby monks then hand cut and pr profusely blessed by said blind baby monks, who will  then come feed my dog by hand, with their very special, blind baby monk hands! All the while blessing him profusely! And singing special blind baby monk songs and dancing and also cleaning my bathroom.   And the stuff I bought  was on sale! and even when its not on sale,  its still not the most expensive variety of canned food on the shelf.  I ended up with seven cans of  Alpo wet food ( I don't want to have to come back immediately)  for what I could have paid for 22 cans of Gravy Train!. The math makes me sad. On the upside, I now know how much Gravy Train I want to buy at a time, for $13.50 I can buy a month of wet at a time and you can be damn sure I will. The dog doesn't really like blind baby monks any way.

I also paid too much for my deodorant. Yay for convenience.

Dr. Goodog

Back so soon? I need more three day weekends, I wonder if I could talk my doctor into writting me a prescription for that? Yeah, my MD says it is for my blood pressure, so , yeah, I need to take Fridays off until further notice? I think it might work.

And then I wake up.

Speaking of doctors and requests, what is the best way to approach your vet to tell him him/her not ask him/her - to write your dog a prescription for Prozac? I'm totally open to behavior modification, in fact I would also need some sort of written directions for that, but my dog needs Prozac like yesterday. Really, like months ago.

I wasted a lot of time worrying about potty training and to a lesser degree, his barking, without putting the pieces together. I just thought he was the worlds hardest dog to potty train ( by the way, he's rock solid on that, the only time he wets is in his box when I am not here. he sleeps through the night and when I am around, he goes to the door to let me know he needs to go out) and that the barking was  just a  puppy thing he would out grow. He still might, with a little help from Doctor Goodog.

I need him to not freak out because I'm in the shower or  upstairs out in the yard or going down the street for a milk shake. I need him to be able to be alone without stroking out. This summer he's going to be without me for weeks and I'm concerned that this is going to end badly, I need him to be mentally healthier than he is now and I need him to be able to function without me for more than seconds at a time, which is what we're working with now. He can't go weeks if he can't go minutes!

As problematic and irritating as his issues are, I think his separation anxiety is mild - in comparison to what I have read online about SA dogs tearing up furniture ( shredding anything handy is a common symptom) and destroying crates and  damaging their homes  and ultimately causing themselves real injury in the course of their anxiety. I don't want this to go from a irritating problem to an injurious problem and it can very quickly. I need my vet to have an open mind and a handy prescription pad. And  I should have asked months ago.