Tolerance, acclimation and integration

We’re still struggling with the acclimation process between Leo and Isis. To be honest, I’m not sure we’ve conquered tolerance yet.

Isis tolerates Leo being confined to the laundry room. She’ll glance at him nonchalantly when she passes on her way in and out of the back door. But we’re still keeping them on opposite sides of barriers. Even then, sometimes there’s snarling, lunging and barking. We’ve had a few accidental meetings. I was not present for one when it was reported that there was no reaction. During the most recent one, all was calm for about three seconds with dogs nose-to-nose. Then Leo threw himself on his back and started wailing. Isis at that point was just sniffing his belly, but that turned into snarling. She hasn’t hurt him, but that could be because her teeth are worn down to flat surfaces. Maybe she’s effectively been defanged.

We have a wonderful trainer and I do see progress. But I also see a lot of regress. We have two xpens set up in the backyard. I can put a dog in each pen, and Isis will lie down and give a few calming signals. (When Rob learned of “calming signals,” such as lip-licking, yawning, sniffing, he asked how he could recognize my calming signals.)

Yesterday, at the instruction of my trainer, I let Isis out of the pen, with plans to praise her for appropriate behavior toward Leo, still in his pen. At first, she trotted off toward the back door. This is when we go inside, right? When she realized I wasn’t with her, she ran back up to the pen, sniffed Leo and lunged and barked at him. It was very difficult to restrain her and get her back in her pen, even with a harness and a head collar. She’s very strong. But once back in the pen, she appeared calm again.

It’s disheartening, because I really believed that Leo would be a good buddy for Isis, and that she would play with him happily. I still think he will and she will, I just don’t know when.

I sit on my couch and watch Isis lying on the floor in front of me and I can’t even imagine a time when both dogs are in the same room with us. Of course, Leo will get much much bigger. He’s already 50 pounds. Presumably, with his mellow temperament, Isis won’t bother to start anything with him.

And let’s be fair, it’s not like Leo would get free run of the house if Isis weren’t around. He’s a little monster. Mouths everything and everyone. Knocked over a bowl of soup and spilled it on the couch. Ruined a laptop power cord when alone in the kitchen for 30 seconds. Bites bites bites his people! It’s bad. I’m really hoping this is the “gets worse before it gets better” part of teething. It’s hard to call “time out” as soon as he puts his mouth on me though, because it’s not easy to extricate one’s self from a 50-pound German shepherd attached to one’s arm.

The best approach, I think, is to train a conflicting behavior. He can’t bite me if he’s sitting for me, or touching my palm with his nose. (OK, actually, he can and does bite me when I ask him to touch my palm with his nose, but I click and treat him when he does it without teeth.) However, he’s gotten bratty about sitting and downing when I ask.

Yesterday we had a way fun training session in which he performed proper “drop its.” He drops the toy when I offer him a treat. Really it’s a trade. In between drop its, we tug-tug-tugged on a stuffed dog/tire thingy until he ripped of its head. His first kill. I was proud because this was done during an appropriate play session with me.

Isis has thrown up her dinner a few times since Leo’s arrival. A few weeks ago, it was beef heart and pork, and she wasn’t interested in those meats for a few days. She would sniff and lick it in her bowl and then leave it. Ground turkey still appealed to her, and gradually she’s started eating the heart and pork again. She’s had no interest in the bison kidney I recently procured.

Leo on the other hand, will eat anything. Except if I put liver in his Kong with ground turkey. He works around the liver.

I got 20 pounds of bison neck bones, which were much larger than I anticipated. Imagine that, bigger than an emu neck. Hard to separate too. The people in my raw-feeding coop had to use an ax to separate the frozen bones for distribution. I cleaved a few of them into smaller pieces, but others I gave up on and stuck back in the freezer in 2-foot-long sections. Maybe someday the dogs can eat this together, I thought.

The other day, I gave Leo a smaller section of neck and he gnawed on it for about an hour in the backyard. I put some in Isis’ bowl and she snubbed it.

Last night, however, Leo left the bison neck in the backyard when I brought him in for some playtime/training. I put Isis out back and she started to work on the meaty bone. So it’s not such a fantasy. The dogs can share the large pieces of bison neck…just not at the same time.

Don’t cry for me, Ipanema

A few months ago, we were watching an episode of the International Sexy Ladies Show (yes we were). This stimulated a discussion about wanting to go to Brazil.

I went into full trip-planning mode. February tends to be a glum time for me, so we should go then. Oh, except I’m signed up for a weekly writing class that meets through March 1. So we’ll go March 2, and be there for Carnaval! Ignoring the nagging feeling that really, we can’t afford two airline tickets to Rio, let alone the travel between regions, I proceeded to come up with a great itinerary.

Five days in Rio, where Rob will train at a Brazilian jiujitsu (BJJ) studio. Fly to Pantanal for wildlife viewing. Fly to Iguassu Falls for waterfall viewing. Visit the Amazon.

One of my fantasies was that there would be a BJJ camp like the Muay Thai camp we went to in Thailand. It provided lodging and two meals a day for cheaper than most hotel rooms. This would solve the problem of hiked hotel rates and lack of vacancies during Carnaval. Unfortunately, BJJ in Brazil is a bit more expensive than Muay Thai training in Thailand. While camps like that do exist, they’re very expensive.

I had to get real. We can’t afford it this year. Which makes it all the more painful to listen to the four Brazilian music CDs I uploaded onto my work computer.

Broken

Am I the only one who goes to a doctor sort of hoping for a definitive bad-news diagnosis? I want my dentist to tell me I need a root canal, because it justifies my going to the trouble of making an appointment and it gives me a solution to the pain.

I stumbled and twisted my ankle when I was in the 9th grade. It hurt like a mother and the ER said it was probably a “contusion” and gave me an Ace bandage and crutches. When I went to the real doctor, I was initially kind of excited when I found out I had a cracked growth plate. Until he put me in a cast and told me I’d have to miss the drill team’s performance at the Thanksgiving football game, The Turkey Bowl. Then I cried.

I felt like crying yesterday when I left the orthopedist’s after learning that I have a stress fracture in my lateral sesamoid bone. I don’t know how much further along my healing would be had I known this in FEBRUARY when it happened. I certainly wouldn’t have continued to try to go to Zumba and martial arts classes.

In one respect, I feel validated. There’s a reason it still hurts all these months later. Presumably, it will heal and I will be able to resume some activity. But I’m also depressed because it could take 18 MONTHS to heal.

Also, the doctor didn’t give me a satisfying solution. He recommended a couple of products I could buy online. “Just try a bunch of different orthotics and inserts and see what works.”

And get a pair of those hideous “rocker sole” tennis shoes, because they take pressure off the ball of the foot. Come back in four months and we’ll take some more X-rays.

He wrote a prescription to modify my orthotics, but didn’t really tell me where to go to do that. Not that I was all that happy with the podiatrist who mailed the orthotics to a lab that took more than two weeks to sloppily cut a hole under the sesamoid.  “Oh, there’s a lab in town that does it. Northwest something.” My physical therapist might be able to do it too.

The most encouraging part of the experience was getting a doctor’s note to cancel my gym membership. Let’s see if they actually let me do that. The tech who wrote the note thought they might actually refund some money for the past 7 months. I’m not too optimistic about that.

Inertia and the killer whale

I’ve invoked Newton’s law on this blog before. A body at rest tends to stay at rest. Even if she’s had a really boring day at her desk. She might learn of an opportunity to get away from the desk and think, “Nah, I’d have to wake up early to do that.”

She might need a good kick to the head.

In the middle of a boring day last Thursday, a biologist e-mailed me some photographs of a fishery. Decent-sized, well-composed photos. I actually thought to myself, “Good. Now I don’t have to go out on a boat tomorrow to take pictures.”

I mean, it would be Friday. The weather was supposed to be divine. I had not one single thing on my behind-the-desk to-do list. The last thing I wanted to do was go on a boat ride.

The fishery started at 5 a.m. and I’d heard it could take four hours to get to the fishing spot. I hadn’t exactly been invited to sleep aboard a fishing boat, although had I been, surely I would have said no, thank you. I love almost every single thing boat-ride related, except that I’m usually the only woman aboard and there’s no bathroom. Holding it for several hours is not fun. Also, sometimes in this job, boat rides are damn cold.

Cry me a river, right?

A co-worker talked sense into me. I made two calls and found some enforcement officers who weren’t leaving until the civilized hour of 8 a.m. They happily took me with them.

It was the best day ever. They even made a bathroom stop for me. They didn’t make fun of me when I napped on the way back to the marina, and I’m sure my mouth was hanging wide open.

The morning fog made way for sunshine, but I kept on my fleece jacket the whole day and was pretty comfortable.

Ten hours on a dry speedboat, taking pictures of fishermen, capped off by a little whale watching. My only regret is that I didn’t get a shot of this guy’s face.

What if I’m the problem?

My kids behave better for Grandma than they do for me.

Leo’s been coming with me to work most of the time, because I didn’t want to burden Rob’s mom with having to come over every single day, twice, to let the dogs out without letting them actually come into contact with each other.

Until I had an excursion where I had to leave my car in a parking lot while I took a shuttle to an island, and I couldn’t bring Leo. (The governor was there!) Grandma was happy to come over and watch the kids, and I warned her to be very, very careful, because Isis had been being very aggressive toward Leo during some of our training exercises. She asked if she could have them in the backyard, separated by the dog run gate. I said sure, as long as Isis didn’t act aggressively toward him at all.

Grandma reported that they were perfect. So perfect that she thinks they ought to be allowed to play together, but of course she respects my wish that they be kept apart until Isis is ready. (Implied: Until I am ready.)

I tried this exercise with the dog trainer last week and by myself over the weekend. Several times, Isis barked at Leo. Not always out of aggression; sometimes she seemed to want to play. But Grandma claimed that Isis didn’t bark at all for her. Can this be believed?

Last night, Grandma was in the kitchen and I put Isis out back, with Leo in the dog run. Almost immediately, Isis started barking. I said, “See, this is what she does for me.” Grandma came outside and did some Isis Whispering. I believe it was, “Isis, be nice to your brother,” and Isis stopped barking. Grandma gave them both cookies.

Granted, Grandma is very good with the dogs, but I think I need to accept/address the fact that I give off very nervous energy because I am afraid of what Isis is going to do.

Our neighbors have a golden retriever and a yippy Pomeranian. When our fence was down, Isis ran over there and got snarly with the golden a few times. Leo has made friends, though, and plays with them in their yard sometimes. Once, when I was not present, Isis slipped out and “played” with the golden and did not eat the Pomeranian. Rob was pretty quick to get Isis to come back, but all reports indicate that Isis was perfectly appropriate.

Last week, one of the neighbors tried to come in our yard to bring us a plate of cupcakes. His dogs came with. I saw the dogs, and said to Rob, “No. Get them out.” Isis ran over to them with her ball in her mouth. Rob said, “She’s OK with them.” I said, “Not in our yard.”

Snarling ensued. It took some effort for Rob and the neighbor to separate the dogs. Neighbor said later that he was surprised his dog fought back. (Which is reassuring only because it means he doesn’t think Isis was the only one aggressing.) No one was hurt.

But. Would Isis have aggressed if I hadn’t been there? Did she aggress BECAUSE I was nervous that she would aggress? When I said, “Get them out.” “Not in our yard,” did she read that as Momma telling HER, “Get those dogs out. They don’t belong in our back yard.”

Maybe the kids would get used to each other faster if I didn’t bring Leo to work. Take my nervous energy out of the picture and let Grandma train them every day.

Most socialized dog ever

I feel like we failed Isis in a lot of ways. I’m learning now that you’re supposed to expose your puppy to everything that could possibly “scare” it later in life before he or she is four months old.

I wish we’d taken Isis to puppy pre-school and puppy kindergarten, instead of waiting until she was four months old to take her to the school where she eventually displayed her first signs of aggression toward other dogs, and where they recommended a shock collar. That’s what finally turned me off. But I did listen when they suggested a prong collar, and even found it effective in teaching her to sit and lie down. (Or so I thought at the time. I didn’t realize at the time that licking her nose was a stress signal.) It helped me walk her, but it didn’t really teach her to walk beside me without pulling. She still struggles with that. If we had started clicker training her from the beginning, maybe we wouldn’t have needed to jerk her down with a prong collar to get her to learn how to lie down.

If we’d let her play with other puppies from the time she was 9 weeks old, instead of enrolling her in a class where puppies waited in the car and were brought in the classroom one at a time – because it’s too “distracting” to try to work with multiple dogs in the same room – maybe she would have the play skills that would allow her to play with the puppy who has now lived in the same house with her, separated by baby gates, for nearly five weeks.

Then there’s Leo, who has a mellower temperament to start. I’m not afraid of exposing him to disease by letting him out of the house. He comes to work with me and meets new people every day. He goes to puppy pre-school and next week we start kindergarten. It hasn’t even been very much work to expose him to things like fireworks, workmen on the roof of my office (a/c repairman yesterday), bicycles, motorcycles, traffic. A man in a wheelchair came out of one of the neighboring offices to meet Leo. I never in a million years would have orchestrated a meet and greet with a wheelchair, and now Leo’s been exposed to it. I haven’t even tried to think of things to expose him to, since so many things have just come our way.

On the drive to work this morning, there was some mist on the windshield. I flicked the wiper and Leo alerted to it. Interesting! I upped the speed and Leo’s eyes followed it as it went back and forth. Hadn’t occurred to me to desensitize him to the windshield wiper, but I could picture a dog, born in late April, socialized all summer, completely freaking out come rainy season whenever the windshield wipers were turned on. How difficult it would be to untrain a dog that barks maniacally at the windshield wipers.

Nothing much seems to freak Leo out, so maybe it wouldn’t have been an issue for him, but nice to have crossed that off the list I haven’t bothered to create.

Sangre

For some reason I like to give blood. Maybe because I like to feel needed. They tell me I have a useful blood type and supplies are low. And it saves lives.

They won’t take my blood if I’ve been to countries like Nepal, India, Vietnam or Cambodia within the past 12 months. So it’s been more than a year since I’ve donated.

The other thing that keeps me from donating sometimes is low iron. Twice I’ve been turned away. Once for low iron and once because I didn’t know they wouldn’t take me within a year of having been to Nepal and India. Kind of embarrassing and irritating. You get in your head that you’re going to give blood and then they won’t take you.

But, but, you said I had a valuable blood type! You said you were in need!

I got an email yesterday about dangerously low supplies and ate a huge dark chocolate bar to boost my iron count in preparation to donate after work.

They’ve changed the questions, so I had to give a whole list of every country I’ve ever been to, and I actually felt guilty. Like I shouldn’t have gone to Africa in 1999. But none of that disqualified me.

The woman pricked my right middle finger to test my iron and in came in at 12. It needs to be 12.5. Another guy came in for a second try, this time on the left side, and it came in at 13.7. Phew.

Then I donated. And learned that after my next donation, I will have donated a gallon and will get a pin. Seems hard to believe I’ve donated seven times.

Unfortunately, I was lightheaded for a few hours afterward and my forearm hurt quite a bit. I don’t think that will stop me from donating again in eight weeks. I want that pin. Besides, I weighed 2 pounds less this morning. And that was after eating a huge chocolate bar plus two cookies after donating.

Salitter drying from the earth

In all likelihood anyone who googles “salitter” will be directed here to my review of The Road.

When I googled “salitter” I found this.

Generally I prefer novels that are entertaining reads. I want a sensical plot and a fulfilling resolution. I don’t need to be “challenged” but I’m happy if I’m given something to think about. Water for Elephants, The World According to Garp and The Dogs of Babel meet these criteria. These are the kinds of books I’d like to write.

I could never write a book like The Road. It’s like a painting. Or a poem. It’s art.

Cormac McCarthy uses words like “salitter,” phrases like “ensepulchred within their crozzled hearts,” and he doesn’t use commas. He doesn’t want you to breeze through his book. As a friend of mine put it, “It’s written to make you uncomfortable.”

I had to reread commaless sentences to figure out where the pauses went. I had to mark words to look up later.

Narratively I felt like the postapocalyptic story became repetitive. They walked on the road. They found a place to camp. Maybe they found food and ate it or maybe they were hungry. They encountered some danger. They were afraid and desperate, teetering on the brink of hopelessness.

But it was so beautiful.

As the story wore on I wondered why the father and son kept walking on this road. I understood why the wife/mother didn’t stay with them. There was no hope. I kept reading to find out if they would reach the coast and what would happen when they did although I suspected they wouldn’t find what they needed. They weren’t the last two people on earth but they might as well have been since they trusted no one else not to eat them or steal their stuff. Or both.

One of them was going to die and then what was the other one going to do? Keep walking the road alone? Each was the other’s reason for keeping on.

Here’s why I loved this book. Here’s why it’s art: After all the harrowing desperation, the ending was uplifting. As happy an ending as you could hope to have after the apocalpyse.

I love having dogs, plural

…Even if I can’t play with them both at the same time. Yet.

Maybe by the third dog, I’ll have it right.

The mistake we made from the beginning with Isis was that we lavished attention on her every second we were with her. This kept her from learning how to settle down quietly. I tried bringing her to work early on, but she whined and wanted constant attention. It made me too nervous that she’d be disruptive to others.

By necessity, Leo has had to learn to settle down by himself even while I’m in the house with him. I’ve followed the rules of puppy confinement not just because Dr. Dunbar told me to, but also because I can’t have him running around the house when Isis is loose. Yet. It’s just as well, because he’s a little devil who only wants to chew things he’s not supposed to chew. Unlike Isis, who always has been able to distinguish between my fuzzy bedroom slippers and dog toys made of the same material.

This has benefited Leo, because I’ve been able to bring him to work. He doesn’t want to go into his kennel with the door shut – he’ll scream like a banshee. But if I tether him to a leash, he’ll sleep at my feet or under the desk and even will go into the kennel himself. Since I have trouble with neck and shoulder pain from sitting hunched at my computer all day, the hourly or so potty walks with Leo are good for my health, too.

Of course, perfect at work means misbehaved at home, where he still screams and cries when we leave him alone. He’s getting better about eating from his Kong during his alone time. So I just need to keep him constantly eating.

Not the baby anymore

A few days before we got Leo, Isis was happy to run around in the backyard by herself. She didn’t want the door closed on her – occasionally she’d show up at the sliding glass door with her dirty ol’ soccer ball in her mouth, asking me to join her – but she was fairly happy entertaining herself out there.

She’s not doing that anymore. She needs someone out there to play with her. If I leave the door open, she comes back inside. At first, she ran right past the baby gate shielding Leo in the laundry room, but the last few days she’s taken an interest in him.

I can’t read her expression. She’s not outwardly aggressive. She doesn’t immediately bark and lunge at him, or even react when he cries. I can get her to lie at my feet. Sometimes, she looks comfortable, with her tongue hanging out in a smile.

I learned yesterday to be on the alert for a closed mouth and a stare. Even if she shifts her weight to her hip (usually a sign she is relaxed), if her gaze doesn’t waver from Leo, she could be getting an adrenaline rush that culminates in her getting up, lunging and barking at Leo.

She is not to hurt the baby. I am to make that clear to her. I thought bracing her against her shoulders and saying “No” firmly was a good response to that, but apparently it is better to “split” between them silently and then click and treat her as soon as she is calm. There needs to be a lot more clicking and treating around here.

Leo likes the laundry room, especially when I’m in the kitchen next to him. He does all right in the large crate in the computer room, where he is completely safe from Isis. We play a very catchy CD called Songs to Make Dogs Happy on repeat. The first three songs are the best. I know all the words to Squeaky-Deakey. If he’s not sleepy, he wails, sometimes not settling down for an hour, but he’s making progress.

The other day I introduced him to the smaller “traveling” kennel. In theory, he could rest in there while we watch TV, and maybe I could take him to work with me. So far he has settled down for short periods in there, even with Isis in the room. The first time, Isis got up at one point and growled at him in the kennel. She almost never growls. It’s actually a problem, because one low growl is a warning that I need to remove her from the situation. Her habit has been to go straight to vicious, lunging barking with very little warning.

Leo can walk on a leash and will sit on command already. (Clicker training is awesome.) But if he doesn’t learn bite inhibition soon, I will not have a single pair of untorn pants left and the gashes on Rob’s and my ankles will become permanent scars.

Mouthing is completely normal for a puppy. Within a few months, he should learn bite inhibition from us and the puppies he plays with at puppy preschool. Sadly, he might not be able to learn this from Isis, because if he nips her with those pinlike milk teeth of his, she’s liable to go overboard in putting him in his place. And nothing unpleasant can ever happen when the two dogs are together (once we finally allow the two dogs to be together).

Leo wants to put his teeth on everything, and for some reason prefers pant legs, sweatshirts, arms, ankles and hands to the chew toys we provide for this purpose. I’ve had some success replacing my ankle with a  stick when we take our 10-times-daily strolls in the backyard. If he has a stick in his mouth, he can’t bite my pant leg. If he’s sitting with his attention on me, he can’t bite my pant leg.

Speaking of chew toys, he still doesn’t continue to be interested in Kongs stuffed with food after I leave him alone. This was the point of the chew toy stuffed with food, remember? So he can occupy himself when left alone. He’ll eat the ground turkey out of a Kong if I hold it for him. Feels rather like giving a bottle to a baby. He sits across my legs and laps at the meat. If I leave him, he ignores the food until I return.

He will, however, eat chicken in my absence. Of course, I don’t want to leave him alone with a chicken wing, drumstick or bone-in breast, because I need to make sure he chews his bone before swallowing. I have been taking away the larger bones after he finishes eating all the meat. Since my vet is not exactly on board with the raw feeding, I really don’t want to have to take him in with a chicken bone stuck in his esophagus.

I like being a stay-at-home dog mom. I’m surprised how fast the past five days have gone. I let Leo out, play with him and put him in the laundry room. Sometimes I sit with him in there and read my book. Then I take Isis out. Then, I either take Leo out again, or I take a shower or fix some food. At some point, after I put Leo down for his nap, I take Isis for a walk. Or I run errands. I take Isis with me in the car for those. It’s important to have some mother-daughter time with the older child. By then, it’s after 3 pm. Once Rob gets home at 5, he shares in the rotation of playing with Isis outside or letting Leo out to pee. We practice having the dogs on either side of a baby gate, clicking and treating Isis for calm.

One more week to go, and we’ll see how much I feel like going back to being a working mom.