Category: Dogs

The Failed Lab Experiment

What a complete and total flippin’ bust! Neville has made his choice, and it does not include me. He only wants to be with Adam except to check if I have food. He treats me like Dad’s wife treated me. I don’t get it, though. Adam and I have opposite sleeping schedules, so when I was awake, I had him, and when Adam was awake, he had him. Adam took him out to go to the bathroom but that’s just because he smokes outside so he goes out anyway. If he was sleeping, I took Nev out. If I make Neville stay in here, he sits in the doorway and whines and dings the bell until I become livid and march him to the other bedroom.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that:

  • I got him to be my service dog. I’ve always had reservations about Adam having a dog and I knew it wouldn’t be good for us as a couple and I’m often thisclose to sending both of them to his mom’s.
  • I treat Neville 1000x better than Adam does. Adam sounds like a textbook abusive father in volume and phrases, and I don’t like it at all. I can’t yell like him, so my yelling is hardly alarming.
  • I do all the non-abusive training and treats and praise him even when I’m not impressed (Look at you! You picked a piece of food up off the floor and ate it! Wow. Like you’re not starving every second of the day).

I’ve never been rejected by a damned animal before.

I’ve always stuck with cats regardless of how much I wanted a dog because I knew how Adam would be and that I would not tolerate it. He thinks yelling and repeating threatening phrases is training. Obedience should not be out of fear. Mom tried to tell him, “Don’t do that around [Cari],” and he should know better by now. I don’t like loud noises, and Dad used to yell. It actually took Dad a while to lose his temper, but then he would just let it all out at my brother or me.

Early in dating my ex-husband, he lost his temper with his job when we were in the vehicle and I started packing and was ready to leave as soon as we got home. My ex never once raised his voice toward me but it doesn’t have to be aimed at me. Some people never change, I guess. I think it is extremely disrespectful that I am the one always making sacrifices and being uncomfortable in my own home. To go with that, I think you get to a certain age where you’re just not going to put up with certain things anymore and you learn to advocate for yourself as much as you can 🤷‍♀️. This post took quite a turn.

So, that’s where we are, and it’s all great. Great, great, great, great.

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Oh, Romeo — Nomeo!

I should be working, so of course another blog post! For school, dropping to half-time would halve my grant (money you don’t have to repay), so I am sticking to full-time 😒. That wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t required to take Shakespeare. Now, I get it; the guy (there is a debate whether Shakespeare was more than one person but we will go with the singular) was a genius and super talented and came up with the best stories and poems, but the old English just stumps me to the point that I need translation.

There are some choices for this class requirement but Shakespeare is actually the lesser of the evils offered, to me, anyway. I cannot remember what the others are, but I think one is Renaissance 😒. Plus, I was taking Shakespeare when my brother died and I could not deal at the time, so I have a UF (unfinished, I think is what that means), and retaking the class will improve my GPA.

My other class is an intermediate poetry workshop, so I am guessing it is a step up from the class I am finishing up on Sunday, and both classes are 300 level, which is for third years, so more writing and stricter grading. Adam has decided to go with fiction writing as his concentration, I believe, although he is pre-registered for a poetry workshop and a fiction workshop. I can never think of middles and ends for my stories and I have always written poetry, but not really any short stories. I’ve started “novels” that I eventually abandoned; that was mostly when I was obsessed with RL Stine.

My poetry workshop professor is giving me publishing resources and encouraging me to submit, but I am on the fence about that. Most don’t mention the royalty percentages, but one did and it was only 10%. Going my preferred route, I will get 70% or 75%. Of course, going through a publisher would give me more exposure, but it would also take away a lot of my freedom with formatting, editing, cover art, and who knows what else.

I’m also totally waffling with my site. I just can’t get the color scheme and image how I want it. I started out with the neon colors, which were cool, but when I decided to switch things up, I couldn’t decide what to go with. Should I use my book cover (willow tree)? Use Grandma’s painting print that I love (previous image)? Keep the image I have now? I seem to have entered a manic phase and that always involves lots of changes and me never feeling 100% satisfied. I was going to say I’m a total tweaker, but that doesn’t mean the same thing to other people as it does to me 🤣🤣. I can never leave things alone if I’m not totally “feeling” them.

Neville has started some scent training, and it is going surprisingly well. He is almost too smart for his own good. We’ve been using clove as the scent, and I take Nev into Mom’s room while Adam hides the hex bag. He then smells Adam’s hand and Adam says, “Go find it!” and he takes off and finds it. We’ve had to limit him to one room or he goes all over the house. When Adam re-hides the bag, Neville goes right to where he found it before 🤣. During potty breaks, Adam scents a stick and throws it in the yard and Neville has to find it. He has picked up the wrong stick a couple of times and knew they were the wrong ones, so put them down and grabbed the correct ones!

One day, I left my phone on the bed and came over to the computer, but I started worrying that Neville would get it and tear it up just to be a jerk (he tends to do that), so I turned my chair around, pointed to the phone on the bed, and said, “Pick it up!” and when he figured out what I was pointing to, he picked my phone up, jumped off the bed, and brought it to me without chewing on it or biting it 😊. I was so proud of him!

Once, when I was fiddling around in Mom’s bathroom, I handed him my phone so I could do something, and he sat there with it in his mouth until I asked/motioned for it back. He looked a bit confused as to why I was handing it to him but I wanted to see if he would take off with it or just hold it. I haven’t read up on teaching him to hold things yet. I know his parents have lots of ribbons and medals for retrieving, and part of that is holding what they retrieve without eating it or running away with it. I always see paintings of labs in duck hunting settings and I know they don’t get to eat the duck as a reward 🤣.

Lately, he has been ringing the potty bell in Mom’s room whenever he wants to play or leave the room. Adam comes in to talk after I wake up, and Nev will stand in the doorway and ring the bell and look up at him. I can’t help laughing when he does that, but he does it several times while we’re talking. He gets very jealous when Adam and I are in the same room.

I think I shared this before but that’s the bell. I can’t post the video because WP wants me to upgrade to do that.
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Welcome to My Electric Lab

Something is up with Neville today! I took my notebook to bed this morning so I could write but I fell asleep pretty quickly thanks to Xanax. I didn’t think to get it off the bed because Neville has not been bothering my iPad which I keep on the bed. He got a hold of my notebook and tore it to smithereens, which I thought he was chewing on one of his bones. I love that notebook. It is pink and purple and has butterflies on it. My now-deceased uncle got me two of them after my dad died in 2012.

Later, I go to pee (just feet away from Neville, who is on a long lead) and he starts screaming like someone broke all his bones, so I start yelling for Adam because I think Nev got stuck. Adam doesn’t hear me but he comes to see why Nev is crying and then starts fussing at him 🙄🙄, because that’s helpful. Neville runs into the bathroom, sits down between my legs, and is shaking like a leaf. (That’s an odd saying.) I lean over (still on the toilet) and hug him, trying to calm him down. Then, he pees while sitting there. Between my legs. While I’m on the toilet and hugging him.

When I left the room to go pee, Neville had decided to tear up another cord (he already ruined the end to my Dyson), and since there weren’t any lying around, he grabbed the heavy-duty extension cord that was plugged into the wall. It must have gotten him good because the cord was several feet away from the outlet. I ordered an outlet cover, which I didn’t know even existed for cords; I have only seen covers that plug into empty sockets so kids won’t stick their fingers in them.

I don’t know who peed in his Cheerios that morning but he was on a mission to be destructive and definitely FAFO’d. I hope he remembers what happened and stays away so something worse won’t happen. I have had the bidet plugged in before getting him and he never bothered the cord before but he was in a mood or something. Oh, he is acting fine and his usual self. His mouth and tongue look okay and he is as goofy and adorable as ever.

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Pick it Up

Well, Nev and I have made up for the moment. He’s been carrying around and chewing on a 1- to 2-inch piece of bone that’s all that is left of a ham bone I got him, so I ordered three bones from Tractor Supply. I thought they might last him a while. They get here, and Adam wants me to come see one of them and wonders if I knew the size when I ordered it.

This bone is huge!! 😂😂 It is called a mammoth bone, but with shrinkflation and companies being so untruthful, I wasn’t expecting much. It is a foot (12 inches) long and the ends are bigger than Nev’s head. He has already removed the ends and cleaned them of meat and tissue so they are white as a bleached bone. I really hate that he feels hungry all the time. I know it must feel awful for him to think he is starving when he’s not. Hopefully, the bones will help him feel full.

We started working on “pick it up” yesterday, in which he picks up whatever I point to and gives it to me. He is doing really well at not running off with it or chewing it. Adam has been giving him things to bring to me and says, “Take it to Mommy,” and he is doing great with that, too. He even brought me a big soft pretzel stick in an open paper bag and didn’t try to keep it or eat it. Twice! He did this without knowing he was going to get to eat them. He brings me my insulin after Adam gets it out of the fridge.

So, with “pick it up,” that’s been fun 🤣🤣. He has been getting steak or steak fat that I don’t eat as a treat during training. When we are done with the session, he gets out of his chair and finds things on the floor to give me. He has given me my socks at least ten times. I take them off and put them on the floor beside my chair. He usually does not see me do this, so he must think I am supposed to have them.

I try not to give him a treat when he does this, but he looks so cute and proud of himself and just looks at me and patiently waits. How can I not? If it’s trash, like receipts I ball up for the cats, he just gets thanked and patted on the head. He also looks around on my desk and hands me things from it 🤣. He gave me a screwdriver I had on the desk, which I did give him a treat for because he didn’t try to eat it. He is a very smart cookie.

Two more weeks left of classes, then I think I have another poetry workshop, which is intermediate 😬. I dropped back down to one class for next term because the workshop is pretty intense and time-consuming. My literary theory professor really liked my PowerPoint presentation, which I was nervous about and did not check the feedback for over a week. Adam is switching majors to my major (English and creative writing). I don’t know if he is going to concentrate in poetry like me or go with general fiction.

I did tell him I would not tolerate it if he published before I do, which I was very serious about. I have wanted to be a published author since I was little, and if he just turns around and does it ahead of me I will be furious. I’m not sure why he is switching from computer science to English. The boy can’t even touch type! He is a total hunt-and-pecker. My publication deadline is in November of this year. I wanted to make sure I had enough time for school and revisions.

She Thinks I’m Cute!!

I got last week’s homework back; two free verse poems, and inserting line breaks in an unknown poem that had the formatting stripped, the latter of which included my all-over-the-place “reflection.” My professor said my reflection was exemplary 😂😂. She also said one of my poems, In the Garden of Remorse, was beautiful, which surprised me a bit because it was rather dark. She once again mentioned experimenting with structure and punctuation, which I don’t completely grasp yet. I have started experimenting with em dashes (long hyphens), something Emily Dickinson was very fond of, and I’m not even a fan of her work. 

Poems with weird spacing and punctuation really throw me off, which I feel is because of autism, ADHD, or a combination of both. I really like the movie No Country for Old Men and was excited to read the book when I found out the movie was based on the book, but the author is not a fan of commas or quotation marks. I could not discern when people were speaking, and the lack of comma usage was so annoying that I stopped reading the book. 

Another author did the same thing with quotation marks (what is up with that?) and I had to stop reading it which really stunk because I was enjoying the book aside from getting completely confused. Oh, it was 13 Reasons Why. I never watched the show so I’m in the dark about why the girl killed herself. Anyway, with poems, it really takes me out of what I’m reading when I am presented with weird, artsy formatting. 

I forgot to write about what Neville did! I got rid of most of my stuffed animals, which I really regret now, but I kept a few that are important to me. I love pandas and tigers, so I have some of each. I dog-proofed the living room before Neville got here and it’s nearly empty, but I have some stuffed animals in there because the room’s theme is safari and pandas (weird combination, I know). I have some pandas on the entertainment center since removing the TV. I take so long to tell stories. 

Nev likes to grab random things and bring them into the room and chew on them. He has plenty of chew toys and bones, but for some reason they aren’t preferable. He hunts for things, and I know he knows he is not supposed to have what he gets. He’s already destroyed two of my wireless mouses and the cord to my Dyson. He doesn’t seem interested in Adam’s stuff. 

So, he comes into the bedroom carrying one of my pandas and I take it from him and put it and the other ones on the entertainment center on top of the entertainment center so he can’t reach them. I see my brother’s slippers on the entertainment center, so I scoot those back against the back so he can’t reach them. Then, I return to work. Nev goes in and out of the bedroom a few times, then he lies down behind my chair and is quiet, which is when I know to look at him. He is lying there with one of Bub’s slippers just going to town on it, ripping the top to pieces. 

I can’t remember if I yelled at him or not but Adam comes into the living room where I’m standing and trying not to cry. I get very still and quiet when I’m angry or upset. I attempt to go back into the bedroom (I hate showing emotions around people) but Adam stops me and pulls me into his arms and I just lose it. I’ve had those slippers in the living room since Bub forgot them here and I like them being there so I can see them. I made it a point to move them out of the way so nothing would happen to them and they are the very next thing Neville goes after. I have my brother’s slippers and a pair of sunglasses, which he also forgot here, and that’s it. I’m not surrounded by his belongings like I am with Mom’s. 

I looked a bit worse than that.

Neville is still here, of course, but I wouldn’t have anything to do with him for several days, and he stayed in the room with Adam. He is supposed to be helping me, not making things worse! 

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Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year!!!

It’s winter break from school, and I am kind of bummed and then not so much. Next term, I have a poetry workshop (yay!) and literary theory (boo!). I’ve never taken a workshop before and I am a little excited and a lot scared. I don’t want feedback on my poetry! ! 😂😂 The RSD struggle is real and it certainly extends to critiquing, giving and receiving. 

I just finished up a history class and critical approaches to lit and those were no fun. I don’t take any approaches to literature because I find most of the “classics” extremely boring, and I can’t remember what I read anyway due to my severe ADHD. A lot of the time I miss what’s right in front of me and have to have someone point it out. Other times, I pick up on and obsess over the smallest things and I stay so focused on them that I miss everything else going on. I am nothing if not inconsistent 😝. 

Things are going pretty well with Neville. He is still convinced he is starving 24/7 even though we try to tell him he isn’t. I have started to introduce him to my diabetes “kit” that has my glucose tabs in it. When he is a bit older, I’m going to teach him to alert to my scent (sweat or saliva) when I’m hypoglycemic, and he will retrieve my kit and bring it to me so I can take the tabs. That should be fun. 

He is a little confused at the moment because he thinks the kit is his to grab whenever he wants a treat (too smart for his own good) or just to lie down and chew on when he’s bored. Luckily, the case is hard so he hasn’t damaged it. I’m a little foggy on how to get from point A to point B, but everything I’ve read said he should be a bit older before that kind of training, anyway.  

At the moment, I’m sharing my CGM readings with Adam via an app and he comes in and feeds me sugar whenever I’m really low, which is every time I go to bed. I have gastroparesis, aka delayed gastric emptying (I have a smorgasbord of autoimmune disorders), so I stack my insulin since my sugar won’t drop for hours and then it starts working all at once when I lie down/fall asleep. I’ve tried not stacking, but my numbers just keep rising and rising and I go into panic mode. Most of the time I don’t even remember being woken up and given candy or tablets; Adam usually asks me if I remember him giving me this or that while I’m sleeping.

I had a couple of bucks and got myself some Christmas presents 🙄🙄. I was shopping for something for Adam, but the deals were just too good to pass up! I bought Taylor Swift’s Time magazine issue, obvi, (not a deal) but then I found a ring light and 62″ (taller than me) tripod for $10 on Walmart! It’s normally $30, so I snapped that up real quick. It’s not only white light, but 3 levels of white and 12 different colors for some trippy fun. I’ve been wanting to get some decent pictures of the kiddies and pup but either the lighting is stinky or the pictures are out of focus or some other issue. I also want to record Nev’s training to show him off. He’s such a smart little guy and really tries so hard. Plus, he gets the zoomies like the cats (especially Theo) and it’s hilarious because his butt is almost dragging the floor when he gets going. He runs in a sort of horizontal split. I can’t explain it, but hopefully I can catch a video and upload it here! 

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Things We Lost in the Neville

This dog stuff, man. I don’t know how or why people do it! Firstly, around 25% of Labradors have a gene mutation where their brains don’t tell them when they are full. They are always hungry, and this was familiar to me because of a CSI episode, which was about a human, but still. So, Neville is one of the 25%, of course. He thinks he is always famished and tries to eat everything. Part puppy behavior, part gene flaw. I remember the simpler times when we just had cats and had to only worry about someone pooping on the floor. Now, we have to worry about what Neville ate.

Begging for popcorn. Note the white cheddar dustings on his nose.

It started with my MamaBear Unpapers, which are cute cloth swatches that I bought instead of using toilet paper. With the bidet, disposable toilet paper isn’t such a necessity. So, he ate one of those, threw it up with a section of his leash, ate it again (his vomitus) before Adam could get it, then threw it up a second time a few hours later. I put the remaining ones out of his reach, or so I thought, and he got a second one! I haven’t seen it since. He just tried to eat our expired debit card this morning after I missed the trash can when throwing it away.

He ate the end of my Dyson cord/plug, we are assuming, because we cannot find it anywhere. My $600 Dyson Pet ball vacuum (whatever it’s called) that I got in 2014 and still works wonderfully. I cried when I discovered that yesterday. Adam Frankenstein’d it using a section of cord and the plug from something else, so it still works, but…come on! Why? I feed this dog twice a day and he gets training treats and scraps. He has gained 25 pounds since we got him on October 14! To hear him tell it, we feed him maybe once every two weeks. He’s gotten his treat containers twice and opened them and emptied them. He’s nearly as tall as I am so I’m not great at putting things out of his reach.

We have confiscated batteries, Theo’s fuzz balls, my shorts, two rolls of paper towels, pop boxes, pop cans, bowls, lids, his brand-new pink brush, etc… He is like Superman; whenever I drop anything, he swoops in and grabs it. He got a hold of my Pillow People, Suzie, that I have had since I was 5 years old and ripped the handle off of her back. I had to perform surgery on her, and she already looked rough since I’ve slept with her since I got her.

He is still doing well with drop it and leave it if he doesn’t really want something. When he doesn’t want to part with an item, he will come to me and sit down with his back to me but still have the item. We have been working on “Give it to me,” and he does so — grudgingly — especially if it’s one of his toys, which makes sense since they are his toys.

He has chewed through his indoor leash three times. We just kept tying it to his collar and it was getting shorter and shorter until we couldn’t tie it anymore. It reminded me of Robin Hood: Men in Tights when Robin and Little John are fighting with sticks and they keep breaking, iykyk 🤣🤣. I have a new chain leash waiting at the post office, which I have a feeling I am going to enjoy seeing his shock and disappointment when he can’t break it.

Most of the time when he disappears from the room and returns with something, I can say, “Whatcha got? Give it to me,” and he brings it to me and drops it in my hand, which I find to be very impressive, especially for a 6-month-old. He has a bit of an anger management problem, which is pretty funny but I try not to laugh. When he has to give something up, he will pick up one of his toys and shake his head side to side vigorously, venting his frustration, I guess. I gave him a big wearable panda head that Adam thought I would like but I just think is super creepy, and Nev looks so funny carrying that around and shaking it. He wants for nothing and I exercise him, so I don’t know why he wants to chew/eat/destroy everything he finds.

The after-potty!

He’s too cute to stay mad at for too long but he tries his darnedest. He does really well when I’m upset or not feeling well and I sit on the floor to hug him. He gives hugs, but he also will sit there and let me hug him and kiss on him. He still wants to lick our faces, and I swear his tongue is 6 feet long. I call him Freddy Krueger because he needs his nails trimmed (nail clippers are at the post office, too) and he can really scratch without meaning to.

I love the little guy regardless of how rotten he is. He is very smart and learning so much. The apps and YouTube videos are a great help but we’re getting the basics down first and haven’t started on the therapy/service part of his training. I may be singing a different tune by then!

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Evel KNeville

So, this has been a trip. The dog…Neville is smart and rotten and gangly and funny and sweet, and so much more. I think I’m in over my head with the training stuff. I’ll be dead before I get him trained as a service dog! It’s not him — he is surprisingly responsive and determined. I, however, have never trained a dog in my life and still don’t know how to approach it.

Some trainers say to teach one thing at a time, and some say to teach different things at a time. Some want me to crate the poor boy whenever I can’t have eyes on him every minute. He wasn’t too happy about being crated and whined and howled when he was in there for less than 5 minutes.

Pondering life.

The first thing I taught him was “leave it,” per Pupford Academy, and he does very well with that, but he thinks that he is supposed to leave something for a minute or two and then he gets it. That is fine when it’s treats or toys, of course, but when I dropped something and he went for it, I told him to leave it and he listened right away until I said “Good boy,” which is what I say in training to let him know he can get the item, so he picked it up 🤣🤣. I’m confusing both of us!

He gets bored, I guess (when I try to play with him, he lies down and chews on his toy) and brings me all kinds of things while I’m working. He brought me his water bowl, which I thought was because it was empty but it turned out he just dumped it while picking it up, so now his bowl is taped to a piece of wood because he did it again. I think it’s because the bowl was in the kitchen and not in the bedroom, but I don’t know; I’m not a dog. He keeps bringing me the bathroom trash can. He has chew toys and squeaky toys, yet grabbed my iPad and started gnawing on the cover 🤦‍♀️. He was going to take a gallon jugful of water somewhere; had it by the handle and everything.

Waiting for popcorn.

The other day, he learned “drop it,” and started to learn how to place his chin on my leg, which will be something I want him to do when I’m overwhelmed. Oh, and he did “drop it” so well! He grabbed the cats’ pooper scooper, and I told him to drop it. He sat down, opened his mouth, and let it fall to the floor, then sat there and looked at me, waiting for a treat. It definitely wasn’t just a startled response from me speaking, and I was so proud of him.

Adam got in on some of the training and seems to think it’s going well. Nev’s getting very good at dropping things for me and the chin command I introduced. He tries to get away with barely tapping his chin on my leg to get his treat but he will leave it there after a few attempts. The first day he was here, he knocked me over when I was sitting on the floor and got on me, which is what I want him to do for deep pressure therapy, but he did it just to hang out and be loved on. He gets pretty distracted by the cats.

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