Tag: Autism Spectrum Disorder

~*~The Blue Elephant~*~ and ~*~Taily Pole~*~

I guess I should have looked ahead on my syllabus before my free writing 😂😂. My two prompts were to be made into formal or “traditional” poems, one being a sonnet (like Shakespeare) and the other being a villanelle, pantoum, or a third option that I don’t remember. A sonnet about a stuffed elephant or Taily Pole?? 

Whatchu talkin’ about, Willis?

Since I’m currently obsessed with Dylan Thomas’ Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, specifically listening to him reading it (which is awesome), and it is a villanelle, I chose to create a Taily Pole poem in that form. The elephant poem was to be a sonnet by default. I think one of the most known Shakespeare sonnets is the one that Roger Rabbit reads while jumping on the bed in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? about counting the ways he loves Jessica Rabbit. (The ADHD force is strong today 😒.) 

Now, I don’t like checking my grades because of severe anxiety, so I don’t know if these were graded yet. If I’m awaiting feedback, I keep my eyes averted and just read the feedback without looking at the grade. Unfortunately, my week 1 paper for literary theory received an F(!) since I missed some points on the rubric, but my awesome professor allowed me to redo and resubmit. The resubmission got an A. That was pretty devastating for me, but I am so glad he gave me a second chance and gave me the feedback I needed to fix it up. Anyway, on to my poems! Click/tap on the poetic form below for the definition of each. 

Sonnet

From Google AI: A 14-line poem with a fixed structure and rhyme scheme.  Sonnets are often written in iambic pentameter, which means each line has 10 syllables in five pairs.  The emphasis is on the second syllable in each pair.  Sonnets are usually divided into two parts – an eight-line section (the octet) and a six-line section (the sestet).  The Shakespearean sonnet rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.

~*~Ode to a Blue Elephant~*~

Oh, dear blue elephant of childhood days

A blind witness of our sibling fights

We marched you back and forth in moonlit haze

No words, no punches, just a game of spite



You had no name, no charm, no specialness

Your stuffing crinkled like a florist’s foam

But then bedtime came, and you were the best

And so through the darkness we each did roam



You came to us from fair or Father’s hand

We cared not for you but only the rise

It gave us when we snatched you from the land

Of dreams and sleep and made each other cry

But when my brother left, the game was done

The elephant was lost; so was the fun
Villanelle

From Google AI: A villanelle is a 19-line poem with a strict structure.  It has five three-line stanzas, called tercets, followed by one four-line stanza, called a quatrain.  Villanelles use a specific rhyme scheme, ABA for the tercets and ABAA for the quatrain.  They also have two repeating end rhymes and two refrains.  The first and third lines of the first tercet are repeated alternately at the end of each subsequent stanza.

~*~Taily Pole~*~



Please, tell us the tale of the Taily Pole

As we sit ‘round the fire to combat the breeze

Your soft, intense voice makes the story whole



We beg you for story time, and you play your role

Reluctant storyteller, yet you give in to our pleas

Please, tell us the tale of the Taily Pole



You’re covered in blankets draped like a stole

As the cool wind blows through the trees

Your soft, intense voice makes the story whole



We giggle and shiver, feeling both hot and cold

Waiting patiently with elbows on knees

Please, tell us the tale of the Taily Pole



You lean in and shout, we shriek and roll

Laughing at our temporary unease

Your soft, intense voice makes the story whole



Years later, your memory still warms my soul

As the great-grandkids gather at my uncle’s feet

Please, tell us the tale of the Taily Pole

Your soft, intense voice makes the story whole
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See Me!

Due to AuDHD, my posts suffer from a several-day lag! Classes started again today, so of course it’s time to write a post 😂😂! One of my required classes is Literary Theory, and I don’t care for that at all. I just finished Critical Approaches to Lit last year before break and while I got an A, I didn’t like or understand it. I have trouble thinking like that, as I have trouble thinking like the neurotypicals. 

What they see or don’t see is often not going to coincide with what I see or don’t see. This occurs in my life regularly, which I never think about unless/until I’m around “normal” thinkers. Adam is getting very attuned with how I think and feel and I still manage to surprise him. Then again, I surprise myself oftentimes. 

May (2002) – See Me!

In other news, I got back on Reddit but they don’t know that. Skirting a perma-ban is super annoying and I’ve been working on doing that since I was banned. It’s just so dehumanizing, especially when one doesn’t deserve it. What they do (without readily admitting it) is something called shadowbanning. On the user’s end, everything looks hunky-dory but the user is the only person who can see any comments they make as well as upvotes and downvotes. You’re basically talking to yourself without knowing it unless you all of a sudden notice no activity good or bad. It may not be a big deal to regular people, but to agoraphobic hermits, that connection means a lot. Plus, I had several NFT avatars that I own, free and paid, and they are locked to my banned Reddit accounts. I like those avatars 😢. 

Reddit is made up of some super weird and lame people but there are also some pretty cool ones occasionally if you dig deep enough. The lame ones are the overwhelmingly liberal and sub moderators. Like, a lot of moderators will outright ban users if the users have and use the NFT avatars. How messed up is that? I don’t know why I would miss that kind of interaction and engagement, but it gets pretty boring with just my husband and me. The cats don’t talk much, and Nev mostly looks at me with his head cocked to the side when I’m talking to him. Cute but not responsive. 

Elephant Blue, Dilly Dilly

I have a poetry workshop this semester and have finished this week’s work. We were to do a couple of writing exercises that will be the base for poems. I’ve not attended a poetry workshop before so I don’t know how this works. I took workshops for statistics class, which was great and super helpful, but not something that dealt with creativity. I had to choose a couple of prompts from the required reading and free write, which is another thing I’m not experienced in, most likely because of AuDHD hindrances. 

Now, this required reading mentions people not being able to write a poem in 20 or 30 minutes and makes it sound impossible to actually do so, and that made me question its credibility completely. When I have an idea for a poem, I will sit there and write or type it out in a few minutes. I don’t make a chore out of it (I don’t write every day, either, so that might have something to do with it). 

Also, it was published in 1997 and devotes two chapters to getting recognized and getting published, as in subscribing to magazines and using 🐌 mail. I don’t know why there aren’t newer editions, especially since it’s required material for the class. It’s very common for school books to be updated in subsequent editions. 

Anyway, the prompts I chose were the base for Elephant Blue, Dilly Dilly and Taily Pole that I decided to share here 😊. I have to squeeze poems out of these two writings. Talk about a challenge! 

Elephant Blue, Dilly Dilly

There is a stuffed blue elephant that sits in my spare room.  It was a point of contention for years.  There is nothing special about this stuffed animal.  It is the blue of a summer sky.  Its neck no longer supports its head, most likely due to the nighttime chokeholds it’s endured.  The body is neither soft nor coarse, and the stuffing is that weird stuff that just feels wrong and unpleasant, a slightly more malleable version of that green Styrofoam found in the bottom of floral arrangements.  I can feel and hear it rubbing and crinkling every time I pick the toy up.  It sets my teeth on edge.  I wonder why it didn’t when I was a child.  Maybe it did and I ignored it out of spite. 

This unremarkable, cheap blue elephant was at the center of many underwhelming moonlit “fights” between my brother and me.  Wherever the elephant (not even important enough to have earned a name) began its night, it ended up in a different bed in a different room by morning.  No words were spoken.  No punches were thrown.  Simply here today and gone tomorrow.  Our level of tiredness would dictate how many trips the elephant made in a night. 

My brother, two years older and the opposite sex, took great pleasure in annoying me and making me cry.  The elephant, possibly a prize from one of the crappy games at the county fair, possibly given to one of us by our deadbeat dad who still held hero status at our ages, was an easy rise for both of us, two kids who inherited their father’s temper and temperament. 

I’m not sure what importance the elephant held or if it was merely a pawn in a game I could play with my brother without fearing physical repercussions.  It stayed behind with my mom and me when my brother moved in with Dad at 16.  I was happy he was gone for about a week and then I was done with this new game of being an only child and I wanted my Bub back.  The elephant was forgotten about, tucked away in the closet, then in a black trash bag with other stuffed toys.  I had clearly won but I didn’t really care.

The elephant moved with us to a new home, then went with me when I was briefly married.  Upon returning to Mom’s, the toy was tucked away, still in a bag, in a storage unit, and then at my aunt and uncle’s.  Time passed.  Dad died.  Mom died.  I remarried; my brother gave me away to my new husband.  Bub died.  I now had room at Mom’s house for my stuff, so everything from my aunt and uncle’s house was returned to me.

So many memories!  A stuffed clown with buttons and zippers, a homemade Care Bear with an A stitched on its chest, and that glorious Blue Elephant.  He is magnificent; the beautiful blue of a summer sky, floppy and worn in.  Precious memories contained in this priceless stuffed Elephant. 

Taily Pole

I come from a decent-sized family on my mom’s side.  I grew up with the Parents (Grandma and Papaw), the Kids (my mom and her four siblings), the Spouses (except for Mom) and the Grandkids (me and my 8 cousins).  Every weekend, we had almost a complete turnout of the family with the exception of one aunt and uncle who lived four hours away.  This changed as we got older, with cousins getting into dating or school sports, but it stayed true for years.  I’m the second youngest of the Grandkids, so Papaw and Grandma were getting up there in age.

Being the younger of the Grandkids, I loved hearing Papaw tell stories, which was a rare treat.  One story in particular, Taily Pole, was a favorite of everyone, not because of the story itself, but because of how it was told by Papaw.  It was most effective when he told us the story outside.  We frequently had cookouts in the cooler months, complete with marshmallows to roast.  Getting comfortable was a feat; sitting near the fire was way too hot, sitting away from the fire was way too cold.  It never failed that someone would drag blankets out of the house with one being confiscated by those sitting on the ground. 

Once everyone was nice and cozy, we grandkids would beg Papaw to tell Taily Pole.  No other story was ever requested during these cookouts.  He would do the obligatory hemming and hawing while all of us grandkids pestered him to the point of acquiescence.  Wrapped up in his own blanket and sitting on a patio chair in the mouth of the single-car garage/potato cellar, he would start the story off low and slow. 

The younger ones couldn’t help but giggle in anticipation.  We knew what was coming, yet we didn’t know how soon and how animatedly it would be delivered.  When Papaw got to the end of the story, he bugged his eyes, magnified by his glasses, and leaned forward, shouting, “I ain’t got your taily pole!”  The story always ended the same and there were always a few who squeaked out of shock, which set everyone else off laughing.  I was usually one of the squeakers but also one who wanted to hear it again and again. 

Years after Papaw died, one of my uncles told Taily Pole to the Great-Grandkids.  I smiled with delight and excitement seeing the little heads poking out of blankets, hearing the nervous laughter, watching the kids, eyes and smiles bright, looking around to see if Mom and Dad were listening, watching the flames flicker in my uncle’s glasses as he bugged his eyes, leaned forward, and shouted, “I ain’t got your taily pole!”

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Her Name is Susie

Daily writing prompt
Describe an item you were incredibly attached to as a youth. What became of it?
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I think I answered something similar before. Regardless, I was incredibly attached to my Pillow People person that my grandma got me for Christmas when I was around 3 or so. She got all 9 grandchildren a different one. I have the one with blonde hair and pink “dress.” My brother had the boxer with the black eye. I named mine Susie after a dear friend’s mom and would not sleep without her, especially because her feet were silk. If I left her at a family member’s house, I would throw a fit unless we went back, much to my dad’s dismay and anger. 

I still have Susie and she is on the bed right now. She’s been washed, lost her sewn-on socks and yarn hair, has been restuffed, had her legs reattached, restuffed some more, and most recently, Neville tore her handle/strap off and I had to perform back surgery on her 🤬🤬. I’ve had her for over 3 decades and not once has she been assaulted by a pet. Her material is very fragile now and I don’t know if she would survive another round in the washer. I’m not good at sewing, so she is looking pretty rough. I didn’t do so hot on her back surgery, either, but she’s not losing stuffing, so I can’t complain. 

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You Want Them Dead? Do It Yourself!

Disclaimer: This post might make me sound stupid or naïve, but I don’t care. It’s my small sliver of the Internet and my current thoughts 😊. 

I really don’t “get” war. When I watched Game of Thrones, I found it weak and pathetic when they had “to the death” matches and the people had proxies fighting in their place. There may be actual words for what I’m talking about but I don’t know them and don’t feel like looking them up. Then, I was thinking today. . . we do the same thing. Actually, that’s going to bug me, so I will look it up. 

Okay, so trial by combat/trial by battle is what I see for the Game of Thrones thing. Doesn’t sound much better than “to the death” matches, so I’ll stick with mine. Anyway, global-wide, that’s what we still do to this day. I get that it may have been necessary at one point in time, but it’s 2024. Can’t we just give it a rest? 

I respect the heck out of our military people. They put themselves on the frontline for people they will never meet and do so willingly. They help in times of natural disasters and crises without asking for a thing from us civilians. But to be told that you are being sent to another country to literally kill people you’ve never heard of or met because your overlords want “power,” are unhappy or slighted about something, and you are being told to do the same? What the actual hell? 

If the people demanding these proxy wars were forced to fight for themselves, they would be scrambling to find a solution to whatever bug was up their butt that day. Leave the innocent out of it. On top of that, these militarians see and do things most people will never see or do in a lifetime, just to come home and be labeled murderers and worse. 

I wasn’t around for Vietnam (my uncle was there), but the only thing I feel for those soldiers is extreme sadness and injustice. These American boys were unceremoniously plucked from their homes and plopped into extremely foreign territory and told to kill. For their sacrifice, they were promised (if they made it home alive) healthcare, GI bills, and a pat on the back with hardly much follow-through on most promises. What?? 

Now, many, many kids fresh out of high school can’t control themselves enough to transition from living with their parents/families to living essentially on their own in dorms, fraternities, or off-campus while attending college. Why would anyone, especially flippin’ leaders of a country, think it would be a good idea to strap them with guns and explosives? Not to mention, Vietnam was a pretty dirty war with Agent Orange on our side and the strapping of explosives to women and children and using them as their own little kamikazes, on the Vietcong’s side, but I won’t get into that. 

After seeing and being involved in atrocities beyond our comprehension, these boys were sent home to folks with appallingly misplaced anger calling them murderers, baby killers, rapists, and whatever vile thing the reactionary brainless could think of. Who does that? How can someone say they are all for “peace,” then turn around and spout such hate to soldiers who did not choose to go to war? I just don’t get it; sadly, I think about it often. I am against war, but I am not going to berate and hate on those who are merely doing what they are told or forced to do. 

Because people learn absolutely nothing from history, the same thing is going on today on a bigger scale thanks to the Internet, which really grinds my gears. You cannot publicly state that you feel for one or both sides of the current goings-on between Palestine and Israel. If your comment gets any sort of traction, you’re virtually torn apart at best and meet serious consequences that impact your entire life in worse cases (most recently, the Harvard students that are being blacklisted and strong-armed). 

I don’t understand how this can be happening and people still say they don’t know how Nazism spread to people who were against Hitler. It’s the same concept going on but with connectivity and globalization making it worse. I will not be told who I can have sympathy for. I don’t really have much to lose, however. 

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I’m Self-Centered, Poetically Speaking

I just read an article on The WEIGHT Journal and I didn’t like it one bit. No idea what I was googling (usual for me), but I came upon a piece talking about poetry format and how center-formatted poems are considered written by amateur poets and a lot of editors will reject these poems without even reading them. Like. . .what? Center-formatted poems are considered outdated and modernist or “traditional,” which are eras we are not currently in, although I personally think the eras need to be updated since “modernist” means late 1800s to mid-1900s; I guess we’re in modern (no -ist)/contemporary now. That may be a lie; I don’t really pay attention to poetic eras and movements. I just read what I like, but I digress.

I have been center-formatting poems since I started writing them back when I owned only notebooks, then briefly on a word processor that took 3-1/2″ floppies. It’s been a while, to say the least. I think it looks better to center them and makes them easier to read, and I like the shape of the poem if each line has a different word count or a graduated word count. I have two or three non-centered poems that were intentional and aesthetically pleasing to me. That’s three out of 50+. 

Rupi Kaur, for one, is all over the place with her intentional formatting. One of her poems is in a diamond format meant to represent a woman’s vagina. For one to be so arrogant as to say they refuse to read a poet’s work due to formatting is downright blasphemous and ignorant to me. It’s like, “I’m sorry, you’re an outright wordsmith, but I could not tolerate looking at your words in the center of my screen. Good luck with your endeavors.” How can you call yourself an editor or poet or professional, making statements like that? Anyway, it pissed me off and set my PDA (pathological demand avoidance) into overdrive, obviously. 

So, I was mega-banned from Reddit because of an immature left-wingnut in a sub and that doesn’t bode well for my PDA, either. They made some BS statement about how the alt-right isn’t welcome in the sub they moderate, and I asked if they had the same rule for the alt-left, so I was banned from that sub (an “inclusive” ADHD sub, btw). I’m neither alt-right nor alt-left, but the hypocritical bigotry infuriates me and my elevated sense of equality and justice. I told Adam about being banned from the sub for saying what I did, so he went to that sub and asked the same question, and that got me permanently mega-banned via fingerprinting, which means the entire household is banned from Reddit. RSD (rejection sensitive dysphoria), come join PDA! It’s even more infuriating that I care and have been crying about it and I wish I didn’t and haven’t been. 

To combat my hermitness, I’ve joined Tumblr, and I don’t know what to think of it. It doesn’t seem to be my cup of tea so far, but I am not much of a Facebook user and I don’t like X/Twitter. Instagram is pretty boring to me. I just get so bored not having anyone to talk to or relate to. I feel invisible 99% of the time in life and Reddit has ferociously reinforced that. Even my service dog-in-training prefers to be with Adam. How can one ignore that? 

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If You Build it, They Will Come

Daily writing prompt
How are you creative?
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That is a good question I’m unsure how to answer. I can get very creative when something breaks or I want to do something but don’t have the correct tools or instruments. Helping Phin (the blind one) around the house has brought out my creative side because I have to make sure he can get up where he wants to go and get down without hurting himself. One place he likes to go is on the refrigerator, and he has jumped down from it before, but I’m so afraid he is going to hit the table or chair if he miscalculates his jump. 

I’ve been taking apart furniture I want to get rid of and saving the wood in case I want to make something, so I took some shelves from an old bookshelf and got some brackets and Adam fashioned some shelves that go from the fridge around the wall and onto a cupboard. Theo loves them and gets on the fridge now, but Phin won’t use them even though we’ve spent time helping him find a safe way down using the shelves🙄. Now, when he wants down, he meows and Adams gets him. I can’t reach the top of the fridge so Phin’s stuck until his daddy comes. 

Another thing I came up with was a sling for the babies when they were tiny because they wanted held a lot, and mostly when I was working. I took a couple of Adam’s crew socks and a COVID face mask and sewed the mask to the socks. The babies loved it and I was able to work. Theo still likes to be held from time to time so I bought an actual sling for small animals, but he loved the one I made until he outgrew it. 

A great solution unless both babies wanted held at the same time

Otherwise, my creativity comes out through words. Words, spelling, and grammar make up my special interest, so it’s not a big surprise. I’ve been writing stories and poetry since I was very young and I’m definitely the writer in the family. I can draw if I’m looking at something (like the AristoCats below), but writing comes easily to me and is what I’m most passionate about.

The AristoCats

When I decided to return to college, I tried to major in something that would benefit work or lay the foundation for a new career path, but that just resulted in me switching majors four times. After my brother died and I started school again, I decided to stop denying myself and go with my passion. My studies in poetry class reignited my love for poetry, which I was hoping for, so I chose poetry as my concentration under an English creative writing major. I didn’t care for screenplay writing at all 😝. Oddly enough, I don’t really like reading poetry, especially modern poetry like Frost, Whitman, and Dickinson. I’m extremely unrefined. Dr. Seuss hits the spot for me, and I’ve only recently been learning how to forego the rhyming and do some free verse. I did discover Rupi Kaur and like her poetry very much. 

Speaking of, my book of poetry will be coming out in 2024!! I am so excited, scared, and proud, and kind of sad. Mom really wanted to see me published and I hate that she is missing the chance, but she is my driving force and I know she would be proud of me. I gave myself until December 2024 with the Library of Congress because I want to take more poetry classes and get some more poems written. I have a bad habit of throwing stuff away, and that includes poems I’ve written over the years, so my collection sits at around 50 poems. 

I would love to be the poetic JK Rowling, but I don’t have those expectations and am wanting to do this for myself and Mom. I keep telling Adam that my writing won’t get recognized until after I die, which is shockingly common with poets. Sometimes it feels like poetry is a lost art, but I see such great work online and really love that it’s alive and well. 

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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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