Tag: Service dog in training

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.