Ghosts?

Hershey has become fascinated with dancing spots of light on the ground (primarily produced by the lower day-time sun and sparse-er leaves on the trees) and shadows.

She will creep up on the spots and stare at them. She may smell them and paw them too. Every once in a while there'll be one she can't resist and will try to dig at it or eat it. Makes me wonder what she's thinking about - does she view them as tricky sneaky ghosts who keep evading her?

Her imagination certainly seems to run wild sometimes. I have seen her wake up from a nap once or twice and run to the door or go outside only to look around frantically for something that she obviously just dreamt about. Did she think there was a squirrel or another dog to go play with? Is it possible she had a nightmare about a scary stranger in the house? Poor girl!

Stop it with the chewing!

After sewing up the pillow two weeks ago, we came home to find the new zipper chewed off - again. I was not too happy about this, but we hadn't been taking Hershey on regular walks and stuff. We've gotten back into a regular routine and things have been improving. That is until Thursday when Chris came home to a half-eaten shoe! Not good.

I made sure to repair all her toys again so that she would have things that were okay to play with. We made sure she had an active Friday (playing in the park with Thilo) and a few walks and jaunts outside, but later on that night, we found out the shoe was still in her system... Uh, well, it came out of her system, that is. She threw up while sleeping on our bed at like 5 am, luckily she only puked on the "Hershey blanket". She was also coughing funny (which made me wake up) and we saw that she puked by the back door too. We had just spoken to her trainer-to-be and a well-trained groomer that same morning who said that we should treat Hershey like a little kid. That we should sooth her when she gets sick - not punish her. So we made sure she felt okay - got her some fresh water to drink (while we did laundry) and put her back to bed (in her crate). Luckily, I think that'll be the end of the shoe.

I mentioned we met her soon-to-be trainer on Friday, which was great. Chris had gone to visit the site and meet her a week or so ago. It was very good to see who we would be working with and for her to get to know us a bit more. She's very nice and really helpful. I am looking forward to starting dog school (only 1 more week left).

To wrap up the weekend, I baked some more dog cookies (as I had already set the oven to 325F for a sweet-potato dish) and shared some of them with Thilo, Trinity and Scooter. These cookies really came in handy this afternoon when I gave Hershey a bath. She needs to be reassured that I'm bathing her for her own good - and it really helps if she sits in the tub sometimes. The cookies help me get her to do that. As always, as soon as she was out of the tub, we went outside (where we are now, enjoying one of the last nice days of the year), and OF COURSE she has found some wonder-smell spots to roll around on! It's a little frustrating, but she looks like she's in heaven when she squirms around on the grass that way.

Finally - we are still working on socializing Hershey. We've taken her on a few more walks in busy areas, and are hoping for friendly volunteers to come over. If all goes well, things will be on the right track for when my parents come to visit in mid-October (fingers crossed)!

Sightseeing

We have come to the realization that we have not been taking Hershey out enough into busy areas of town. It is important to expose her to all sorts of situations, people and environments so that she can get used to distractions, and not be so nervous.

We went on a few longer walks this week - Chris took Hershey through the valley and creek, and we've been getting better about taking her on evening walks in the neighborhood. Yesterday we took her on a city walk - to the farmer's market and down to the temporary library location. She was pretty good but did bark at some people who approached her, and tug when there were other dogs around. All things given though, it went pretty well.

We are really looking forward to starting dog school in two weeks - we are working on some of the habituation tools that our dog teacher has suggested we try. We've had mixed results. Our poor friends were our first real guineypigs yesterday - it wasn't great, but we don't really have a baseline to compare it to. We're going to keep trying with other generous souls, and hopefully Hershey will get better and eventually grow out of this cranky stage.

How I spent my weekend

We came back home a bit later than normal on Friday after an awards celebration at the university. Hershey was left on her own for about 9 hours that day - not too great. Anyhow, at some point in the day Hershey must have gotten really bored and naughty-ly started chewing on her pillow (the bed pillow, but not her bed-bed). At some point she got through the zipper, then started chewing through the inner pillow zipper and tore the inner pillow apart. She then proceeded to pull all the fluff out of the pillow and spread it all over the room.

I can just imagine her absent-minded-ly nibbling away on her pillow and at some point snapping and realizing she's already gone too far and since she'll be in trouble anyway, might as well have a ball destroying it!

So, we told her she was bad - she knew she was, turning away and crouching down low to the ground. We took her out of the room to clean things up a bit, and then told her it was okay and got her to sit and work on a few commands and then gave her praise for that.

Saturday I literally spent the ENTIRE day sewing up a new inner pillow, filling it with the old fluff, fluffing up the fluff as it wasn't very fluffy to begin with, filling it with even more new fluff, sewing the zipper back on to the outer pillow and then reassembling it. Hershey looked apprehensive when I first put the fixed pillow on the ground for her, but once I told her it was "okay" and to "go ahead" she leapt on to it and stayed there for most of the evening!

Reservoir Dog

Hershey loves to chew things - in a methodical and scissory way, snipping rope apart segment by segment, sawing through even the toughest things.

There is a creepy trend though as you may see here:







Victims are identified as (from top to bottom): Mr. Sheep, Lion, and Dolly.

Ms. Elaine's Dog Cookies

Friday night I had dog-friendly Jen over for some baking fun while Chris ran Hershey with Jen's dog, Thilo. I had picked up a dog cook book (how to cook for dogs, not how to cook dogs!) and all the ingredients to make Cheddar Cheese and Garlic Cookies. Jen helped, and together we got the wicked-dense dough mixed up, rolled out and made into cookies. They baked for about an hour while Hershey and Thilo tried to play nicely in the house (note "tried").

When the cookies cooled a bit - we tried them out on the dogs. Both loved them! Thilo's a bit more picky, but seemed to like them a lot, and Hershey will go through the gamut of her trick bank to get them. Apparently, my home-made cookies are her one of her favourite treats, second only to pepperoni (and who doesn't love pepperoni!)

Basic Recipe (from memory):
3.5 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup wheat germ
1 egg
1 cup grated (aged) cheddar cheese
1 tsp garlic powder
1 cup water (or beef broth)

Preheat oven 325 degrees.
Mix egg, water, garlic powder and cheese together. Add cornmeal and wheat germ. Mix well. Add flour (kneed with hands).
Roll dough out to 1/4" thick, cut out cookies (we used small and big hand and foot shapes) and place on a parchment paper-lined baking tray. Bake for about an hour or until golden brown. I would recommend flipping cookies about halfway through. Thinner cookies break more easily. Makes 2 full trays of cookies.

Hershey Riverquest Safarivenutre

We took Hershey in the canoe for the first time yesterday - it was a lovely day and the North Saskatchewan River was quite calm, so we couldn't have had better conditions. Nonetheless, I was skeptical that she would be able to sit calmly in the boat - I honestly thought she would bail out right away! But happily, she seemed to enjoy the ride quite a bit... That is until we started paddling heavily. Hershey puked. In the canoe. It was gross. As I was up front, there was nothing I could do to stop that, because I couldn't keep an eye on her, and unfortunately she was out of reach for Chris. Yuck.

After cleaning up a bit, we continued onwards. We likely paddled about 6 kms, which was quite good. We got to a little island and some shallow water and Chris got out of the boat to moor it. Hershey took this opportunity to get the hell out of the canoe! She jumped in the water and wandered around the small island for a while with Chris not far behind her. I thought we wouldn't be able to get her back in the boat after this, but she ended up jumping back in with no problems. She did end up puking a total of 2 more times, but Chris warned me and we were able to get her to "go overboard" and avoid messing up the canoe even more!

I know this has been a gross post - but in all, I think we were lucky to have Hershey enjoy her first canoe ride. She loved putting her nose in the water and watching the oars go back and forth. She loved being able to see the banks and watch the seagulls flying overhead. Next time, we'll try her out on a lake where there won't be as much turbulence.

The Great Outdoors

On August 25th we packed up Chris' car and headed out camping - WITH HERSHEY! This was her first camping trip with us and likely her very first camping trip ever! It was a gorgeous weekend and we were going to be meeting friends (and their two dogs) there.

We gave Hershey Gravol for the first time on the car ride out - it worked like a charm. She was still very excited/nervous when we started, but she soon lied down and dozed for the last 30 minutes of the hour-long drive. She got nervous again when we entered the campground, but was thrilled to smell the fresh air and wander around outside (on a cord) while we set up camp. She played really well with our friends and their dogs, remembering them from the previous weekend; however she wasn't as good seeing people walking past our site and seeing lots of other dogs around with their owners. She barked a lot and pulled on her cord; we worked on this with her and by the end of the weekend she was much better.

The campground was by a lazy river, which meant that Hershey could go try swimming and catching sticks. She LOVED it!
Here is a MOVIE of her fetching a stick - she looses sight of it for a second but you can see her leap and be one awesome dog!


We went for some short hikes, wading, and a quick visit into town to see the farmer's market. In total we stayed 3 nights and 4 days, which was just enough. The second couple we were camping with had never met Hershey before and she never quite warmed to them. There were a few times where she was just too excited, for instance, when a neighbouring dog was off-leash (against the rules of the campground) and wandered over to our site, or when an owner and another dog (again off-leash) were playing frisbee behind our tent - I felt awful telling Hershey to be quiet and punishing her for not listening to me when she was the one who was tied up and the other dogs and their owners, who were making her all excited, were the ones not following the rules. Anyhow, as I said, by the end of the weekend, Hershey was a pro at watching quietly while people strolled pass and was much better with other dogs nearby.


We hope to be able to go camping again before the end of the season.