Friede

Morning: 6am
coffee-essential
oatmeal with butter, maple syrup and lovely sweet local raspberries

Noon
handful of toasted almonds and pecans so I don’t expire

Afternoon
leftover home made Thai coconut green curry (sauce from a jar of paste, fish sauce, and coconut milk), lots of lovely veggies, tofu, and basil, with brown rice.
Juicy nectarine
water

evening
Organic local bratwurst from happy local pigs, grainy brown mustard, whole wheat bread
big serving of steamed cauliflower drizzled with olive oil and just a pinch of salt
water

I don’t know about the skilled part. Perhaps I should revise that bit to something less grandiose. Silvie and HPJ have inspired me to actually post on this goal since I have been working on this all summer with our lovely new dog. Certain things someone else accomplished with him like house training since he is 1.5 years old or so and riding in cars, and sit. All of these skills are great. We went through a basic obedience class with him earlier in the summer using clicker training. He is very food motivated and a reasonable problem solver and calm enough a personality that he is rather easy. I have sit, down, and stand on verbal command now though I am not sure when to start randomizing when he gets a bit of food reward on those. He knows his name-poor thing had two awful names before he came to the rescue group we got him from. His new name suits him much better. Some brilliant child in his foster home gave him his new name and we kept it. I need to keep on working on watch me, but he will look at me for 15 seconds or so before looking away. Gotta work more concertedly on come and stay, though stay is working pretty well in low distraction settings. He will stay at the back door now till I release him before going on a walk and will stay and wait for his food before I release him to eat. Also took this great loose lead relaxed walking class which was really great. Learned a new to me technique of keeping the dog by your knees when walking by pivoting in front of him and setting a rather stern boundary by saying “back” in a stern gruff way and really taking up the dog’s space and moving them back a bit. D is so mild an animal it isn’t too hard to impress him with that move so he has learned the boundary really well in the last month or so at least in low distraction settings. But that includes really enticing squirrels right now on walk- he still maintains his place and will look at me instead of the squirrel if I say his name. So he is walking really pleasantly on lead right now and I have nifty skills I didn’t have before to manage walking. Working now on getting him to self correct his walking position just on the verbal command “back” without any pivot. The reward on this for him is that we keep moving if he maintains the correct position. We learned more in the class but it is too complicated to go into here. It has been a joy though to have one of the most relaxed dogs in class. Our dear departed Z was always so stressed out and reactive in obedience classes even when he got comfortable about the other dogs. He was so revved up and anxious. We didn’t want to go through that again. I can really feel though for the folks trying to learn to work with high energy reactive dogs. Hard work and patience is what that takes. D is a dream dog. A gentle soul, but confident enough that he is not overly cautious or afraid. He also seems to be coming out of his shell a bit more. He was so very clingy when we first got him and we have even heard him bark now a little. One day recently he barked and play bowed at the little dog next door through the fence! He is so silent most of the time it is a real shock when this big rumbly deep bark comes out.

for glorious birthday breakfast?