Happier news on the Dora front! My daughter, who yesterday was sad because the dog didn't like her, spent the evening on the couch with the dog sprawled over her, licking her face. We're good there. And I think that at this point all that stands between my son and the same treatment is one more piece of cheese, a distinctly high-value treat.
It worked well to have her crated a lot yesterday, for roughly two-hour stretches, with lots of walks and outdoor time with me interspersed. I used the long training lead to play fetch with her, so that there'd be no more going over the wall after anything. Periodically during the day, we all sat in the study where her crate is, talking and paying her no mind, so that she could see that the kids were supposed to be here, and that she didn't have to protect us against them. Then they fed her some treats while in the crate. When she was out of the crate, I kept her harness and leashes on so that I could manage her if needed –– I hope by the end of today I won't have to do that anymore and won't have to worry further, this go-round. Once you're in with her, you're IN, and she can't get enough of your love.
My older daughter, who has acquired two dogs in the last three years, talked me down yesterday from a lot of my stress and anxiety about the situation, for which I'm grateful. They've been continually engaged in training, so she had a lot of good insights not only into strategies and solution-seeking, but also into the process that it all is. She also made me feel better by reminding me that her dog Finnegan, whom I love, had bitten one of my sons because the son was dancing in their kitchen –– apparently Finnegan hates dancing. Finnegan is a lot smaller than Dora, which somehow makes things like that funnier and less like maybe you need to do something about your dog, which is interesting –– he's not a tiny dog, mind you, but he is about thirty pounds, to Dora's forty-five, and that size difference does change our perspective a lot. Very little dogs get away with horrific behavior all the time because nobody is afraid of mosquitoes, just annoyed by them. Yet larger dogs who exhibit the same behaviors are problem dogs. This makes sense: the bigger the dog, the bigger the threat. But I've long been interested in what people let their tiny dogs get away with, thinking it's cute, and how bad that is for those dogs' characters. Anyway, aside from hating dancing (and the mailman, because what dog does not love to hate the mailman?), Finnegan is fine with people, very social and in the middle of everything all the time. My older daughter took him over to campus the other day to study with my younger daughter; apparently he sat on the table the whole time, like a cat. But it's kind of comforting sometimes to hear about his lapses.
And then there's Ruby, seen here in recovery from being a chaos and entropy machine.
And I'm glad that at least two of the nine people coming to my house for Christmas are seasoned dog people, and another two will not be unknown quantities. We'll have a kind of steady drip-feed, with the college students coming home sometime after the tenth of December, the firefighter son appearing on the twentieth, and everybody else on the twenty-third. One or two of "everybody else" will not be staying with us, which I think is probably just as well.
A bright, cold morning this morning. Dora and I have been out for a quick quarter-mile walk –– yesterday I walked nearly seventeen thousand steps in between crate sessions, but surely today might be more a day of rest ––and have hung out in the kitchen drinking coffee (me) and alternately lying on a bed or standing at my knee (Dora).
Mass in a while, then the kids are going to catch the closing matinee of Comedy of Errors, which we saw the other night.
Some scenes from the backyard:
Wearing my Sierra, the really sensible dress for cold mornings, with my ThredUp-purchased moss-green Calvin Klein corduroy blazer, my mustard yellow Snag tights, and my camel boots. Further accessories include thrifted dog. I was throwing the toy straight up, and she was levitating to catch it, but I never managed to time it so that the camera caught her in mid-air.
UPDATE: Silly me, I didn't even realize until I'd gotten into the car and was reading the Mass readings that TODAY IS THE FEAST OF CHRIST THE KING. Good thing I have a gold tablecloth for dinner tonight. And good thing I have a week to get my candle action together for Advent.