Our Lady of the Fleeting Snows.
Also, more forsythia, which I love as much in its bare winter state as I do when it flowers:
Not that I'm not looking forward to its flowering, mind you. Winter-into-spring is possibly my favorite of all seasons, and forsythia is its emblem.
Here is Dora, sniffing in the backyard:
Why is this noteworthy? Well, I'll tell you.
One significant thing I've learned via this reactive-dog training course we're doing is that intense sniffing, for dogs, is a valuable self-calming mechanism. It's akin to deep-breathing exercises for us, bringing down heart rate, stress levels, excitability. Dogs with any degree of reactivity, whether it's to other dogs, strangers, loud noises, whatever, are dogs who struggle to self-regulate, which is why what seem to us to be negligible triggers can send them over their emotional threshold fast. High-energy dogs also benefit from intensive sniffing exercises, because smelling engages the brain –– it does for the dog what really meaty reading does for us. A dog who's done ten or twenty minutes of smelling exercises is pleasantly tired out and unwound, just as if he had been for a walk. For reactive dogs, who may tend to be more wound up by a lot of physical activity, a smelling exercise can be an even better way to work out the jitters, so that the dog isn't then bouncing off the walls in your house.
My morning routine with Dora for some weeks now has been to go out in the backyard in the morning and, at first, let her derp around on her own. Actually, she doesn't do much derping –– she usually shoots straight out the back door in pursuit of a real or hypothetical squirrel. In other words, she's tuned way up right out of the gate. Usually the next thing she does is come and jump exuberantly right at me, sometimes biting my clothes, sometimes not. This is not nearly as fun as it probably doesn't even sound.
So I deal with that behavior by taking a scoop of kibble out with me, and while she's nosing around for a pee spot (this takes a lot of consideration, apparently, even for somebody who has been crated for eight to ten hours overnight), I scatter it over the grass, or the bare sodden ground, as it is right now, as if I were sowing seeds. She sees me do it and comes running, but very quickly has to resort to smelling, not sight, to find the pieces of kibble on the ground. I give her a good portion of her breakfast this way –– ten to twenty minutes of sniff sniff sniff, crunch crunch crunch. The rest of her breakfast I give her in a Kong-type rubber toy, all frozen, so that it takes her a good forty-five minutes to extract the rest of her meal. Chewing, like sniffing, is a calming activity for dogs, so by the time she's done all that, outside and inside, she's ready to chill out for a good stretch of the morning.
Scatter feeding –– this strewing I've just described –– is a good counter-conditioning strategy as well. What I'm trying to do, over time, is to transform Dora's perception of things that currently threaten or frighten her to a more pleasant emotional association: a conditioned emotional response. For example, she tends to react pretty violently to any indication that other human beings besides us inhabit the world around our house. Neighbors coming out of their houses where she can see them, neighbors talking in their backyards where she can't see them, neighbors rolling their garbage cans in or out, people passing on the street . . . all of these have been triggers for massive stress barking. At this point, I can usually tell when there's another person in the general vicinity just from her body language. She flings up her head, tenses, usually raises one front paw. Any minute now she's going to lose it.
I've learned to watch for these things –– and to hear the neighbors even before she notices them –– and intervene by scattering some food on the ground. As long as she's not already over her threshold, barking, in full dog-toddler meltdown, she will go for the food in the grass. This move achieves several ends: it redirects her from whatever the stress trigger is, it engages her in a calming activity, and it gives her a pleasant experience to begin to associate with whatever the trigger is. I haven't tried this yet with the next-door neighbors right at the fence, which would be a big stressor, but already she's able to be outside and tolerate people calling their kids or dogs, talking on their cell phones, talking to each other, and generally making normal human noise. This is progress.
The next step is to take her out on the 10-foot training lead to some fairly quiet, safe place where I can predict the exposure to triggers. We've done a little of this in the vacant lot three doors down from our house –– it's a big, open area where I can see people or dogs coming and not be surprised by them, with plenty of room for her to move around on the long lead. The house next to this lot has dogs in the backyard that bark a lot, which stresses her out, though not as badly as people do –– so we've practiced going near the fence (but not so near that we really freak out these dogs) and scatter feeding at a distance where she's aware of them, and they of her, but nobody is over their threshold. There's also a community college across the street, with a sidewalk where the cosmetology students like to stand around and smoke. So once the weather warms up a little and they're out there, we can practice not minding their presence, from a distance where Dora is safely under her threshold. I'd also like to get our dogsitter, who hasn't met Dora yet, to come and practice gradual introductions in that spot, moving eventually to our own yard and house, which are the worst places for new introductions.
Anyway, this just looks like a picture of a dog smelling the grass, but really it's an entire training program.
Nothing on today except to watch the weather, which threatens to get wintry again. Not that it isn't wintry already: cold and getting colder. I'm going to make myself start reading something that isn't a Ngaio Marsh mystery, but I'm not sure what yet. I just finished #20 last night.
Wearing today:
I've given my dresses a break for a second day in a row, mostly in the interest of deliberately wearing all my clothes. I'm winterizing this very old thrifted spring/summer linen skirt –– or bringing a breath of spring to a warm ensemble, whichever way you want to look at it –– with this thrifted gray-blue wool pullover, a pair of thick blue leggings (bought new several years ago), and Docs with wool socks. I was outside without a coat while Dora was doing all that sniffing, and while I was not exactly toasty, I wasn't miserably cold, either. Next time I'll bother putting on a coat, but I was okay without one for ten to fifteen minutes.
Channeling a sort of vaguely wartime-London vibe, I hope. It's what I'm in the mood for, after all these 1940s mysteries. My hair of course is too long to be truly 1940s-vintage, but I'm trying a modified pull-through-ponytail half-updo –– modified in that it's very much to one side.
And the other side:
Many women go to great lengths to hide their grays, but what I actively like about this kind of hairstyle is that it exposes those strands, which at this stage grow mostly on the underside of my hair. This kind of do is also good in the cold weather when my hair tends to be a lot less curly.
Speaking of hiding things, one advantage of wearing prints is that exuberant dogs' muddy pawprints don't show up quite so plainly:
I did sponge myself off, but if I hadn't been able to, I doubt anybody seeing me would have noticed the inadvertent print clash.
Meanwhile, the birds are probably glad I've come back inside ––
OH ALSO: Today marks three full weeks of No-Buy 2022 (clothing only). So far, so good, even with a trip to a thrift store. I did buy some pillowcases, but I passed up racks and racks of clothing without a twinge of temptation.