Finally, after five days, a shot from home again: a garden angle I don't think I've exactly photographed before. Those are calendulas at bottom left, with mostly obedient plant/false dragon's beard to the immediate right. In the background are lavender and three containers of cosmos, the other yellow/orange flowers, plus the chair I set there early in the season, when it was comfortable to sit out in the sun for any length of time with Dora.
Today so far I have:
*walked the dog, just over a mile
*done a little training session with said dog on our return --- I used half her breakfast as hand-fed treats (ie, kibble works just fine as training treats) to continue teaching her the "place" command, which means "go sit on your mat." Then we worked on "lie down" on said mat.
My end goal is for her to perceive the mat as a place to go and stay while I am working, or we are eating at the kitchen table (this last is a real stretch, but it is a goal), rather than crowding around and pestering me/us continually for attention and/or food. That we literally never gratify her food-begging does not seem to deter her from doing it. And she's frankly a pest when she's bored or wants attention, which is constantly. I hate having to resort to the crate in order to get work done --- I do use the crate as part of her daily routine, in a rhythm of activity and enforced rest, but too much of that absolves her of having to learn some self-regulation that would result in better house manners.
Yes, yes, it's been almost four years, and we're still working on this stuff, but she is . . . kind of nuts. She's eager to do things, especially if there are treats involved --- in fact, treats are sometimes a drawback, because she quickly reaches a point where all she can think about is getting a treat, and her every uncontrolled impulse is in that direction. This becomes a training problem, the good thing turning into the only thing. So I'm trying to do very short sessions when we get back from our walk in the mornings, before I crate her with her breakfast, at least partly because I do want her to have more time out of the crate, and more activity, before enforced-rest time.
Today went pretty well, actually. I moved the mat from the kitchen, where we have been working on this command, to the study, where of course her first impulse is to jump on the daybed (and she is allowed on the daybed). What I wanted to do in this instance was also acclimate her to being leash-tethered to the daybed, and to be happy to lie down for a while on the tether, which keeps her from coming to me in my chair and putting her big hard paws all over my laptop keyboard while I'm trying to work. The idea is for her to be happy to be in the room with me but not pestering me for attention. And the key to anything's being a happy experience is to connect that experience with the unambiguously happy experience of eating treats while having the other experience.
So I had her sit on the mat, clipped the tether to her harness, and just fed her treats, one after another, for a good while. I stopped, went across to my chair and sat down, and then came back and fed her more treats before she had a chance to jump up and try to follow me. Then I got her to lie down and fed her more treats in that position, to condition her to think, Why, this lying on the mat business is actually very pleasant, and I should do it more often. This mat, actually the mat that goes in her smaller crate, has a cooling side, so it probably was kind of pleasant after our hot walk.
I did this until the quarter-cup of kibble was used up --- half her allotted breakfast --- piece by piece. Then I let her go. The command to leave the mat is "break," so I let her "break," then we hung out for just a little while before I sent her into her crate and brought her the other half of her breakfast to consume in peace. Now she's lying down in the cool. I'll let her out in about half an hour, but an hour of imposed naptime is not a bad thing for a dog. Like toddlers, some very high-energy, driven dogs can overtire themselves and go to pieces, and they really need somebody to say, Rest NOW, you moron.
Otherwise, I've revised my piece about my friend Jane, featuring one of her poems (by permission of her publisher), to go up Monday morning on the Substack. And I washed my yesterday's dress and hung it to dry outside --- I've been cooking very messily this week and not wearing aprons.
Still to do:
*change the sheets
*some more laundry, both hand laundry and the washing machine (for napkins, towels, sheets, etc)
*read "Nyal's Saga" for my Norse class
*book an Airbnb for the Kingfisher Folk Festival next weekend
*think about what's for dinner
*possibly plan to read a poem of Jane's at a Zoom gathering tonight
*keep cool --- today's high is 98F
Wearing:
*Secondhand Wool& Sierra dress (I always have to show off my little embroidered visible-mending fish) in Washed Navy, bought fall 2024, last worn July 9. Wears in 2025: 15
*Thrifted Crocs, year 2
I might regret this dress in this heat, but so far, even with this heavier French-terry knit, I'm okay. Sierra is just such a good Saturday dress, easy and unstructured and pretty tough. I wore my Iris Blue Sierra repeatedly on our Nova Scotia trip, and I'm still not quite ready to reach for her again, but as always, I enjoy this secondhand one far more than I had anticipated when I bought her.
I'm still really undecided about size, should I ever buy another Sierra --- Iris Blue is an XS, while this dress is a S. The XS has stretched out a lot in the nearly 8 months I've been wearing her, but then this dress has relaxed a good bit as well. Overall, I think I like this looser fit a little better, mostly because in no pose that I might happen to adopt as I move through my day, will the pockets bulge at my hips. The XS pockets do, sometimes. In many ways I prefer the closer fit, and I like the shorter length, but . . . I dunno. The answer, really, might be just not to buy another Sierra, because they do this. I am taking care with these dresses (read: not dyeing another one), but I still fully expect this S Sierra to wind up as a midi-length dress eventually, because my first one did. I love these dresses, and I wear them all the time, but I don't want to pay for what seems to me to be inevitably the eventual outcome. We'll see.
Not that I'm really in the market for anything right now --- gotta wear the clothes I have --- but it's worth noting that WoolX makes a dress very similar to the Sierra, in what seems to be a lighter jersey fabric. Their prices run a little higher than Wool&'s, but they make a similarly high-quality product and are a good company generally to buy from. Their sale prices seem lower than Wool&'s clearance prices, too. So I do want to keep my eye on them, especially in the secondhand markets. I do have one more "new" slot in my year's allotment, but I could always flip that over to one extra secondhand slot, which I would prefer in many ways, not least because I can use Poshmark credit, which I'm trying to build up again with sales.
Ah well. I had better get busy with my other Saturday chores, and then it's off to early-medieval Iceland, and all its unrelenting bloodshed, in the longship of my mind.