Merry Christmas!

We had a lovely low-key Christmas, as usual. (Well, except for one thing.) Kaline, being a wee rambunctious man, didn't get invited to Auntie Jen's, so it was rather a Juno-centric day.

The night before, Juno, as predicted, was a very good girl at Christmas Eve dinner. She was in total work mode too—at the end of dinner but before we had left the restaurant, Auntie Jen asked to pet her and I said sure. Juno wasn't having it though! She kept politely touching her nose to Auntie Jen's hand and then backing up, like, “Yes, I like you, but I'm working right now so maybe we'll say hi later.” It was precious.

Juno in her ruff at the restaurant.

Mom and I stayed up late watching a movie and having doggie cuddles. Kaline was curled up in my lap/on my chest like a baby. Juno was on Mom, so there was no way to take a decent picture of both me and Kaline. So this will have to do:

Christmas morning dawned rainy and yucky, so I scooted each dog out individually to do his or her business (put them together, and they will take exponentially longer to get anything done), and then they had treadmill time. We headed down for them to have breakfast, and just as Juno finished inhaling her kibble, I noticed a bunch of red dots on the kitchen floor, like someone had been making some kind of jelly dessert and dripped everywhere.

And then I saw the wall in the family room, which had a huge red smear on it. Yes, Juno had whacked her lethal tail hard into the wall one too many times, and now she was bleeding everywhere.

I should probably mention that this has happened before, just not recently. When we first adopted her, her tail tip was totally raw from wagging in her narrow kennel run and constantly bashing it into the concrete walls. She kept busting it open and the vet was worried we'd eventually have to dock her tail. But we were careful for a while, she healed, and all was well. A few months later she bashed it open again following a bath, but again, she healed, and that was about the last time she did that. If you look at her tail now you can see the evidence, two little oval hairless patches.

I commenced a futile search for styptic powder and once that failed, stopped the bleeding with paper towels. I protected her tail successfully through her whole Christmas bath, only to have her thwack it against the doorjamb on her way out of the bathroom. Blood everywhere again.

Mom devised a bandage with non-stick gauze and medical tape. Most dogs probably would have nibbled it off, but once it was on (Juno did not enjoy that process) she completely left it alone. It stayed on the entire day, we had no more bleeding, and it would've stayed on probably through the night, if I hadn't cut it off to let her little wound breathe overnight.

So that was our Christmas drama.

Kaline stayed home in his crate while Juno, suitably spiffy in her Christmas ruff, came along to Auntie Jen's. She was great, following me closely almost the whole time (during dinner she left a few times to go beg and had to be called back). I got some excellent dog related presents, including a new Dremel (one that runs off a charger, instead of batteries—my current Dremel burns through four Double-A's every time I do Juno and Kaline's nails) and a lovely bone-shaped necklace charm. On once side it says JUNO in even, neat capital letters, and on the other side it says Kaline in letters that change in size, capitalization, and location. Pretty much sums them up, no?

Juno got to partake of many different Christmas foods, thanks to Mom, who was bubbling with glee due in no small part to the wine. (Usually one glass is enough to make her fall asleep ...) She got honeybaked ham, non-chocolatey bits of cookie, sourdough bread, baby carrots and who knows what else when I wasn't looking and going, “MOM! Whyyyyyy?!” But hey, she has an iron stomach and she deserves her treats, since she's the best dog ever.

Juno in front of the tree and all the presents. She's the best present!!!

Juno supervises present opening, using the table as a chin rest.

Me and Juno in front of the tree.

Juno and the mini-tree.

Awesome dogs

My future car's current license plate. WTF! It almost makes me want to keep those ... but I won't. TGSONTP is here to stay.

In dog terms, it has been an amazing day. I'm not even just talking about Juno and Kaline, I mean both my packs as well.

Didn't get a ton of sleep last night, because I kept waking up to check on Kaline and see if he was awake and in need of a potty break. Starting at 4:00 a.m., I was up every twenty minutes! Talk about a helicopter mother. Finally, at 7:00, I just woke up the bleary-eyed little pup and took him outside. Then I could finish up sleeping with confidence that his little bladder wouldn't be bursting in his crate.

Empty, Kaline snoozed away the morning placidly as I got ready for the walks and took care of some paperwork (including sending away for his CGC certificate). Our first pack was Ellis and Teddy, and we got to do the beautiful Oak Knoll walk. Hardly anyone pulled, we passed all kinds of semi-unruly pups without incident, and just in general had a lovely time. Then we took Jett and Max to downtown Palo Alto and everyone was brilliant.

Jett ceased (at least for today) his annoying habit of walking behind everyone else and walked with the pack. Everyone behaved wonderfully at the flower store, where they gave their favorite friend, Molly, some much-needed TLC. This being the release date for the iPhone 5, there was a huge crowd of people with no lives outside the Apple store. (I mean it—they started camping out two days ago, as if Apple will somehow run out of phones.) Training opportunity!

We waded into the crowd and, to my glee, no one sniffed anyone inappropriately, or failed to slow to a crawl, or anything remotely bad! Jett kind of wanted to sniff, but I had him on the inside so he got thwarted. On our second pass through the crowd, he was exemplary. Juno and Max did a great job parting the way for us, and Kaline, as he had all morning, did constant visual check-ins with me even though there were tons of interesting people to smell. And then on the next corner, two girls from Peet's Coffee offered me a shot-sized sample of their pumpkin freddo. Yes, please. I view pumpkin much like other people view chocolate: it makes nearly everything taste better! The dogs got tons of compliments and no groping. That's how I like it.

We came home briefly and Kaline got his antihistamines, which have totally knocked him out. We had to meet Mike the Car Guy at the gas station, where we were getting the Lexus checked out. Kaline and Juno snoozed in the car until we headed to Borrone's to wait for the car to be finished. At Borrone's, possibly because of the meds, but I'd like to think because he's learning things, Kaline settled under the table just as fast as Juno. He didn't move as people walked by and over him, although right at the end I think someone tripped over him and he got up real fast. He's fine though, don't worry. They both did great. I thought it was hilarious when an elderly retriever—a retriever!!—came up and gave Kaline a great big sniff in the face, and Kay just stayed there. Normally he'd be like, "Oh boy, oh boy, a retriever! I love you already! May I chew on your ears?!"

We came back to the gas station, got the report on the car, then came home for me to make a round of calls—my aunt, car insurance, credit union, etc. I found out that Farmers, our insurance, is indeed the one insurance company that is breed-blind when it comes to home insurance. They don't care what breed your dog is, only if it has a bite history. Judge the deed, not the breed, in action! I was super glad to hear that.

Normally Kaline will kind of take advantage of me being on the phone and start screwing around. Today, Juno curled up by my feet (wherever those happened to be—whenever I change location, she changes location, even if it's not that big a move), and Kaline contented himself with quietly chewing his pressed rawhide. Then he clambered up on the couch and fell asleep. He is so damn cute when he's being a good boy!

Of course the car drama continued in the afternoon, but mostly with little annoying things and not with big You Don't Exist problems. We'll get it figured out. Kaline slept on my chest and then curled up behind my computer chair while I tried to get my iPhone photos backed up. It's all Kaline's fault too, I never had your-phone-is-too-full problems before he came along! Heehee.

We had a beautiful walk in the Oak Knoll neighborhood with Dad, and now are contemplating what to do for dinner.

Oak Knoll sunset.

Oak Knoll sunset.

I am getting the car!

Yesterday was a nightmare, mostly, but it ended with me (and Dad as co-signer) getting approved for a car loan. So yay.

I was super proud of Kaline in the morning. He is on antihistamines which also have steroids in them, so he is having a harder time holding it in the morning. Well before we normally get up, he whined loud enough to wake me up. When I let him out of his crate, he absolutely booked it downstairs. Normally, going downstairs first thing in the morning involves a lot of checking rooms to see where the other family members are, then stretching eleventy billion times as he makes his way down. Nope, he was on a mission. I opened the door to the patio and he zoomed out to his favorite plant and peed for like fifteen minutes. I was so impressed that he actually knows it is not good to pee inside, which is very different from knowing it's good to pee outside. Yay for the baby.

We tired him out with numerous pack walks, which was good because the afternoon was all Juno. We went to lunch with the parents, where I was massively bummed because the goalposts got moved on me getting health insurance. I'm on COBRA now, which sucks the big one because it is super expensive yet rather useless, so far. I was told that if I had no treatment for my fibromyalgia for six months, I would be able to look for non-COBRA insurance. It has been six months. I checked in, and was told I needed to be treatment and symptom free for six months. Well, that's not happening, clearly. Gaaaah.

After lunch, we headed to Chase, where both my parents have accounts and we thought getting a loan would be easy. Not so fast. I had applied online the night before, hoping to expedite the process, and got rejected by the computer program in about two seconds. Which apparently made it impossible for any actual human beings at the bank to help me in any way. You almost have to laugh—they reject you in less than a minute, using a computer; then they send you a paper letter by snail mail in 3-5 business days to tell you why. And of course, you can't do anything further with the bank until you receive said letter, and they can't tell you anything about said letter over the phone because that would be EEEEEVIL. I got so upset during this futile process that Juno had to do a lap-up to calm everything down.

Following that rejection, we went to Stanford Credit Union. Thanks to Dad being my co-signer, we got pre-approval for the loan. The whole thing took forever, but it did not involve any frustrating arguing with the equivalent of inanimate objects, so that was awesome. Also, Juno got to do handicap buttons without having to watch Kaline fumble about with them. Oh man, there was this lady in line who was so confused why she couldn't screw around with Juno. (See the Service Dog patch? See the Do Not Distract?!) Then she started yammering about her Bichon and how expensive they are, and how she got hers for free. Lemme tell you, lady, just because a dog is expensive does not mean it's well bred or worth it. See: ALL DESIGNER DOGS.

I was so exhausted from all this crap that I almost didn't go to Kristin's send-off dinner, but I'm glad I went. It was at a really nice place called the Village Pub and Juno was perfect. They were so nice to us—I showed up super underdressed, because basically all I own are jeans and t-shirts and hoodies, with my dog, of course, and we got welcomed so warmly. Well, Juno got welcomed—I'm just her sidekick! After a little bit of scootching around under the table, Juno got into what I think of as perfect Guide Dog Position, lying between my feet and partly under my chair, facing the same direction as me. Lovely. Dinner was amazing and many hilarious and wildly inappropriate dog stories were shared.

Kristin at the Village Pub.

Today we got to do daycare for Rocky the Golden Retriever-Poodle mix and had a really productive time at training. Anne was there and really worked me and Kaline. He's graduating now from heeling with a treat basically in his mouth to not having the treat there—I'm always afraid to bump him up to the next level, but he did great. I just have to really work hard on not turning into him, because it pushes him back. We also worked on his recall; he has now started to come in, bash his nose into my crotch, then sit. What a lovely gentlemanly habit, don't you think? Gotta nip that in the bud.

At the end of training, we had all fifteen dogs who were not Kaline out on down stays in two lines, facing each other. It was so cool. We have a couple dogs who have really come a long way, who were recently way too nervous and anxious to do this kind of thing successfully. It was so gratifying to see them succeed!

All the dogs! (See that black lump on a rug in the top right corner? Kaline.)

I had a nap with Kaline on my legs, and then went to dinner with Mom and Juno. We ended up at a pub where I usually go to watch the Dutch national football team. It was really loud (not too crowded, just bad music) and fire engines kept going by. Juno slept through all of it, was a total star. I wonder how Kaline would have done in that environment.

Tomorrow we're getting the car checked out by the mechanics at the Shell Station, who know my beloved little Honda like nobody else, so we really trust them. One of the guys just got a new Doberman puppy (he already has a two-year-old cropped black and rust male). I'm trying to convince him to keep his new red girl natural, for her ears at least. He got her from a BYB (makes me want to tear my hair out, but he's got her now, so there's no point) and she's only 7 weeks old. Still, I can't wait to see pictures!

Night night, doggies.

Bad day, the sequel

The car drama continues, and the dogs continue to have to work on me. Feeling positive, I called the credit union once the dogs and I got out on our walk. I told the woman what my aunt had found with only five minutes' actual work. She said she had not received any emails from or about me (possible lie) but she was going to "head me off at the pass." Because the credit union only uses information from one credit score reporting company, and she had doublechecked whatever she'd done, she would not even look at the credit score I actually possess. The disapproval for the loan still stood, and if I wanted to do anything about it, I'd have to call Experian and fight with them.

Then I got some gobbledegook about how all the different credit score companies can have different information (how this is possible, I don't know). I told her that sounded incredibly stupid. She talked about having a contract with Experian, yadda yadda. Did I understand now? No, in fact, none of it made a jot of sense whatsoever. "Am I not speaking clearly?" she retorted. About to cry, I hung up, then had the meltdown.

I called my aunt, who had me call her friend who'd done the credit check on me yesterday. He agreed that given my credit card (MasterCard, nothing obscure) and the places I'd made purchases (again, not obscure) the idea that none of it would show up on a credit report was completely preposterous. So he called the credit union; the woman said she is not in the business of trusting people but making good loans. He got the same treatment: rude and stonewalled. So we're going to try somewhere else ... trying online at Chase, my parents' bank, led to a rejection within seconds, though. Gotta go in person, I suppose.

Again with the completely hopeless feelings. Not fun. Even less fun: I was giving my mom an update on the situation on my phone and walking the dogs. A grown bloody man stepped in front of Juno, didn't even make eye contact with me, and started freaking GROPING her. I snapped his head off: "You're supposed to ask before you manhandle other people's dogs!" He snapped something back but I wasn't listening. Sometimes, I wish Juno was a less tolerant dog toward strangers ...

Thankfully, training in the afternoon was lovely and made me feel a little better. Kaline did pretty well, participating in big dog heeling with the moving sit, moving down, and moving stand. If none of that makes sense: "moving" means that your dog does the command, while the person continues moving out to the end of the leash or some other point. Moving stand, naturally, was hardest for Kaline, but not terribly difficult. I got him stacked really nicely at one point! Then of course he moved. Ah well.

Juno was a freaking star. She did lovely off leash heeling, then worked on doing sits and downs while not moving out of the heel position (harder than it sounds!). Once she got the hang of it, she was gleeful—"up-down" is one of her absolute favorite games. Then we went in a big field with the other advanced dogs and did really long recalls. The best one was where I left Juno at one end and headed for the other, probably 75-100 yards (but I am not good at guesstimating measurements, so don't quote me!). Periodically I looked back to reinforce the stay; about three quarters of the way to my destination, I looked back and Juno was standing up.

"Sit!" I called. And her butt plopped down. I actually did a little fist pump of glee. Woohoo!

I made it to the end of the field, called her, and she came like a bat out of hell. Such a good dog. She got many treats and a good long belly rub.

After a long nap and cuddle, Kaline and I accompanied Mom to Stanford Shopping Center for a quick training outing. We worked on attention, as always, as well as not pulling (gaaaaah). He settled nicely behind me while we were at counters, if I asked; he also did pretty decent blocking if I asked for that. I had a good time exposing him to the escalators. His reaction was very Kaline—not scared, but utterly fascinated. We hung out there for a while; I gave him treats for looking calmly at the escalators, and for looking at me.

Kaline and the escalator.

We also did a quick stop in at Trader Joe's and went up and down some aisles. Kaline did a lovely sit-stay with great attention while I got cream cheese off a high shelf. I had him do a down-stay and rolled one of these TJ bags on wheels all around him; he was fine until someone rang one of the big brass bells, and then Kaline had pretty much had enough. Ah well, he did fine!

Vet update: Kaline had a pretty big breakout, all of a sudden, of those little bumps last night after the CGC test. They were clustered on his left hock, and definitely itchy. So off we went to the vet; she called them "pyometra" and put Kaline on antibiotics and antihistamines. Woohoo for antihistamines and their knockout properties, hehe. Hopefully this will take care of those. I also started him on Frontline, and Oct. 1 he'll start getting a Heartgard with Juno.

Kaline's first "title"

Yeah, I know, CGC is not exactly a real obedience title (although apparently it will be after January 1). But Kaline has it now!

Yesterday was way better than expected, and today was way worse. We were supposed to go to a ballgame yesterday and due to various kinds of drama one of the dogs would have had to be left home all day. More drama; and then I ended up staying home with both pups while the parents went to the game. Much nicer. We had lots of walks, met some lovely children who handled Kaline's paws with no problems, had naps, did a little open-close work.

That was actually pretty funny. I had Juno open a cupboard and then asked Kaline to close it. He did it with perfect Juno-style technique: A good nudge with the nose to start, and a careful nudge with the paw to finish up. Of course, once the door was closed Juno immediately tugged it open again! And then when Kaline went to close it, she went on the other side and gleefully nudged it a little to thwart him. Then she let him finish.

The game would have probably been a good experience for Kaline, but I didn't need the stress. And we had a lovely day at home.

Then today there was tons of drama with the car. More specifically, the loan. The credit union people called me back and said they couldn't approve me not because I had bad credit, but because I had no credit score. Which is preposterous, because I have had a credit card under my name and SSN for a good eight years—which is always paid off on time. Of course, that led to a massive meltdown, but luckily I have a fantastic aunt who takes no shit from anyone and really wants me to get a proper car. Within five minutes of getting my SSN she had my credit score, which does in fact exist. So we're working on it.

The upside of the meltdown was Kaline did an excellent job tag-teaming me with Juno. Between walks he sat on me in the car, leaning into my chest and licking my neck and face. (He likes my neck. Who knows.) Juno kept checking in on me visually while we were out with the packs; once when I was really zoning out, Kaline grabbed my fingers in his mouth and "carried" them for a while, munching but not too hard, just hard enough to be like, "HEY, pay attention!" Well, I gotta admit, he did get a little carried away after a while with the munching and then I had to stop him.

Anyway, the meltdown kind of colored most of the day, but in the evening, Dad, Kaline and I headed to Mountain View for the Canine Good Citizen test put on by Deep Peninsula Dog Training Club. Then the nerves and adrenaline just took over! Kaline was thrilled as well—Labs everywhere! At first, he wanted to go play with all of them, but he settled down pretty quick.

Kaline ended up wearing a choke chain with his regular BLD leash for the test (no prong collars allowed). I don't like using choke chains because they can just tighten indefinitely, but you don't have much of a choice with AKC events. I'd never use a chain for actual training. My other option was his combo slip collar and leash, but the fabric it's made of hurts my hands if he pulls at all.

We got registered and then walked around to warm up and get Kaline's yayas out. He was pulling a bit at first, but then when I did sudden turns and rewarded him for spontaneous attention, he started working nicely for me. I was super proud of him when we were waiting in line, and a little surprised at some of the other dogs. Kaline, who is not even five months old yet, curled up by my feet and just chilled out while we were waiting. One of the Labs kept pulling hard to get to Kay (in a mostly friendly way), plus there was a German Shepherd and another Lab they were keeping away from everyone, and trying to strategize about when to run them through the tests. I was kinda like, if your dog can't be around other dogs, how does he qualify as a good citizen?

Anyway. One of the test organizers is a total Dobe person, loved Kaline, used to have what Freddie nicknamed The Doberman Drill Team. We had a good time hanging out with her. We were the fourth team through.

CGC Test

Item 1: Friendly stranger (no petting)—The evaluator shook my hand and introduced herself. Kaline sat politely next to me.

Item 2: Friendly stranger (petting)—Kaline sat, then got up, licked her arm and was politely friendly (no jumping) ... and then he almost did a crotch-burrow. Ehhh, still passed!

Item 3: Grooming—The evaluator brushed Kaline with the brush I'd brought; as usual, he really wanted to eat it. Thankfully, she understood that for what it was, a mouthy pup, not a puppy who was scared of the brush or of her grooming him. He didn't care at all when she flipped back his ears and picked up his front feet.

Item 4: Loose leash walking—We had to go out, turn left, right, and do an about turn. Even though Kaline tugged on me some between test items, he walked wonderfully for this and we had no problems.

Item 5: Walking through a crowd—I walked Kaline through a crowd of about seven people milling around. He was a little interested but not much. All good!

Item 6: Sit, down, stay—Kaline immediately sat and lay down when I asked. You can choose to leave the dog in a sit or down for their stay, but most people leave their dogs in downs because it's more stable. That's what I did, cause Kaline was definitely hyped up. He stayed while I walked 20 feet away and came back.

Item 7: Coming when called—Kaline was all of a sudden interested in the trees ... I walked in, got his attention back, then went 10 feet out and called him. He came like someone had goosed him! Heehee. He was so cute.

Item 8: Reaction to another dog—Our other dog was this adorable Clumber Spaniel (I think). We walked up, I shook hands with his owner, Kaline looked at him and took a big whiff, and then we walked on.

Item 9: Reaction to distraction—Someone dropped an enormous book. Kaline jumped a tiny bit and turned toward it at the noise. When the book didn't move again or make any more noise, he decided it was something he wanted to eat. (Don't worry, I didn't let him.)

Item 10: Supervised separation—I left Kaline with a lovely older gentleman who was actually the judge at Juno's very first obedience fun match. I went out of sight and waited for my three minutes to be up. That was the worst part at Juno's CGC test, because I was so worried she'd whine/yowl excessively and fail on the last item. Kaline did fine, so yay, he passed! How exciting! Everyone thought he was super cute with his insanely adorable face and big floppy silky ears.

When we got home, Juno (and eventually Kaline)'s new Cozy Horse Winter Warrior coat had arrived; I put it on Juno and she looked fabulous. I noticed Kaline licking his hock even more than normal (he enjoys mouthing his legs) and he looked like he had a breakout there of little itchy bumps. Heading to the vet tomorrow, of course. 

Sorry I didn't get video ... my real camera is out of batteries and we have no Double-As in the whole house at this point. Once I get batteries again I'll post a couple coat pictures, at least!