Movies!

Kaline and I just finished up the six-week package of “classic” movies at the local Cinemark 20 theatre. It was a great help with his long-down consistency. The first couple movies, he'd pop up a bunch, starting mid-movie. By the final couple, pop-ups were down to two or fewer per movie!

He also got to do a lot of practice with hitting handicap buttons, not rushing into or out of elevators, and going at a measured pace down the stairs. He is great at pulling up the stairs, just needs to work on going in a straight line, haha.

I've been working with both dogs, but especially Kaline, on various Rally exercises as well. Kaline has several different things he needs to get down before he competes in Advanced on March 22. He's doing really well with the new finding-heel exercises, but having more trouble with finding front when I don't move my feet. Next week, we're going to work on learning the broad jump!

I'm totally preoccupied right now with new Paco collars for Juno and Kay, as well as new tags to go with them from Aggie's Anvil. I have to wait, however. Kaline's birthday is on April 23, and Juno's Gotcha Day is May 12, so that's the soonest I'm allowing myself to get this new expensive stuff, haha. The new collar for Kaline was supposed to be for his graduation, but yeah, I can't wait that long.

If you couldn't tell, we haven't done a whole lot of exciting stuff lately. Oh well!

Milestones

Kaline and Juno at the grove in the Arizona Garden.

This past Tuesday, my boy Kaline had his first birthday! It's completely insane how fast this year has gone. And I keep wondering what he did with that adorable little fat puppy who used to have to jackrabbit up the stairs. (Still kicking myself for never getting a video of that.)

On our morning walk, Kaline's friend Kelsey, who works at the flower shop where the dogs get cookies, presented him with a rose. Then she held it for him while he gleefully ripped off all the leaves and petals!

For Kaline's birthday, we did our usual Tuesday things—walks and training—but then finished up with a big delicious bagel burger. I think he was a little shocked that the burger I was grilling was for him. Juno gets fed scraps and such (it's too late to retrain Mom) but the only leftovers Kaline gets are things like fruit, vegetables and rice. He was so delicate about eating it too! Juno was like that her first time, licking the bagel until I mimed chomping it and she got the idea. Eventually Kaline ripped chunks off, but they were little, gentlemanly chunks. It was very cute. (Not as cute: The diarrhea that ensued the next day. Perhaps we'll have to figure out a different birthday tradition for him.)

Last week was not a good one for me, being stuck in a pit of depression most of the time due to being off certain pills and to overreacting to various events. But, it led to another milestone for Kaline. The parents invited me to go see 42, the Jackie Robinson movie, and because I was in a fragile emotional state and Kaline is much more attuned to that and proactive about it, I firmly said that he was going to the movie.

It was his first movie in a theatre other than the Stanford. And he was perfect during the movie! Didn't get up once, barely moved around period! He was awesome. And the movie was great. Some kids are raised on the normal fairy tales, but I was raised on stories of Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was my dad's hero growing up and was mine as well. It almost became a running joke in school, because I would do any American history or biography project on Jackie Robinson, always. The movie was quite good, although the ending was a little meh. It was amazing to see Ebbets Field recreated.

So yeah, doing well in a Real Movie Theatre™ was a huge deal, at least to me.

This was not a huge deal, but quite fun nonetheless.

In other fun news, Juno came along to a birthday dinner for my mom's best friend. Another member of our party arrived after I did, and even though she was sitting next to me, she didn't realize Juno was there until I happened to mention it. Win.

She also came to the Dutch Masters exhibit at the DeYoung and was awesome. We met Sonja and Chief, and also went with my friend Julie and her guide dog, Honda. The dogs were all fantastic. Juno did such great blocking. The exhibit was crowded with clumps of people, and every time I went to stare at a painting for an extended time, I'd motion to Juno to block behind me. After about the second one, the little movement from my right hand was all I needed, and she'd swing herself around in a most wonderful fashion. The rear end awareness exercises we used to do continue to pay dividends.

Chief and Juno at the DeYoung (Honda only holds dog toys).

 And my mom's friend, Dona, finished the travel-mat prototype! It's slightly narrower than our old one, but I absolutely love the fabric and colors! We already have some ideas for improvements and I'm super excited about it. Now I just have to hope people buy them, cause otherwise I'll look like kind of an ass. We're going to try it out at the doctor's office on Monday.

Kaline on the new mat. If you look closely, you can see the silhouettes of dogs (and a few cats) in some of the dots!

Winter Break Update #1: Juno at the movies

The past couple weeks have been pretty light in terms of dog duties (we're talking dogs who don't belong to me). So I've been trying to rest and sleep more, as well as do various things with Juno and Kaline.

Juno's work has been going to the movies, which she's exceedingly great at. (Kaline, of course, is not so great.) I have hardly gone to the movies since we got Kaline, so it was kinda nice to go back. And of course it's always fantastic being out with Juno.

Almost always, the approach to the theatre and the theatre itself are crowded, so Juno does a lot of crowd work. I love watching her weave through all these people, barely turning her head even if they pass really close. She did great at the handicap buttons as well—she always bats them firmly and squarely with her paw. She is very precise about it. Kaline is working on that, haha.

Except for the last movie we went to, Django Unchained, each one had a line you had to wait in to get into the actual auditorium. Even with Junebug to block, I didn't need to be in those. We'd go hang out at a table until it was time to go in. Once, there were elementary-school-age kids racing around; Juno was totally unperturbed. She's a rock.

Juno waiting with me in the lobby, ignoring every distraction.

We'd go in and I'd set Juno up on her mat for the duration. For Django, she had to lap-up before settling down, because we'd come through a huge, pressing crowd and I was not doing well. She barely had to be told to leave the popcorn alone. At the first movie she almost got stepped on twice by these crazy people who decided that climbing the rail to the first row behind the disabled seats was a better idea than going up the stairs. Gaaah. After that happened, I always turned her light (the one on her Cloudchaser) on during the credits so people would know someone was there.

Juno at Lincoln, definitely the best movie we saw.

Juno at Parental Guidance on New Year's Eve.

Checking in on me after her lap-up at Django Unchained.

She also came to New Year's Eve dinner at Izzy's, a yummy steakhouse. She came along yesterday to Vino Santo, another restaurant that's just a little too nice for Kaline. (Unless the wee man has been sufficiently exhausted.)

Ah, Junebug is the best.

Christmas obedience class

Kaline demonstrates his Doberman comfort-seeking genes.

Today was our Christmas class at Stanford Shopping Center! We had a pretty good time. Kaline is used to the shopping center, but obviously today he was more distracted than normal since all his friends were there. His little buddy Lupo now has a snazzy bright red Ruffwear Cloudchaser—he looked so cute. Poor Kaline should've been wearing some sort of jacket. I thought we'd be mostly inside stores, but we turned out to be mostly outside between stores, and it was cold.

We always do Needless Markup (also known as Neiman Marcus) first, then disperse. We paraded through the first floor, went up the elevator in shifts—no one had any issues—then worked on group down stays right in front of the escalators. The dogs were freaking adorable. Whenever I got the chance, I'd work on auto-settling with Kaline. He did pretty well.

Kaline between Bean (Cairn Terrier) and Traci (German Shepherd).

L-R: Bollie (mixed breed), Rex (Golden Retriever), Bean (Cairn Terrier) and Kaline.

Back row, L-R: Gracie (yellow Labrador), QD (Border Terrier), Jessie (chocolate Labrador), and Bollie (mix). Front row, L-R: Phi (Sheltie), Percy (colored Bull Terrier), Sienna (terrier mix), Juno!!, Jockey (Norfolk Terrier), and Rex (Golden Retriever).

We meandered all over the shopping center, eventually running into our friend Sylvia (I've gotten to know her because her house is on the Black Dog Walk route) and her newest CCI puppy, Scotland! Scotland is a three-month-old Lab/Golden cross. Kaline was crazy about her. She is unspeakably cute, I must say. Sylvia and my dad really hit it off because they are from the same area of Pennsylvania, so we ended up standing around in the middle of the center for what seemed like hours.

How many more times do I have to pose with inanimate objects?

Being an adorable puppy himself, Kaline attracted child after child. And he was excellent with them. I was so proud. He did not jump on a single one, or even appear to think about jumping. He sat very nicely while they petted him, and went for little kisses whenever cheeks came in range. If the kids wanted to give one of the doggies a cookie, they got to visit the chow hound, Junebug, who gleefully slimed their hands as they held out treats for her.

We had an afternoon full of grooming, mostly for Kaline. Juno's toenails are fine if I grind them once every two weeks; Kaline's need to be ground (grinded?) intensively at least once a week. Probably twice if I was really a good dog mommy. So we did that, and then both of them got brushed. And then came Kaline's anti-favorite, the bath.

He still needs "help" getting in. He could, physically, jump in, but he won't, even if I put a rug in the bathtub for traction. He was okay after I helped him in. He was seriously pissed about being bathed in cool water though. I'm hoping the bath in the special sensitive-skin shampoo will help us get through the next week or so till his Paco collar gets here. The skin on his neck has been more flaky than normal lately, in certain spots. Ugh.

For the first time in a while, I accepted an invite to the movies from Dad. Then I agonized for a while about which dog to take. Kaline is more attuned to my psych stuff, but obviously is too young/untrained to really help with anything fibro-related. And he requires a lot more involvement in general. But I really wanted to get him the work, especially on settling. Then dinner got added into the mix, and I pretty much knew that that'd be too much for Kaline. Two hours lying quietly in a theatre, then a couple more hours lying under a table? Yeah, surrre.

So once I settled on Juno, I roped Dad into a Trader Joe's outing for Kaline. He worked the best he ever has in his head collar. He was paying attention, walking with me, responding quickly and enthusiastically to commands. He did hardly any sniffing. I had Dad run the cart by us, very close to Kaline, while he was both sitting and lying down. No problems. Dad walked by us and stomped loudly next to Kaline; he nudged his butt while he was in both sit and down stays; he did the bad-dog-hand-waving that Sonja and I like to play around with. Kaline was a little rock. And then he blocked wonderfully in line.

I put him on the treadmill at a trot for about 15 minutes to drain him before we left for the movies. Juno was perfect at both the movies and dinner. Kaline probably would've been fine at the movie, but oh man, he would've been way overstimulated at the restaurant. It was very crowded there, and we had to wend a very narrow path between oodles of tables to get to ours. Juno does not sniff people or tables, but let me tell you, Kaline sure would have! All at nose height—oh boy.

The one disappointing part of the evening (other than getting scolded for not indulging the curious people who ask intrusive questions) was realizing it was impossible for me to use the bathroom at the Guild Theatre. It was built in 1912, I think, so obviously it doesn't have to comply with the accessible bathrooms part of the ADA. It still sucked. The stalls were so tiny, no one with a medium-sized or larger SD—much less someone in a wheelchair—would have been able to fit. The bathroom itself was not large enough to accommodate a SD doing a down stay outside of the stall. And I couldn't even put her on an out of sight down stay in the tiny bathroom "lobby" because every time the door opened it would have hit her. I wrote them a kindly worded letter about the problem; I doubt there's much that can be done but it can't hurt to bring it to someone's attention.

Maybe I'll use Kaline training as an excuse to be bad and eat fast food tomorrow. Hehe. I loved using the McDonald's near Kepler's as a training ground for Juno when she first started training. Mmm, definitely a possibility.