Entering the Holiday week

Visitors to my neighbors keep showing up.  I'm seeing more activity outdoors as the cars pile up on the street.

We had a cool summer morning on Sunday.  Cool enough to make wearing a sweatshirt comfortable.  

Ember and I went on a longer than usual walk.  Other dogs and people were out and about in the cool air, too.  She got pets even in the 6 a.m. hour and touched noses on leash with another leash walking dog.  Home safe, mom's breakfast, Dog TV calming her down, and into her crate at 7:30 a.m.

Mom then went about her cleanup routine:  poo patrol on the patio, take a load of laundry out of the dryer and upstairs to sort and fold.  Shake out the muddy mat.  Shake all the dirt off the tablecloth on the dining room table and smooth it out again.  

It was time to don the sweatshirt and go sit and read a chapter on the paver patio.  Peace!

Next was fixing the duct tape threshold that Ember had worried at.  I vacuumed the bits of carpet fragment that came with the morning's destruction.

The "ignore" / "game over" campaign continues, to stop the jumping up behavior related to Mommy, specifically.  "Mommy done", "Mommy not playing".  Knock wood, it seems to be working mostly.

Four more full days of "stay off the sod".  The back yard reopens on the 4th of July.  

I got up and took Ember for a water break and "last call" at 10 p.m. Saturday night.  She didn't need / want to pee and poo at all, but she really, really wanted that water break.  She went back to bed peacefully after a bit of time out on the patio.  There were a few fireworks booms in the distance, but she didn't alarm at any of them.

Sunday morning offered a peek of moon framed by the silhouette of the neighbor's tree beside their chimney in the 5 a.m. hour.  I breathed in the cool air and felt so at peace.  Ember laid at my feet, having let the kitty escape to his own space.

The detente of the deck.  Wary but respectful.

After puppy nap #1

We went on puppy leash walk #2.  Ember met Zack, the son of Fran, a gal I went through Jenny Craig with back in the day.  He lives just three houses away from me, and Fran comes over and helps with the yard work.  Zack gave Ember pets and belly rubs, and she was in heaven.

Then we walked the other way from walk #1, a shorter walk.  When we got back home, I realized I had marked down an event on my calendar.  There are only 3 days left for several petitions to gather signatures to get on the November ballot.  Three of these issues are ones I want to see on that ballot.  There was a drive-through petition signing starting at 11 a.m.

I asked Ember if she wanted to go on a car ride, and she got all excited.  She jumped right into the back seat and let me fasten her seat belt.  She settled down to the radio playing, and I cheerily speculated that maybe, just maybe, we were outgrowing the car sickness.

We got to the petition place, and I got out of the car.  It was cool enough that leaving the windows down and asking her to wait for mommy seemed reasonable.  I signed my name on all of the documents, then got back in the car.  I felt virtuous and good.  I drove us home, and into the garage.  I debated along the way stopping to get her a pup cup but did not do so.  I debated stopping at the lake to let her out to walk but did not do so.

Pulled into the garage, got myself together, and opened the back door.  Ember was being still, and let me unclip her seat belt, and then I noticed that she was in the process of... about to heave.  Sigh.  Breakfast chunks all over the place.  Poor little thing.  She didn't want to get out of the car, but when I told her "You're loose, jump down"... she did, stepping in the spilled tummy contents that made it to the garage floor.

On the way back into the house, she found the set aside child's toy, and picked it up to teethe on!  

I let her do so.  Poor baby!  Not too long after, she polished off every bite remaining in her food puzzle.  She also accepted three bites of my banana.  And she settled down into her crate for puppy nap #2.

Showing off my changing dental armaments, as I teethe!

I probably let her out of the crate "too soon".  She continued to nap for a while outside the crate, but the deal with outside the crate is that she can be distracted into wakefulness when she really needs more rest.

We went on a third leash walk, but I didn't turn on RunKeeper, so those who are tracking me there didn't "see" that walk.

After walk #3, Ember started tearing up the new duct tape.  I gave her the "leave it" extra high value treats to do so.  But she went right back at it.  I distracted her with fetch games.  But it seemed to me she was already hungry, so I fed her early.  

We watched a little dog trainer video on the couch in the family room, but when I got up to start cooking my supper, Ember started going after my feet and shoes and my pants legs.  I "fled" to my corner and stopped playing, but with cooking already started, I got her into her crate to start the evening puppy nap session before last call early, too.  By the time I finished my supper, she was snoring in the crate.

At this point, I'm about an hour ahead of the clock.  Sigh.  I'm thinking today's puppy handling mistake was not accounting for "coming off" of the high of Saturday with the big run with Carl.  I should have insisted on 3-hour crate naps, not 2-hour ones.  I don't know if adding more excitement (i.e. a stop for a pup cup or for an extra out of the car experience) would have helped, if in fact I'm right about tired, overexcited puppy.

Time to take a breath, and survive the evening/night.

Life is good.  Spark on!