Sometimes the only thing for it is pulling weeds!

Thursday morning was a bit on the "exciting" side in Emberville.  Mildly, mind you, not as in total emergency.

Let us begin with "I slept well".  That's always a good start to the day.  I did the cat chores, then I let Ember out.  

I fed her "chow" when she first came out of the crate.  She was plenty hungry, having last eaten her supper around 3:30 - 4:00 p.m., before Alicia came over.  I gave her a "last call" about 8 p.m., so the bathroom needs hadn't kicked in just yet.

I put down kibble after she finished the 1/2 can, and she indicated "out", so we went out in the 5:30 a.m. darkness.  I could tell that she did her business and approximately where in the yard.  It is one of the most pleasant times of the day, in terms of temperature, and the moon and stars are out, so we stayed outside for a while.

Then I had this bright idea to go hunting for that plop in the dark with my phone flashlight.  OK, you experienced dog people, you can see it coming now.  In my hunt, I managed to put my foot in it.  Literally.  Squish!

Shined the flashlight down, and my eyes and nose confirmed it.  There was still enough solid left on the ground for me to do my best to pick it up and discard it in a poo bag.  Which I did.  With my brain trying to figure out "what do I do next".  Wiped the foot on the grass, best can do, but you all know running shoes have lots of nooks and crannies in the soles.

The plan became:  entice the dog into her X-Pen inside and change shoes, setting the offending one in the garage for later cleaning.  Here comes the excitement.  I started executing this plan.  There was an old pair of now dried shoes in the garage, and I put them on.

But Ember has a long memory.  When I let her out of the X-Pen and she saw those shoes on my feet?  She did what she used to do whenever I would change shoes or pants or put on a jacket or sweatshirt!  

This is the first rip she put in the shoe.  

Then when I told her "We don't chew on Mommy" and tried to show her it was me, she moved her mouth to my pantleg, then gradually up, eventually lightly holding onto my hands.

What to do?  I opted for "show her this is Mommy"!  I reached down and untied the shoe, then removed my foot from it.

She dashed off into the X-Pen with the shoe in her mouth.  I closed the gate and calmly decided to just clean up the blue shoe right now and let her have the older shoe.

Sigh.  

Once I was back in the blue shoes, the chewing on feet was over and done with.  We did not go on a leash walk Thursday morning.  We did go play chase the ball in the backyard.  We played a little bit of tug, too.  And inside we played a bit of "ItsYerChoice" with cheese.

By the time my breakfast was interrupted two or three times to distract Ember from the stair-step, and she was behaving well and put down for puppy nap #1, there was nothing for it but to go pull weeds (top photo), put away the toys, and consign the now unusable right shoe to the garbage.

Sigh.

Clearly, we still have work to do with desensitizing Ember to mom changing apparel!

Life is still good.  Spark on!