The Spirit of Ollie

 

Sunday is a good day for honoring the spirit of Ollie.  Ollie was a lineated parakeet, who lived a brief life with my son's in-laws.  He was pampered and loved by these two retirees.  He rode Bob's leg as an elevator.  He dipped his crackers in Donna's water glass.  He watched bird videos on their phones, and mimicked the calls he heard, both on the videos and in the world around him.  He learned new songs from my daughter-in-law's cockatiels.  He even seemed to like it when I would whistle to him at family gatherings.  He will be missed.  Interestingly, a young Cardinal has been hanging around my house and my neighbor's the past week or so, and I have dubbed this bird "the spirit of Ollie".

ItsYerChoice and the Band-Aids

This morning a lightbulb went off in my brain about how to approach the Band-Aid stripping that Ember had been doing of late.  While I do consider it a clever thing, it's not a behavior I wish to encourage.  She had been doing it particularly during the ItsYerChoice game, when I was focusing on whether to close the hand holding the treats and ignoring unwanted efforts on her part, but she seemed to have concluded that some of that behavior was a precursor to getting down to the business of earning the treats.  Maybe she even thought it was part of what she needed to do.

Unfortunately, I can't read the puppy's mind.  But I can control the resources.  My first effort was to change hands and close the left hand around the treats.  She still tried to strip the bandage on my left arm.  She ignored the closed hand.  So I put the treats back in the bowl and put the bowl in the cupboard.

I waited a few minutes, then tried again.  Same thing, she went for the bandage.  Same thing, I put the bowl away again.  

Third time's a charm.  When I got the bowl out a few minutes later, for the third time, Ember planted her bum on the floor with her nose a good foot away from my treat-holding hand.  She got right down to business, ignoring the distraction of the bandages, and earned every treat I had allotted to the session.  We shall see if this "sticks" or if I have to repeat the lesson tomorrow.

Lunch with "the kids"

It was a last-minute decision, but since my son's friend had connected with the car through me, I accepted the invitation to "stop by" where they were meeting for lunch and share a slice of their artisan pizza.  Yum!  

He purchased my niece's car, and now should be about halfway across Iowa on the way home.  He brought his partner along, but she doesn't drive a stick shift, so he is handling all the driving.  I heard a few stories I hadn't before, both from my son, and from his friend.

A very pleasant interlude in the day.  I tucked Ember into the big crate for puppy nap #2 while I went.

Hottest day of the week

It got up to 102℉.  When I got home from the luncheon, I let Ember outside, for the usual reasons.  She is a smart cookie.  She knows that water comes from the hose.  She picked it up by the end and shook it to try to make the water come out.

I obliged by turning it on, which made a little puddle in the grass that she played with for a while.  I got out the puppy pools, and tried to run some water into them, but Ember would have none of that game.  She wanted to drag those things around on the patio and the grass.  She even dragged one of them under the deck.

In any case, we had no leash walk today, due to harness behavior and heat.  But we did get a couple of good training sessions in for ItsYerChoice, Collar Grab game, and a solo recall, but not the restrained kind.

And we kept working on the "hot spot" training, too.  For supper, I tried out canned food for her for the first time.  As expected, she liked it and gobbled it right up.  I only fed her half the can, because... transitions in diet should be gradual.

On the biting front:

Only one new bandage today, on a finger, as it happens.  It was clearly an "oops", a collision of a tooth on my finger as my hand was holding a ball, not an intentional bite.  

My skin is still 71 years old, and I still bleed easily.  No surprise there.  But I'm calling it an optimistic day.  

The week ahead leads into the Labor Day weekend.  How did that happen?  The year is just flying by!  In September I have an eye appointment and a dental appointment, and toward the end, the plan is for Carl to come stay while the kids travel to a wedding in Kansas.

The kids will be having one of their grill outs next Sunday.  Ember and Carl will have their first play session since they both got off of "restricted activity".  

Ember will have her puppy class on Friday.  I am debating with myself about whether to schedule another private trainer session for her before that, so I can get some more restrained recall assistance. 

Life is good. Spark on!