Reusing stuff you already have

 Written on Wednesday:

Ember likes big toys.  You may or may not recognize this one.  In 2009/2010 when my son was deployed, this was "Rawlings" the basketball I tried to deflate to ship overseas to him.  I ended up ordering one directly delivered to his APO from Amazon, instead.  Rawlings, named because of "Wilson" in the movie Castaway, remains at my house, and when Ember started exploring the basement, out he came to play.

She can actually pick him up with her mouth and carry him around.

The photo on the right is me holding Rawlings in 2011.  That year I did a once a month (on the last day of the month) progress photo for a year, then followed up the next year, month by month, with a recreate of the same pose, showing the effect of fitness training while maintaining weight.

Written on Friday:

Thursday was a bit of a dumpster fire around here.  Ember not only refused to get into the car to go to the dog park, but she proceeded to tear into a bag of clover seed.  She also ate an apple core she found in a bush on our leash walk Thursday morning.  I sacrificed a cardboard box to her to keep her from barging into the cat's room while he was there.

On the plus side, we did "the big loop" on our leash walk for the first time, covering 1.24 miles total.  She would have been familiar with both the start and the end parts of this walk, but the connecting stretch was totally new to her.  The apple core was close to the beginning of the walk.  Perhaps the length of the walk contributed to her reluctance to want to go run with other puppies, too.

End of the day, I was feeling bummed and low energy and went after sugar in the kitchen.  I was also worried about my cousins in the Tampa, Florida area.  The one that I ran a half marathon with down there had a tree fall on her garage during a pretty awful night of Milton coming through.  Her mom fared OK, though, and no people in the family were injured, so that's always the good news.

Friday morning, Ember and I had a shorter morning walk.  As we were on the far corner, we came across a garage sale.  For sale, among other things, were three dog crates.

I saw the biggest of the three from across the street and wondered if it were large enough for her to easily sit inside, which is a requirement for several stages of "crate games".  Crate games is day 6.  It's also the place where I got stuck in the Recallers program.  Having a well trained Crate Games behavior is vital to so many later games in the program.

The photo is "after" I got it home.  The seller helped me collapse and load it into my little Dexter (Honda Fit), and asked if I had someone at home to help me unload it.  I said no, but that I was sure I could handle it, and I was right.  I reassembled it in my kitchen/dining area and put a couple of towels that I'd been using for Ember "hot zones" inside.

After letting Ember out of her original crate and working with familiarizing her with the big training one, we got in the car and went to the dog park, where she ran around with her doggie friends.

When we got home, I made us salads, and after she finished hers and I was eating my own, I heard those sounds of... impending loss of tummy contents.  Yep, she lost a whole tummy full!

Looked like something she picked up at the dog park (a beggin' strip?), plus some of her partially digested breakfast, assorted treats, and of course, her "salad".  Cleanup on aisle seven!  I did what any fur-mommy would do, went back through all the things that could have contributed to her upset tummy, including the apple core, her habit of inhaling EVERYTHING, and the car ride.

She was a little low energy after that.  She put herself to bed in the new crate, melting her mommy's heart.

She stayed there snoozing for 15-20 minutes before moving out to lay by the back door.  I had left the door open the whole time.

I sang her to bed in her plastic crate after a little, put a load of laundry in, and came upstairs to blog.

Life continues to be good in Emberville.  Spark on, everyone!