skyisadog's blog

Our Three-Month Anniversary

Sky today

Huh. It definitely seems longer than three months. Our progress on everything has been great, and we have almost no problems at all... she's happy, healthy, funny, fun, affectionate, playful, sweet, loving, wonderful. The only issue that we need to deal with now - and it's not an easy one - is separation anxiety. We have possibly a Perfect Storm of circumstances that make this a difficult situation. First of all, it's a condition that is apparently not unusual for rescue dogs, and compounding this is the fact that I work from home, and we take her with us almost everywhere, so she hasn't had a chance to become accustomed to spending time without one or both of us... Totally our fault. She's my little shadow, and follows me everywhere, except for once or twice a day when she goes to take a short sunbath in the courtyard, or if she decides that I'm just staying up way too late, and decides to go off to bed by herself. So, this is a thorny problem to deal with, and will make house training seem like cake (which it was, actually).

Complicating matters is that we plan to take a transatlantic trip of a few weeks in the Fall, and we hope to have friends staying here to care for her, and want to make that as painless as possible for both Sky and friends. So. I need to start going out without her for short periods, and gradually lengthening that time, and try to assure her that everything will be okay if she isn't with us every second. Tough one.

You realize you've become the crazy dog lady when...

• To start with the most obvious: your dog has a blog
• You decide you need to go shopping for a toy box, for the dog.
• You've had your dog's teeth cleaned, but not your own
• Your dog wears more jewelry than you do
• You go on a romantic date with your husband... and you mostly talk about the dog. Plus you bring the dog along.
• You find yourself slapping your husband's hand when he tries to steal some of the food you're cooking for the dog
• You haven't been to a hairdresser in years, but after trying to give the dog a haircut, you decide you better just take her to the groomer
• Everyone in the neighborhood knows your dog's name, but not yours
• You start shopping only at the places that let you bring your dog in; extra shopping at the places that also pet her and give her a treaty
• You start wearing only clothes with pockets so you can always have your handy-dandy plastic poop bags at the ready
• You hate the heat, and it's 100 degrees outside, but you still cuddle up on the couch with your husband - and the dog draped over both of you - to watch TV
• You used to try to catch "CSI", or "Lost", or reruns of "The X-Files"; now you never miss an episode of "It's Me or the Dog"
• All the photos on your flash card are pictures of the dog
• You spend your time writing lists of Crazy Dog Lady signs and symptoms

GoogleDog?

I really love Google. I love the search engine, I love my Gmail, I love Google Notebook, and now I love Google Calendar.

Google as useful pet app

These last couple of weeks I've realized that I need more than the Vet booklet to keep track of things I want or need to remember for Sky, and decided that I needed to buy a diary/agenda sort of thing... but I sort of dragged my feet, because I didn't feel like spending 20 Euros on a cute diary from the local bookstore with the year half over, and I didn't feel like using some hideous wall calendar or other free thingy. Then I remembered Google Calendar, which I had checked out long ago, but didn't really have a use for. Great idea! Much better than a paper version because you can search, you can look at everything at once by day/week/month, as well as four-day period, and an agenda list - and you can have it send you alerts for things you need to remember. Perfect!

one view of my Google calendar

So, for example, if I make an entry for each time Sky is weighed at the Vet, and put "Sky Weight - (howevermany) kilos", and I want to search and see her whole weight history, I just enter "Sky" and "weight" into the search field, and each of those will come up in a list. Very, very handy. And you can have as many calendars as you like, so you can have one just for your pet if you'd like, and be as obsessive or as casual as you'd like about what you keep track of. I have Vet visit information, baths, medication (just eye ointment at the moment - to see about clearing up her very persistent eye goobers), anti-flea/tick applications; diet info; weight info; Vet blood test results; vaccinations. And alerts for things I need to remember. I love.

I also love Google Notebook, because I am always coming across internet information I want to keep track of and sort into useful piles, and bookmarks just don't cut it for me for various reasons. So I have several Google Notebooks - one for recipes, one for art and images, one for health-related items, one for Greece and Athens related info, one for web design and CSS, one for stuff my husband would be interested in, one for books, and of course - one for Sky. In her notebook, I have several folders: Vet (things to ask my Vet about; articles to send her, etc.), Grooming, Food, Health, Training, Local resources, and Blog (for things I might want to include here). Very helpful for taming information overload and tucking away all sorts of things I'll want to refer to.

Made me LOL

Okay, The Poodle (and dog) blog made me laugh today, with Jan's "Real Classified Ads from Real Papers" entry:

• For Sale -- Eight puppies from a German Shepperd and an Alaskan Hussy.
• FREE YORKSHIRE TERRIER. 8 years old. Hateful little bastard. Bites!
• FREE PUPPIES: 1/2 Cocker Spaniel, 1/2 sneaky neighbor's dog.
• FREE PUPPIES.. Mother, AKC German Shepherd. Father, Super Dog...able to leap tall fences in a single bound.
• FOUND DIRTY WHITE DOG. Looks like a rat. Been out a while. Better be a big reward.
• STAR WARS JOB OF THE HUT - $15
• GERMAN SHEPHERD 85 lbs. NEUTERED. SPEAKS GERMAN. FREE.
• Great Dames for sale.
• Dog for sale: eats anything and is fond of children.
• 2 female Boston Terrier puppies, 7 wks old, Perfect markings, 555-1234. Leave mess.
• Shawawa pups for sale, from cute and intelligent parents
• Lost: small apricot Poodle. Reward. Neutered. Like one of the family.

I was initially puzzled by the "Shawawa pups for sale" - after all, pretty much every time I search for anything related to dogs, I run into new breeds I've never heard of before... But a search for "Shawawa" only turned up a city in the Congo. Finally, the coffee kicked in: Chihuahua. Chihuahua. Duh. Cute and intelligent, indeed. :)

And speaking of funny pet-related classified ads, I was forced (forced!) to look up this old one, in case anyone reading this blog was living in cave for a few years and never happened across it:

I wonder how it turned out