It got busy this week! Lots going on at home, work, and otherwise as well. Life My daughter's school decided to close on Friday, along with several other schools in the area, with some being closed from Thursday. Not enough staff. The school had been on a mask mandate since the beginning of the pandemic, dropping it only for one week when the pandemic had appeared to have stabilized last year. And yet, they dropped the mandate completely at the beginning of this year, when cases were exponentially rising, only to bring it back again starting next week. I've gone from being very annoyed to angry to feeling fatigue in these first two weeks already. I won't lie - we all mask around here and try to avoid going where we don't have a need to be in, and still, we are not taking anything close to the extreme precaution we all took at the beginning of the pandemic. I cannot and don't want to keep my kids home - I have at least that much faith in the schools' precautions
It's been ages since I did the last Salon post and I feel pretty clueless around here for a change. I've been up since two hours ago and the hour hand is only just slowly making its way to the 8 o'clock mark. Dogs and their early morning urges! It's been two weeks since we got Rue, and it's been a lot of revelations, learnings, changes, fun, and anxiety since then. The first week was all lovey-dovey. We loved the dog, she loved us. It was all a big happy family. We were pretty relieved that Rue was turning out to be low maintenance. As with things like these, once the honeymoon ended, the nightmares started. One day I came home to see that she had pretty much upended the recycle bin and started chewing on bottles and cans and strewn the litter in the hall. The neatofreak in me had a terrible panic attack. That same evening she ran out of the house (to do her business) but she didn't return back when I called her. Anyways, the point is, we found she has separation anxiety and I have seen pretty much all the symptoms in her - she follows me around all the time, she hates sitting alone, she jumps over-excitedly when I return from work, she chews crazily, she barks madly, etc. Did I really say low maintenance?
Still, she's already become such a core part of our home that I don't remember much about how things "used to be". I'm just hoping that we can get her to reduce her barking (I sit terrified every day that some neighbor will go and complain. *fingers crossed*) Right now, she barks at every Tom, Dick, Mary and their dog. Drives me mad!
At the moment, I'm looking forward to a lazy Sunday and plenty of reading, and some barking frenzy during Rue's training class that we have today.
Comments
I think it takes months to really cement the dog/owner relationship and for the dog to get into the groove of what is expected of him or her.
Hang in there.
:)