Gross title, I know, and after I haven't posted for a couple weeks! I'll get around to explaining the title in a minute. First, I hope everyone had a happy and healthy Turkey Day! We did - we were at Oakwood Ranch, of course, celebrating with the Wood's and the Harmon's. It was a typical thanksgiving, with the gourmet meal cooked by Mom - not without some headache, of course, and her thinking everything didn't turn out perfect when it actually did. Dad was still a pain in the butt, yelling at mom to prepare appetizers that he hardly eats any more. He's had gastric bypass surgery, in case I hadn't mentioned that. It was little Mia's first Thanksgiving, and she could eat some of the fixings with all four of her teeth. And sadly, it was the first Thanksgiving wtihout Grandma, so no green bean and mushroom soup casserole. Mom said she didn't make it because it was only Grandma's fav, but I loved it too! Maybe next year we can make it again. While we missed having Grandma at the table, it all comes full circle; she got to celelbrate 91 Thanksgivings, and now the countown for little Mia begins at #1!
The rest of the weekend went well, it rained on Friday which was kind of a bummer, since I brought my walking shoes and wanted to take a hike with Ollie. Instead we went and saw Walk the Line. Great movie!! While I'm on the topic of movies, Cory & I rented Crash last night, and that was an amazing movie as well. Perfect ensemble piece with a lot of coverage of important topics. Highly recommended.
Okay, onto the anal gland talk...(I know you've been waiting patiently!). You know how we've begun our hardcore training with Ollie for his child aggression, right? First, we started last week, and hes doing really well. It took him a few nights (sleepless ones for us), but he's now completely used to his crate in the garage and being separated from us. Taking him to Oakwood for T-day was a bit of a backslide in his training, since we were obviously breaking the rules of not taking him off our property for the first few weeks of boot camp. See, he's supposed to get used to his routine without the distractions like other dogs and people. We decided to give him some freedom when we were down there, because it wouldn't have been easy to keep him away from playing wtih the other dogs. He showed a little improvement while there; he let my dad pet him, and he was super obedient when we told him to sit and stay. He would even stay laying down while the other dogs wrestled in front of him, I knew he wanted to go play too but he listed to me. Anyway, by day three, he had started to backslide a bit. He growled at Allison and my dad while in the kitchen. So we had the great idea to test him a bit (I was going to take the opportunity to correct him) by having Allison leave the room and reenter with a hat on to see if he growled. Well, she took it a step further and put on a coat and a cane, and came hobbling toward him, banging the cane on teh ground. Wonderful performance, he bought it hook line and sinker. He thought for sure she was the grim reaper coming to kill him, he growled and tried to get away, but I corrected him and made him stay put. So instead, he involuntarily expressed his anal glands all over the kitchen floor. If you don't know what an anal gland is, be thankful. It wasn't big a messy like poo, but ten times as stinky. At least I have a cold and my nose is plugged up, so I didn't get the brunt of it. Anyway, lesson learned; I jumped a little too far ahead in our training! It's back to normal now that we are back in Fremont, and I'll be sure to take it slow with him to not have any more anal leakage. ;)
Enough anus talk, back to leftovers! Hope all is well out there cyberland people reading...I'll be back soon.
Anal glands, I know thee well. My girls have to be expressed at least once a week--they produce too much musk. Yuck. I didn't realize Ollie had some child agression issues. I'll definitely have to read back a bit.