If you’re new, here’s the beginning of the Tulip chronicles.
Day 1
Circles. Not sitting.
Day 2
CIRCLES. NOT SITTING.
Day 3
Redford must have a bellyache because he asks to go out five times in the night. Which means I’m up ten times, letting him out and letting him in.
I come home after work intending to walk in circles but instead lie down on my bed for two hours. It’s the Wednesday of EOGs, after all.
When I check on Tulip outside, she has barfed a huge pile of dog food and dirt (she’s taken to eating the soil out of my potted plants) onto the deck. She won’t eat her supper. Her stomach is gurgling and sloshing.
Day 4
The plague has entered its second day. I go out to the yard and find it punctuated with runny piles of mess. Neither Tulip nor Redford have any interest in their breakfast. Violet remains unafflicted.
Nelly comes over. Her situation has changed again, and adoption of Tulip is once again a possibility. Despite her gastrointestinal woes, Tulip luxuriates all over our guest. I show Nelly how we walk in circles. Tulip even sits once or twice! (But that may just be because she’s exhausted from the scourge.)
Tulip eats her supper begrudgingly, Redford only when I pull apart pieces of poached chicken and stir them into his food.
Day 5
The plague has lifted! Everybody’s back on his or her food! Yay! No vet trips!
I go out to see the Durham Bulls game in the evening. When I come home, I walk into my dark house and sense that something is off. To the best of my ability, I’ll recreate Tulip’s diary from the hours I was gone.
6:15 Aw for god dog dog! In the kennel again?
6:20 Amy secured the front wall of the kennel, but what if I yank on the back wall? Victory! I’m free! I can do anything! I’ll look out the living room window! and sniff in the kitchen! and run around the house all by myself!
Or.
Or.
Or this bed looks nice with all these pillows. K, I’m good.
10:45 Hark! Amy returns from her excursion.
Later, when I get in bed, she tries to climb up there with me. When I push her off, she’s like, “No, really, it’s OK. I was up here earlier, and it was totally fine.”
Day 6
The plague has not lifted. Tulip blargs her dog-food-and-dirt special onto my bedroom floor.
Guess who greets me at the door when I get home from the Carolina Phoenix game. I’ve got to invest in a new crate.
Day 7
Tulip hurls twice on the deck, but then she eats her breakfast. Hm.
In the evening, we head out for session 2 of Feisty Fido class. Tulip’s nervous tooting problem is exacerbated by this week’s bubble guts. The drive is unpleasant.
Though the first session was held in the parking lot of a vet’s office, the rest are to be at a lake in Raleigh “for real life effect”, according to the literature. More interactions, more chances for correction and learning, I suppose.
I park in the wrong parking lot, and by the time I figure it out, I’m 15 minutes late. I drive to the right one and ask various strangers if they’ve seen a dog training class. They all indicate the direction the pack had gone. A boy says, “It’s gonna take you a while to catch up to them though.” We walk fast. Tulip stays right at my heel. A while later, a dude says, “If you run, you might catch ’em.” So I run. Probably a mile, all told. Neither Tulip nor I are built for speed, and it appears she enjoys running about as much as I do; she drags behind me the whole time.
We finally come upon the pack because they’re working on a stay drill. I’m pouring sweat. Tulip’s tired, but she’s also EXCITED about the other doggies. She stays pretty well, but when the group turns to walk back to the parking lot, she’s too keyed up. I have to walk her in circles a bunch of times and do 87,000 tugs on her leash.
New lessons: (1) The trainer tells me to tug toward myself (essentially bumping her into my leg), not back, which is what I had been doing. And (2) I ask him about the sitting problem, that she’ll sit with the treat inside but not on the leash outside. “So take some treats outside. I’m not against cheating to win,” he replies. “Just make sure you wean her off the treats as soon as it’s nailed down.”
Only two noxious farts on the drive home. She must’ve worked most of it out during the run.
Day 5. Comedy gold. Whole thing, really. But day 5, damn.
what he said.