Straight Up
This week Gretchen turned 14 weeks old. What have we learned/gained so far? Her ears (both of them) finally stick straight up.
As the day goes along, they get tired or something and the tips start to droop. Though with each passing day, they get stronger and straighter. We kind of miss the floppy tips. We've also learned how to sleep the whole night through or at least we learned what it takes to sleep the entire night.
It was really quite simple. We moved her crate into our bedroom. The hard part was removing the door to fit her crate in our room and not just temporarily. The door has to stay off as long as the crate is in there. Jen and I are of the philosophy that bedrooms don't need to be very big if all you do is sleep in them. The part we never considered was exactly how many would be sleeping in our room. We're up to one cat, two adults and two dogs. Unless we get a queen bunk bed, I think we're done. Now if I could just stop the 7am meetings with India, I might actually get to enjoy the peaceful sleep in my own bed.
Hmmm other things learned... Gretchen (CJ too now) can sit and stay with her full food bowl in front of her until I say it's ok to eat. It's not like I make her wait hours and hours, but it's nice to be able to put the bowl down without being attacked. She's also learned the basics like sit, come, and drop.
Bad things learned... peeing on herself in her crate makes her smelly. That was after three and a half hours. There is tastier crap in the yard to eat then the treats I offer to get her not to eat the crap in the yard. She's been eating nearly everything she comes across since we got her, but this week has been particularly trying. She's like a little Hoover with her snout to the ground sucking up, chewing and swallowing whatever nasties she finds. At first I would offer her a treat and ask her to drop whatever it was (positive reinforcement). That worked fine for a few days. Now she just stares me down in defiance thoroughly enjoying whatever piece of junk she's found to eat. She nearly forgets to go to the bathroom outside with distractions of crap to eat. Maybe that explains the crate peeing? Grabbing her by the collar and cleaning out her mouth with my finger does nothing to teach her eating crap is bad (negative reinforcement). It just makes her eat stuff further from my reach - basically avoiding me.
Anyone want a really cute, sort of trained, serious pain in my ass right now? I guess I should at least try coating the yard in tobasco before I give up and give her away.
- b
As the day goes along, they get tired or something and the tips start to droop. Though with each passing day, they get stronger and straighter. We kind of miss the floppy tips. We've also learned how to sleep the whole night through or at least we learned what it takes to sleep the entire night.It was really quite simple. We moved her crate into our bedroom. The hard part was removing the door to fit her crate in our room and not just temporarily. The door has to stay off as long as the crate is in there. Jen and I are of the philosophy that bedrooms don't need to be very big if all you do is sleep in them. The part we never considered was exactly how many would be sleeping in our room. We're up to one cat, two adults and two dogs. Unless we get a queen bunk bed, I think we're done. Now if I could just stop the 7am meetings with India, I might actually get to enjoy the peaceful sleep in my own bed.Hmmm other things learned... Gretchen (CJ too now) can sit and stay with her full food bowl in front of her until I say it's ok to eat. It's not like I make her wait hours and hours, but it's nice to be able to put the bowl down without being attacked. She's also learned the basics like sit, come, and drop.
Bad things learned... peeing on herself in her crate makes her smelly. That was after three and a half hours. There is tastier crap in the yard to eat then the treats I offer to get her not to eat the crap in the yard. She's been eating nearly everything she comes across since we got her, but this week has been particularly trying. She's like a little Hoover with her snout to the ground sucking up, chewing and swallowing whatever nasties she finds. At first I would offer her a treat and ask her to drop whatever it was (positive reinforcement). That worked fine for a few days. Now she just stares me down in defiance thoroughly enjoying whatever piece of junk she's found to eat. She nearly forgets to go to the bathroom outside with distractions of crap to eat. Maybe that explains the crate peeing? Grabbing her by the collar and cleaning out her mouth with my finger does nothing to teach her eating crap is bad (negative reinforcement). It just makes her eat stuff further from my reach - basically avoiding me.
Anyone want a really cute, sort of trained, serious pain in my ass right now? I guess I should at least try coating the yard in tobasco before I give up and give her away.
- b
posted by JenBob at
9:30 PM
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