General Ramblings

Earl is of the age where she is on the absolute cusp of disbelief when it comes to Santa. Seven is such a weird age. Half of her friends at school no longer believe and are doing their darndest to ruin it for her, too. Little haters. They suck. The other half are still holding into the Santa thing with both fists, doing their best to plug their fingers in their ears and la-la-la-not-listening their way until Christmas, lest they be caught not believing and somehow be docked on Christmas morning. Those are the little Mulders – the little I Want to Believers.

These days, there’s not just the whole Santa rigamarole for parents to maintain (if they so choose, but we won’t get into the parents that refuse to perpetuate what the rest of us are trying to sell – they only make our jobs harder! (but if you’re reading this, I love you anyway)), there’s the damn Elf on the Shelf phenomenon.

Now, I’m absolutely not saying we need to ditch The Elf. The Elf is sometimes a total behavior savior. I get the best behavior our of Earl this time of year merely by invoking the name of our beloved scout elf, Pink.  Hence the reason why, after a long ride home yesterday during which Earl went on and on and on and friggen ON about the elf, TechPapa and I didn’t bat an eye or catch a breath before sending her out with her friends while we dug up the elf in the attic.

At least, that was the plan.

(Yes, we should have dug it out before leaving town.  Shut it.)

My friends, I give you the four most dreaded words to the mother of a Child on the Cusp:

“I hid him…somewhere.”

Meanwhile, Earl is running around like a chicken with her head cut off with two very excited friends all looking for her elf.  Who we couldn’t find.  TechPapa and I were slinging decoration boxes out of the attic left and right, frantically digging while trying to act like this incredible burst of activity after a five hour drive was completely normal and to be expected.  What?  Us?  We’re not doing anything.  We just decided to decorate for Christmas before we even unloaded the car.  Keep looking.  Nothing to see here.

Which was the problem.  We could not find the elf!

I finally said to heck with the digging and the slinging and took off in the car to Books-a-Million to procure a NEW Elf on the Shelf.  And in a moment of brilliance and simultaneous utter stupidity, I bought a girl elf because Earl had expressed her wishes that Pink (who is was a boy) be a girl.  Great!  Two birds with one stone!  Replacement elf and elf of the preferred gender!  Mom for the WIN!

Except, as I realized on the way home, Pink couldn’t just VANISH and be replaced by a new elf!  How the heck was I going to explain THAT?

Cue frantic development of harebraned plan and recruitment of friends to help me carry out an insane scheme.  I needed someone with neat, legible handwriting and proficient spelling skills to write a note from the Elf Reassignment Department explaining that Pink (who had been in sleep training because he kept oversleeping and forgetting to report to Santa last Christmas – an issue documented in last year’s letter from Santa) has been reassigned to a more suitable daytime position at the Toy Development and Deployment Department.  He was very sad to leave his former post as Earl’s elf, but here’s this new girl elf to replace him!  Hooray!

I immediately thought of Heather and TPO.  Heather must have been unconscious or something because she wasn’t answering her texts, but TPO did, and, after I breathlessly explained the entire conspiracy, carefully detailing what I needed her to do, she did what any really good friend would do: She made me feel like a complete idiot: “I certainly don’t mind doing it, but wouldn’t a typewritten letter be, I don’t know, more official?”

Well, DUH.

So I unboxed our new elf, hid her in the car, consoled a sobbing Earl for an hour and a half over Pink’s forgetting her or not loving her and how now she didn’t have an elf or the Christmas Spirit because Pink always brought her Christmas Spirit, then once she was finally asleep, pulled up Photoshop to design an official looking logo and hatch my evil genius plan.

I am nothing if not an overly dramatic overachiever who specializes in overkill.

But she bought it!  And she’s already named the new elf Julia (who, thanks to Pinterest, has some big ol’ plans for this holiday season).

Now we just have to make sure she doesn’t find the wayward Pink in a box of decorations somewhere.  I’d hate to have to fake a coroners report stating he went to check on Julia’s progress and got trapped in a box of unfluffed garland and suffocated.

On Star Wars Day, we got a dog.  This wasn’t our first dog; we have two Cavaliers (three if you count my mother’s) already.  No, this was a new puppy.  A sweet little 8 (maybe 10?  Who knows?) week old lab (“She sure looks purebred to me!” the girl at the shelter said all confident and perky) (hint: not a purebred lab. has developed a shihtzu underbite. dna proves it.).  A little rambunctious, but, look!  She’s tiny!  She runs UNDER our little 20 pound short-legged Cav!  How CUTE!

I mean, really.  Could you resist this face?

So you understand how I was screwed at first sight, right?  Yeah.

Getting a third dog ranks among the top 5 most insane things I have ever done.

TechPapa was all gung ho.  “Yes!” he said, from out of town, when I sent him the shelter’s glamour shot, “Go get her!”  I gave him 15 chances to say no.  I practically BEGGED him to tell me no.  But did he?  Obviously not.

Not even 36 hours after first seeing her picture, she was ours.  Helluva impulse buy adoption.

Earl was smitten the moment she saw the sweet little puppy in the kennel.  And the puppy adored Earl.  The Humane Society called her Coco.  Earl insisted on Olivia.  After the cartoon pig.  Which means our dog has her own obnoxious little singsong theme song!  Awesome!

Olivia immediately fell for Quinn, our Ruby Cav.  Quinn, on the other hand, immediately learned to just put up with Olivia.  After all, the Black and Tan Rhett (the smallest) is and always will be the Alpha, and that was settled at first sniff.  Quinn begrudgingly took the puppy under his wing and began to teach her the ways of the house, like how to use the doggy door, where we stored the food, how to open the playroom door, and how to pee and poop in the most opportune places on the patio simply to irk Papa.

See the size difference?  Our cute little puppy!  Next to the 25 lb Quinn and the 20 lb Rhett.  She’s so SMALL!  So tiny!  So innocent!  So cute!  And her paws!  They’re so LITTLE!  How can she possibly ever be that big?

And then one day, the paws unfurled like umbrellas.  And kept unfurling.  You know that old Lily Tomlin flick “The Incredible Shrinking Woman?”  Olivia was like that, only in reverse, before our very eyes.

Suddenly, this was life.  A big dog with an earflop and a constantly photobombing child attached at the hip.

OMG, she’s such a sweetheart and completely patient with Earl (with the undying gratitude of the Cavs who were, quite frankly, ready to be left alone for a while).  Inseparable, these two.  But Olivia was growing by leaps and bounds, and her brain wasn’t quite adjusting to her size.  She thought she was still that tiny little girl, when in fact…

…Hi there!  Just take up the entire front seat of my Explorer, why don’t you?

Life was getting to be a challenge.  She wouldn’t listen, didn’t come when called.  I couldn’t walk her because she would nearly yank my arm off no matter which leash/collar/harness combination I used.  She thought she was still a lapdog, but was also quite aware of her ability to reach anything and everything on tabletops and countertops.

We’d done some clicker training early on with an excellent trainer, but Olivia quickly learned that if we didn’t have a clicker and a treat in hand, she was still in charge.  So I started doing some research.

At the Balancing Act Roadshow in Charlotte, I saw a guy walking around, weaving in and out of an insane number of people with a dog by his side.  Off leash! The dog was LEASHLESS but stuck by this guy like he was on a 2′ lead.  Right there.  Ignoring any and all distractions.  DUDE!  I WANT THAT!

I managed to tenuously keep the name in my head until I got home and could Google aimlessly until I saw a logo that sparked a memory.  Eureka!  I had found them!

I immediately jumped up, clicked my heels together, shouted “Eureka,” and promptly committed myself to 15 new projects putting dog training at the bottom of the pile.

Of course, things weren’t going to get better on their own.

In mid-October, I called Turk Akbay of Off Leash Dog Training in Charlotte and set up a consultation.  He saw potential, and TechPapa and I didn’t even have to talk about it beyond an exchanged nod before we were signing her up for JumpStart™ Training.  She would go on October 23rd.  Well, she would have gone on the 22nd, but the groomer was coming on the 23rd, and if I was going to send my puppy off for 1-2 weeks, I was going to make sure she was all cleaned up and presentable.

(Note aforementioned shihtzu underbite.)

Olivia was ready.  I was pumped.  Earl was devastated.  To the point that she told her second grade teacher the next day she needed to talk to the school counselor to deal with her grief.

Drama?  Huh?  I have no idea where she gets that….

Fortunately, Turk, his wife Jill, and the rest of the Off Leash crew were incredibly understanding and posted pictures of our sweet Livvy every single day on their Facebook page for Earl to see.  At the end of the first week, they even sent us a card from Olivia updating us on her progress.

Today, 12 days later, we trekked to the U.S. National Whitewater Center to meet Turk and a few other dogs to pick Olivia up, then go on a short hike and swim (for the dogs).  During the outing, he showed us the ins and outs of her training, helped her begin to transition from listening to him to listening to us (primarily me, but by the time we left, TechPapa and Earl were even being listened to from time to time!), and showed us how amazing it can be to have a dog that will listen…even while being off leash!  I would have taken pictures, but I was too busy being amazed at my dog.

Talk about freedom!  We’re a long way from done, but Turk has a lifetime guarantee on his training, and we have a few upcoming home lessons, then group lessons to continue her growth as an absolutely awesome dog.

I think she also grew 6″ while she was gone, but I could be exaggerating.  Although the perspective on this picture doesn’t really help convince me otherwise.

I swear her head’s really not bigger than Earl’s, but dog has gotten bigger!

This afternoon and evening have been wonderful.  Earl had friends over, and Olivia didn’t jump all over them.  She didn’t bark at every little leaf.  She mostly came when called (as I said, there’s a bit of a transition period), and she’s learning to incorporate her training into the rules of our house.  Tonight, we had steak for dinner, and she stayed in her place for the longest time.

Honestly, I was completely impressed.  And I completely understood when, with a string of drool dangling from her mouth, she did an about face and slinked out the dog door to sit on the porch until we were done.

Olivia, dear, I really don’t blame you.  That was, perhaps, a bit cruel of me.  But you handled it like a champ!  I can’t wait to see what you can do as we continue on this training journey together!

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Disclaimer:  This is NOT a paid or sponsored or even requested review.  This is completely based off of my own experience and my own desire to spread the word about how awesome the folks at Off Leash Dog Training in Charlotte, NC, are.  If you have a great dog you love, but needs some work, you need Turk!

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Great!  Thanks!  I think.  But I digress.

You know that awkward friend you have who never seems interested in doing something unless you practically beg her to go?  The one who makes you absolutely batty because you want to be her friend, but she just makes it so damn hard?  She wears you out with her self-deprecation and inability to believe in her own awesomeness.  And then, then, oh my god, when you finally get her to agree to do something and you start to have a conversation with her?  She gets all Penelope on you and somehow manages to make herself the topic of conversation.  Like, seriously, just shut up already.  I know you’re awesome, but must you insist that I listen to that story about the time your fat ass decided to wear 4-inch heels to the Emmys and then won and had to walk aaaaallllll the way to one end of the theatre and back only to have to get right back up and do it again because you had to accept another Emmy?  OMG!  And shut up already about your insane family and how your family tree branches are all circles and loops and criss-crossed applesauce and nobody says criss-crossed applesauce except first graders so just stop already!  Next time you ask if you’re really invited to something, I won’t just say no, but HAYELL no.  Unless it’s Trivia night, then we’ll suck it up and let you come because you have this brain that’s full of absolutely useless shit.

You have one of those friends, right?

I venture to guess that, if you do, she has an inkling of how awesome she is.  She probably knows deep down how valuable she is.  But maybe she spent a lot of time growing up not fitting in anywhere, and now that she’s found friends she fits in with, really fits in with, she doesn’t know how to deal with that.  Perhaps she spends too much time in her head hearing voices of people in the past who have proclaimed her awesomeness then turned around and said passive-aggressive things to other people about her.  I believe it’s quite possible she has a very bright light inside, and she wants it to shine, but it’s been snuffed before and she doesn’t want that to happen again.

I think maybe she’s made a promise to do one thing every day that scares her, and today, it was assuming she’s invited rather than asking.  She probably nearly bit a hole through her tongue to keep from asking, pleading for that spoken invite, but chances are she’s proud of herself for doing something so frightening, yet so absurdly simple.

Whatever the case, I’m positive she appreciates you being her friend, accepting her and her quirks, and dealing, at least up until now, with her oddities.