It must be lovely being a dog!

Coco's life is not very complicated. If she sees a bee she chases it. She is not self-conscious and does not worry that she looks a bit daft, or that she has never yet caught one. When she loses interest, she sits in the sun, eyes closed, relaxing. She does not worry that she is wasting time or not achieving anything. When she hears the door, she hurries up to see who has come, fully expectant that it will be someone fun, who loves her and will tickle her or play with her. She does not worry that she ran away at puppy class or obsess about whether she could have performed better. She just is and she is happy. I could learn a lot from my dog!

Obedience

My friend Lucinda calls it making up a story. You see something, or overhear a comment, and your imagination takes over. Before you know it, you have constructed a scenario, ascribed motives and you know exactly what someone else is really thinking. Or not. Too often I am way down this road, my fantasy is fact and I respond based on what I believe, without ever having checked in with the truth.

My head is full of dog training and I am homing in on the last few exercises which Coco need to perfect to get her gold assessment, so when I saw another woman in the park today, standing resolutely some distance from her stationary dog, I assumed she was training him. After a few moments, the dog ran a quarter of a circle and settled down again, much like sheep-dog trials. I was impressed, especially when he repeated the trick. After a while the dog came over to play with Coco and I approached the woman to express my admiration and to pick up some tips. She was quite surprised when I congratulated her on her dog's obedience. It turned out that my whole story was exactly that - a story. The dog would not come back to her. She had let him off the lead to play and now he would not return. Yesterday, it had taken an hour-and-a-half to get him back!

As I walked away, calling my dog to heel, I chuckled to myself about the absurdity of my feeling so easily intimidated and bested, how quick I was to interpret what I could see as a sign of my own failings. It's not about comparison and I can never know what is going on for someone else unless I ask. It's about doing my own thing as well as I can and being happy with that.

Silver!

Yes, my amazing dog has passed her silver assessment! She played, stayed, came and walked to standard and was presented with her certificate at the end of puppy class this morning. She is a very lively and bouncy dog and usually elicits comments about craziness or being a live-wire when she meets people in the park, but I can really see how she is developing her obedience and she is a pleasure to walk with. I no longer find myself dragged along the pavement or fear that she will not come back to me. I have struggled at times with the work that training her has been, and continues to be - after all, there is gold to aim for now! - but I am pleased and proud that all this work has paid off, not only in her behaviour but also in our relationship and my confidence. I was surprised how much anxiety I felt about her failing, and I knew that I would be deeply disappointed, no matter how much I told myself that no-one else even needed to know and that we could always try again in a couple of weeks. As my children grow up and exams loom on the horizon, there are few tangible markers of their progress and I am feeling that deeply and finding that hard at the moment; to have proof of achievement and success in a task I have taken on was sweet indeed this morning.

Proud Owner

I arrived at our usual Tuesday puppy class yesterday to be told that we would have a run through of the Bronze Award which Coco has been working for. It came as a bit of a surprise, especially when I was told that Scooby, Coco's classmate, had had a run through last week when we were away and had passed. Oh, so a run through with some significance, then? Instead of our usual teacher, her colleague led us through the various tests, and Coco came to me when called, stayed in place for a minute, let me groom and examine her, waited while I went through a door first and walked, just about, to heel. So we were very pleased to receive her Bronze Award, a certificate and green and white rosette.
It's been hard work having a puppy, much harder than I had anticipated, but it is rewarding to see her obedience and control and to have worked with her, building up our relationship. I am a proud dog owner and she is a very good dog!

Freewrite on the dog

We have started to freewrite again, and now that my little girl is able to write a bit more herself, I am taking the opportunity to do some myself. My son says my work is 'very freewrite-ish.' I find it a helpful way of thinking, getting it all down and not worrying about how it sounds. I often find that answers are there, if I take the time to pin down the worries and stop them fluttering around my head. It's not necessarily good writing, it's not clean and polished, and it can sound something like this:

I am not sure what to write about. How do I feel about Coco? At the moment I am finding her quite difficult. She seems particularly 'mischievous' and 'into things' a the moment and it feels as if she is 'naughty'. She keeps taking stuff off the table and peeing on the carpet and I worry that she needs more exercise and she is bored. I really want her to get her Bronze award because I want her to be obedient and to run safely with me. OK, so what is it I want? What do I want her to do? I want her to obey commands like 'leave' so I feel in control of her and around people and things, that she is safe and comfortable to have around people and things, and homes and stuff, I want her to be safe in the park, to behave nicely around other people and dogs and to come back when she is called. I want her to walk and run nicely by my side so she can run safely with me and get enough exercise. I like the ideas of an award but I more want help and advice on how to train her better and I don't feel that I am getting that at puppy class. What advice/help did I get this week: shorter lead, consistent walks, less is more? Questions: how do I motivate her without treats? How do I deal with undesirable behaviour? How do I judge too much and too little exercise? I am worried about her being bored and therefore unhappy and difficult.

Christmas School (3)

Our next activity for Christmas school was a choice, as I had planned both Thursday and Friday morning for craft and realised that there was just not going to be time. Each child chose a different project, with a collage fairy, a snowflake garland and a hand-made Christmas card under construction.
The children were all busy and entertained and so I decided to join in too. I got out paints, card and glue and had a go at making a greetings card. So pleased was I with the result and so much did I enjoy doing it that I made another, and then bought some prettier card when I was out shopping to make others. Simple and quick, yet requiring enough skill in order to get an attractive result to be engaging: I am looking forward to putting some time aside in the next week create more. For me, it is one of the precious Home Ed moments, when I am alongside the children, learning and active with them, enjoying developing myself as much as them.

The peace and goodwill of the approaching Christmas season has clearly permeated the household and the furry residents are gradually improving their relationship. Coco knows her place and waits patiently for Barney to want to play. Barney will never want to play, but he has, at least, condescended to remain in the room with her.

Dog Days

She did it! She is, officially, a very good girl! Well done Coco!The cat, however, I can only describe as underwhelmed.

Little and Big

I spent some time with a friend this weekend, a friend who is suffering at the moment. It has been this way for three years and has shown little sign of changing. But she came along to church with my yesterday and agreed to talk to our curate, to ask for help and for someone to intervene. It won't be easy and it may well make things worse to begin with, but it is the only way forward and it was an honour to see her so brave.

Sitting down to blog this evening, I ask myself what is on my mind. What has occupied my thoughts today? My friend? My elderly step-father? My children's education? No, not really. Mostly I've worried about whether my puppy with stand on command. (The answer is sometimes!)

Coco will be having her assessment for her Kennel Club Good Citizen Scheme Puppy award tomorrow. I have the personality-type which thinks: 'If there is an award, I want it.' For various reasons things haven't really worked out with the puppy classes we started and I want to swap, but I don't want to start all over again so she needs her award to go to a new place at the next level. Because I had to miss a class and one got cancelled, she has only had three classes. We have been offered a make-up one the next week, but that's when I want to start with the new club. It's complicated. Or, at least, I am making it so. Just ask anyone who's had to have a conversation with my about this! And I am finding myself stressed about it, and stressing the dog. There is no need to tell me that this is pointless and unhelpful, I know. Sometime between now and tomorrow morning I need to get some perspective. Or stay up all night training her to stand on command!

Walking the dog

Life with our puppy is beginning to settle down a little, there are certainly less wees on the carpet, and we have started to take her out for little walks. The advice we have received is that she walks for no more than 5 minutes for each month of her age, which is 15 minutes. This, I thought, was plenty of time to get round the block. I am determined that she will not pull on the lead but will walk nicely by my side. One of the main purposes of getting a dog was as company for me when I run and so it is imperative that she is well under control on her lead. According to the books, the best way to train this is to simply stop every time she pulls: soon she will learn that pulling has the undesired consequence of, briefly, stopping her walk, but a gentle pace keeps things going. We have not got very far down the road! Someone told me last week that this was a good and quick way to teach good lead manners and might take as little as a month!
I have begun to think of my thought patterns like this. For all my life habitual thought patterns have dragged me along feeling helpless in their wake. A conversation this week led me to link this to walking the dog. I need to be in control, I need to stop when they are running away with me. It isn't easy and sometimes it takes less effort to let them pull me along with a "What can you do?" expression on my face. But if I am prepared to exert myself and my will, to stop when I start down the same old rutted paths and challenge old and false patterns, perhaps it won't be too long before I don't find myself dragged into the ditch any more!

Decisions

My middle son is not enjoying puppy classes. It is important to me that the puppy is trained by us as a family, and not by me, who will then end up telling everyone else how to do it, no doubt moaning and nagging, being resented and feeling resentful. So the three chidlren and I all go together and I convince myself it's 'educational'. However, my middle son is not enjoying it. He finds the trainer brusque and intimidating. So do I, if I'm honest. I'm rather pleased with my personal growth. A while back I would have ignored my own feelings and told my son that he had to get along with teachers he didn't like but I decided to listen to both of us and try out a new class. And now I have to decide. And worse, I have to tell one of the trainers that we won't be coming back. But which. There are pros and cons of each choice (aren't there always?): length of class, distance from home, time of day, style of training, friendliness of teacher. And underlying all this, I think I detect a real note of fear. Suppose I get it wrong? What would wrong look like? Miserable kids, untrained dog, money wasted. It's the same with the pet insurance. What excess to choose, life-long cover per condition or just one year, to include advertising costs if she gets lost? Again, I feel the fear, what if, months from now, I bitterly regret this decision?
I guess the truth is that I will never know. There cannot be two "me"s, one to make each choice and see how it turns out. So, I will just have to do what seems best with the knowledge I have, and live with the decision I make.

Socialisation

Coco attended her second obedience class today, although, as the trainer told us, it is not the dogs that cause problems but the owners! Among the benefits of these classes is Coco's socialisation. She is learning to meet and relate to other dogs. Puppy socialisation is very important and is mentioned in every one of the puppy books I've read. She must meet all sorts of people, in all sorts of places and, of course, all sorts of dogs. She needs to meet bicycles and umbrellas and people in hats and other animals and she needs to be exposed to as many different situations as possible. One random article from a quick Google search suggests the dog not only meeting all kinds of people, ("Include men, women, youngsters, oldsters, different ethnic backgrounds, etc.") and animals ("invite ... healthy, vaccinated dogs, puppies and even cats to your home to meet and play with your new puppy") but also taking her to places ("Carry your pup to shopping centers, parks, school playgrounds, etc; places where there are crowds of people and plenty of activity.") and out in the car ("Take your puppy for short, frequent rides in the car.")

I am not sure why children are assumed to learn socialisation in classes of other children, pretty much like themselves, but puppies learn it from the whole, wide world.

Spooked

While Coco, the puppy, has been settling in very well (only one indoor pee yesterday, and that on the lino), Barney, the cat, is less happy. He has been content to stay upstairs all day everyday, eat in the bathroom and allow us to open the front door for him whenever he'd like to go out, but I am beginning to feel that I need to work on our own entente cordiale. So yesterday, with Coco in her crate and being fed treats to keep her otherwise entertained, I brought the cat through the kitchen, past his arch-enemy. He puffed up and growled, but we made it through. We did this twice and later, while the cat was in the garden, I took Coco out on the lead. Barney took moments to disappear although the puppy showed no interest in him at all.
I didn't see Barney again until this morning! He showed up at the front door but was reluctant to come in. I had to round him up like an unskilled sheepdog and finally lunged at and caught him. I really needed him home as he is due at the vets for his booster vaccinations (having missed them last week due to running away from the dog). Poor Barney, he really is having a bad week!

Puppy Obedience

Coco attended her first puppy obedience class this week. She was very, very excited about her first trip away from the house and about meeting other puppies. She was the newest in her class of four and had a good stab at all the exercises. It was fascinating to see how the trainer could get each and every one of the puppies doing exactly as she wanted but the owners couldn't always. It is so easy, and so tempting, to blame the dog when it is actually myself to blame. If I am not clear, or give mixed messages, or expect the puppy to follow a command which she is not familiar with, I set myself and Coco up for failure, irritiation and even anger. One lady on the class found any and every excuse to explain why her dog would not behave for her, at one time even claiming that her arms were too long! If I tell Coco, "Good girl!" when she is sitting and I want her to wait before she jumps on the sofa or heads through the door, she thinks she has done what I asked her to do, so is it any surprise that she jumps up or heads out? So I am learning to use the command "Wait" and accepting that when I forget I will get the behaviour I don't want.
I am beginning to see the parallels with parenting. As I pick at the children because I feel stressed and overworked, so they start to pick at each other; as I shout "Stop yelling!" the noise levels increase and the loving communication decreases. With both puppy and children, I need to look at what my attitude and behaviour is asking of them, not just my words.

Busy Week

I am not sure where all my time has gone this week, but it has felt particularly fraught. I know that the puppy is largely responsible, but I'm just not sure how she has consumed my time. The children have been incredibly mature and responsible, willingly taking her in the garden, clearing up poop outside and wee inside and hiding in the garden to teach her to come when called.
Both my sons needed to visit the doctors today, and my eldest shooed me away from the surgery door and had the consultantion alone. While I was impressed and pleased with his independence, another part of me marked it as a sign of his growing up and away. Of course there is a time in the future when I won't even be aware that my children have been to their GPs, but it felt strange and sudden not to be in there, not to know.
Life changes. While I think that I crave it getting easier, I find that, as my children are growing up I have brought a dependent puppy into my home. I have had plenty of 'pit-of-the-stomach moments' this week, wondering what on earth we've done, whether I will actually be able to cope with this dog. Dog owners reading this, tell me, does it get easier? I really need to hear right now that it does, as I wipe up yet another pee, or take yet another shoe from her saying, with decreasing calmness, "Not for dogs."
I'm would love to write more, but I have an excited puppy and hungry children ...

Havoc

There are moments in my day of pure bliss: my daughter snuggled up on one side, learning to read, and my new puppy with her chin on my leg, learning that we are her new family. There are moments of havoc: another puddle of wee on the kitchen floor, mud liberally spread throughout, one son trying to write a limerick and the Tesco delivery arriving, as always, five minutes early so my husband isn't home to help unload.
I am trying to emulate Brother Lawrence in the practice of the presence of God, and to this end I have begun a notebook in which I will write one Bible verse or inspirational quote each day to mull over and keep my thoughts turned towards Him. Today: "And I'm going to keep that celebration going because I know how it's going to turn out." (Philippians, The Message) I have not managed, quite, to celebrate all day, but I do know that God is good and that in His care this will all turn out well.

Becoming a Dog Owner

After a fun, but exhausting, weekend, being on the road from 7am 'til 8:30 pm on Sunday, we are now the proud owners of a beautiful, pedigree, chocolate Cocker spaniel puppy.Yesterday was spent in a blur of sleepiness, said puppy cried until gone midnight, and wiping up dog pee, desperately trying to find five minutes to upload my pictures and post, but failing. We did all get fed though and the children managed some work too. Coco is a delight, very excited but also already very obedient. She's very wriggly too, so that most of the pictures I took of her were blurred.

Until she fell asleep.

All Change!

This is Coco Chanel:God works in mysterious ways! I rang a Cocker Spaniel breeder, a friend of a friend who is becoming a friend of mine, to discuss the puppy we saw on Sunday. I was concerned about the weepy eye and whether her tail had been docked properly and while we had said that we wanted her, we were not due to finalise this until the owner came home from his holiday next week. This lady had been my first port of call fo a puppy but all her Cocker Spaniels had been sold. Except one, it turns out: a beautiful chocolate girl, so lovely in fact that the breeder had been going to keep her. But, feeling overwhelmed with the number of dogs she has at the moment and with the opportunity to let her go to a friend, a home she knows will be good and someone who will visit with the dog, she agreed to let us have her! She took the afternoon to make the decision and to discuss it with her family and, while we were waiting, I realised that I was not comfortable with the owner we were getting a puppy from and how much safer I would feel with a breeder I knew and trusted.

There was delight and joy in our house last night when we were told that we could, indeed, have this very special puppy. She is already called Coco Chanel and we all like that, so the brewing upset over the Faith/Hope debate has been laid to rest.

The seed of the idea of actually getting a dog came on our return from our holiday in Yorkshire. We were so sad to leave, and I would happily relocate, but there are so many reasons to stay where we are and I do believe that God's plan is for us to be here. So I re-framed the question: how could I make life here, in Sunbury, match a little more how I imagined it would be in the Yorkshire Dales? Since our return we have headed out in the car a number of times to explore the Surrey Hills on our doorstep and the children are growing more accustomed to the idea of a Sunday afternoon walk, and I began to consider getting a dog. Little did I know that God already had our dog ready for us back in Reeth and, in fact, we must have seen her without realizing when we borrowed another Cocker Spaniel and a pair of Labradors for a walk when we were there! And, a week on Sunday, our own little bit of the Yorkshire Dales will be coming to live with us.

Impossibly Cute

This is Faith. That, at the moment is the name we are trying out, although there is some lobbying for Hope so it could change. (Muffin, Biscuit and Cookie were ruled out because they are not 'serious' enough.)
We met her yesterday and fell in love. Of course. I was well aware that meeting a puppy was like falling off a cliff, there would be no going back. All this in a week! We have loved having our dog guests and I missed them when I was away overnight on Thursday. I spent Friday night and Saturday morning discussing breeds and practicalilties with a more knowledgeable friend of mine and settled on a working Cocker Spaniel. One specualtive call to a breeder informed me that these dogs, being true working dogs, only have litters at a certain time of year, and those litters are available now. The next lot will be next year, and a lot of breeders are sold out. I heard, 'I sold the last one this week/this morning,' a number of times. Suddenly it became a nowmy brain had been doing in the background and in one crystallizing moment I knew that I or next summer decision. As with many of my major life choices, I realized how much processing wanted us to get a dog. She is expensive and will be hard-work and time-consuming, she will need house-training and she won't sleep at night for a while, but my heart is ready for this new personality in my life.