Petsmart Puppy Class Day 1

Tonight Molly went to her first puppy class at Petsmart! She did well in learning the tricks but not so well in socializing with the other puppies. I'm going to go into a lot of detail here--forgive me. I was just wishing I could have gone through someone's blog post on Petsmart training so I would know what to expect.

The first ten minutes of class were puppy play time. Our instructor Richard told us to drop the leashes and let the puppies just play together, since the only way they can learn to socialize with other dogs is by doing it. There are 6 or 7 puppies in the class. Most of them are big puppies--there's a husky, a bull mastiff, a chocolate lab, and a few other dogs I couldn't identify, plus a very yippy chihuahua. Most of the puppies eagerly started playing, but Molly hid behind my legs and even climbed up on my chair to sit in my lap. The instructor made me put her back down. We weren't allowed to touch the puppies during puppy play time, and if they hid behind us, we had to move.

It broke my heart to listen to him, because Molly was terrified! When I moved away, she hid under my chair. The bull mastiff (his name is Hulk, which is basically perfect) came over to sniff her, and she ran away whining in fear, tail between her legs, to hide behind another woman's legs across the room. Richard said if puppies are scared of dogs like that, it usually means they were taken from their litters too soon. I am a little unclear on Molly's age. The breeder's husband told me she was born on December 18, but her shot record says she was born on December 9. Either way, she got an extra 5 days with her family after her siblings left--so if anything, her litter was taken from her too soon! But she spent that time living with other adult dachshunds. I'm not sure the problem is that she was taken from her family too soon, or if it's just that she hasn't interacted with other dogs for the month that I've had her. Either way... Richard is hopeful that we can overcome her fear.

After puppy play time, we gathered up our dogs, and Richard taught us the secret to training dogs. The second they do something right, we've got to say, "YES!" in a bright and happy voice, so they learn that "yes" means they did something good. The timing of the "Yes" is more important than the timing of a treat when we are teaching them, because soon the treat goes away. He had us go around the room and each say, "Yes!" one by one. (He said I had the perfect tone. If he'd asked me to say "no," though, that wouldn't have gone well.) He threw a ball in the air and told us to say "Yes" as soon as it hit its highest point, so we could work on responding quickly. And then he bounced it off the ground and we had to say "Yes" as soon as it hit. Once we passed that test, he told us to get out our dog treats. Five times in a row, we said "Yes!" and then gave the dog a treat to get the positive association in their brains.

Then Richard walked around the circle. He'd distract each dog, and the owner's job was to call their name and give them a treat (with a big YES of course!) when the dog turned to look at them. (When we say the dog's name, it should mean "Stop what you are doing and look at me, a command is coming.") Molly rocked at this. The second I said her name, she turned to me. Richard said that was name recognition at a high level, and she'll do well.

Next, we worked on sit. Each owner had to run into the middle of the circle and stand in three different places, getting the dog to sit each time. Richard wasn't critiquing the dog's performance so much as the owner's performance, which made me a bit nervous, but it went well. The hardest part was coaxing Molly out of the corner to the middle of the circle. She is so scared of the other dogs! She looked up at me with this adorable scared puppy dog face that made everyone coo. (Richard says she is the cutest puppy and she will never get in trouble in his class!) But she slowly shyly came into the center, and she sat every time I told her to. She even started sitting before I gave the command, which threw me off but Richard said was a great sign and deserved a treat.

Finally, Richard gave each of us a platform, and had us take our dogs into separate aisles of the store (in the middle of the customers, which was kind of awkward) to practice "Climb" and "release", or in other words, get on top of the platform and then climb down. For Molly, we had to take the legs off her platform because she is so short! But she did very well.

We all regrouped in the training area. Richard says our homework is to teach our dogs to "shake" with just their left paw. If we can do that, he'll teach us 2 special tricks next week--I missed the first one, but the second one is a praying pose, I think. Molly knows how to shake already, but I let her switch paws. Guess we'll have to work on that this week!

Medieval Scholar

Beginning last summer, I wrote this fanfiction of a movie called Secret of Kells--about Irish monks during the middle ages during the age of Viking attacks.

It was fun and it helped me get past my writer's block. I'd lost confidence in myself and in my writing, and writing something fun and no stress helped re-energize me and helped me get my confidence back.

Well... I'm laughing because today I was contacted by a grad student studying the medieval era. He wanted to cite my fanfic in a paper he's writing on the layman perspective of the middle ages versus the academic perspective, and he wanted to interview me. His main point is that laymen can learn a lot about history from fiction.

The interview was actually really fun (my first time ever being interviewed about something I've written! I had to squee a little bit at that) and he was very nice, even though I was very self conscious since my research was minimal to ensure historical accuracy.

Canine Cuisine

So poor little Molly has some kind of puppy flu. She's been to the vet, and the vet thinks she will be okay... I'm just keeping a close eye on her. And, I'm feeding her a diet of boiled chicken and rice.

A light bulb went off in my head as I was making her food. Why do we buy dog food? Dogs survived for centuries without eating things in cans. It seems like it's healthier to make them food. I know that the chicken and rice are safe and healthy without a bunch of weird preservative chemicals.

Plus, it would be so much cheaper to just make her food.

I may have just become the kind of dog mom that cooks for her baby. Hmmm.... definitely didn't see that coming.

Back to The Future Ball

Last night was the big YSA March Ball that I'm in charge of. This year, our theme was Back to the Future! It was awesome. People came dressed in formal attire from all sorts of time periods (it was a time travel formal, after all!). I went with a 1950s dress.

It was my first time wearing a petticoat and although that was weird at first, it turns out petticoats are fun, especially when you're spinning around. 10/10, don't recommend for daily wear but I may have to pull that thing out again sometime in the future.

My friend Talaina came up with some truly epic dance decorations. The dance floor was "Enchantment Under the Sea" themed--which, for non nerds, is the 1955 Homecoming Dance in the first movie. Basically, Marty McFly goes back in time and prevents his parents from falling in love. He has to get them together by the Enchantment Under the Sea dance where they started dancing in the original timeline, or else he will cease to exist.

The other half of the gym was our dining hall where we had a formal dinner beforehand. One half was dedicated to the wild west, where Marty journeys in Back to the Future 3, and the other half was decorated like 1985 (the home base time period in the movies.) There were round tables on either side... In between we had some rectangle tables set up as a buffer, decorated with flame tablecloths leading to our model Delorean (the photo booth for the evening). Because, you see, when the Delorean travels back in time, it always leaves behind flaming tire tracks. That table featured awesome centerpieces like a box of plutonium, and gloves to protect from toxic materials.

I may add more pics later. My friend Skye was the official photographer for the evening and she got some good pics of the night in action.

We had a live band during dinner and for the first hour and a half of the dance. Then my friend Christina was our DJ. The music was epic and the dance floor was packed! We worked hard to promote things this year, and we ended up with a great turnout--200ish, I think? We even had a lot of people come down from northern Colorado, because I'm working with the Denver YSAs on planning a regional conference this year and I asked them all to promote our ball to their wards.

One of my favorite moments--we had a line dancing workshop a few weeks ago for the Mingle. I was surprised how many people didn't know the basic line dances, since I grew up going to stake dances once every month as a teenager. People were a little self-conscious about learning at the time. But last night I saw those folks out on the floor line dancing just as happily as everyone else, and when new line dances came up that they didn't know, they waded out there and learned 'em. It made me very happy. :)