#and relaxed enough into counterconditioning to be rolling all over the floor and grinning delighted at me by the end of class
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Since the dental Tribble has been on a strict no kibble, no crunchy, no chewing diet. (In a week or so she'll be allowed to use her teeth again a bit more, but no one wants to see a dog get dry socket.) Spouse feels that canned dog food (perpetually on hand to make into pupsickles) is not experienced as filling enough, and we do know that Tribble has done better on grain inclusive foods for the past decade, so... the rice cooker has been simmering with chicken stock rice too bulk out the canned food all week, and Matilda and Benton have both gotten a fair bit of overflow rice as a treat.
Unconnectedly, tonight happens to be my first night alone as the sole human all evening in quite a few months. Matilda has been doing her job of enforcing bed, of course, but I can also rely on other humans to help make routine happen if she's too tired to be on it.
If I was worried that Tilly hadn't worked out her evening routine enforcement functions before now, I shouldn't have been. I don't think I've ever seen a dog so excited to move the evening along towards the part where dinner and the good cookies are.
#Matilda#australian cattle dog#1 year#the things I'm trying to achieve feel so embarrassing sometimes#like the complex and flexible but not too flexible pressure to do things that are good for me at intervals in the evenings#and yes yes yes it's just that old insecurity again#I grew up literally being told that the audhd was just my special burden to overcome in secrecy: the internalized stuff is not surprising#but it also means I'm watching her cues fairly carefully#and she's now completely reliable to alarmed tasks and mostly reliable to totally uncued pesterbot reminders#it's probably time to work on other grounding behaviors and really practice DPT more but I'm just really admiring my dog's progress so far#she had her first dog reactivity 2: building basic social skills class Tuesday and barely reacted to the five other dogs in class at all#by which I mean that she stared and leaned once#answered her leave it#and relaxed enough into counterconditioning to be rolling all over the floor and grinning delighted at me by the end of class#I'm beginning to see the shape of her grown self coming out#and I think I see why people are willing to go back and keep raising puppies from this breed of incredibly awful adolescences#it's a good shape. strong. very prone to getting distorted over a few generations if a breeder isn't keeping an eye on it#I can see what she's going to be like when she's put on some more emotional development#and I'm really beginning to look forward to it
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