#i have decided that distance is good

[abirddogmoment]

I love seeing Rory run in the field!! Bird dog doing bird dog things!! You said in the tags you had different training and priorities with her vs Mav re: offleash running like that. What kinds of things did you do differently with Rory to be comfortable having her offleash at a distance with reliable recall?

I was writing a whole novel but really it boils down to this chart. Under the cut because it's (vertically) long.

In short, it's just as much about what I didn't do with Maverick as what I did do with Aurora.

(Edited to add: I am extremely fortunate to live in the prairies where the kind of visibility I need is easy to find. Use my experience to inspire your own training if you like, but don't use it as a recipe. I have my own goals and my own priorities and those are likely different than yours.)

Maverick:

🔵 Supremely confident from day 1

🔵 Came home in August (extremely good and exciting time for outdoor adventures)

🔵 Prioritized specific sports behaviours over foundational building blocks like engagement and cooperation

🔵 Learned bad habits from my older dog at the time (prey drive > recall)

🔵 Was indiscriminately prey driven. If it moved, he wanted to kill it.

🔵 I phased out treats too fast and didn't want to use an ecollar or long line

🔵 I focused on "social media dog behaviours" (think like walking extremely close to me on trails) and got frustrated when we couldn't meet these rather than meeting my dog where he was at. This created a lot of frustration in our dog adventures.

🔵 I practiced recalls constantly when I didn't have to, making them a tedious behaviour for him. I would recall him 20-50 times a hike for everything from "you're too far away from me" to "I want to take a photo".

Aurora

🟣 Came to me a little insecure and looked to me for reassurance

🟣 Came home in December (a cold and relatively boring time for outdoor adventures)

🟣 I prioritized engagement, cooperation, and name recognition from day 1

🟣 Practiced good habits by walking offleash in the snow either alone or with Pike (amazing recall)

🟣 Is extremely birdy, but is very very focused. She easily calls off deer or people/dogs in the distance because she mostly cares about birds.

🟣 Literally always gets offered a high value snack for recalling or voluntary check ins (I will never phase this out, I will carry chunks of cheese on offleash walks for the rest of her life)

🟣 I never practice recalls if I don't need them. This one is hard to explain, but once Rory understood that long whistle = come back as fast as you can, I don't whistle unless I really need to. I recall her an average of 0-3 times per hike (*based on visibility or wildlife*) and trust her to make good decisions otherwise. I keep my eyeballs on her 100% of the time and choose areas with good visibility, but I don't recall her just for being far away.

🟣 I limit hikes where I have to nag her often (think, in the woods where I dont have a great line of sight and have to remind her to stay close to me) to a few times a month or less so she doesn't start getting frustrated about it.

🟣 I trust the training I put into her and choose to run her in areas with (relatively) reduced risk if she makes the "wrong" choice. I don't nitpick everything she does and I let her make her own choices, within reason.

🟣 I have an interrupter cue to ask her to stop doing something before I call her back (if she's digging a hole and I want her to move on, I use "Rory, enough! Here!") instead of whistling at her.

🟣 I don't force her attention on check ins. If she runs back to me and doesn't want a snack and wants to run straight back out, I let her run back out.

🟣 I have anticipatory cues for the end of a walk so I don't have to recall her when we get to the end of the field.

I want to say that it's nerve wracking to watch my dog sprint at full speed hundreds of yards away from me. I have to fight the impulse to recall her just because she's far away. It's an exercise in trust because I'm always worried about her going over the horizon, or running into a wildlife, or falling into a hole, but it's an important thing to work on if you have a dog that needs that trust to thrive.

Mav and I were a good team, but I never fully trusted him outdoors. I always had my finger on the ecollar buttons ready for him to do an evil and need to be vibrated. It was exhilarating to watch him in the field, but it wasn't really fun or relaxing.

Rory and I built a much stronger foundation of trust (I personally never would have been able to do this if I had more than one dog). She doesn't know any tricks yet, but I'm super confident in her recall and ability to take direction in the field, even when she's sprinting as fast as possible.

[lianlianlianlian]

I want to write barbie x ken fanfiction set maybe a couple years after the movie (Barbie spoilers)

where ken decides to go to the Real World because he Can Do That now and meets barbie again whos been adjusting and living self-love and doing things and finding herself and It's this, like, tearful reunion moment and Ken's still in love with her but he's much better at keeping it to himself because ken always respects barbie's decisions, but barbie spends a few days with this ken who has over time also sort of become himself, and has discovered his interests and likes and dislikes and became, like, more rounded through experiences and discovers that she finds him utterly endearing and begins falling for him and just. Second chances pure friendship to lovers barbie x ken where they take some time off for themselves and meet each other as better people (dolls? idk u get the point).

[loderlied]

honestly maybe considering making oleander ven and niles just original fiction characters? or finding a mind closet to shove them into while i find different settings for them…

[lususnatura]

[giddydelphiresearcher]

The tool wheel! Finally, good smooth tool switching! I also fixed the scalpel's collision; no matter how fast you move it, everything in its path will get hit now! I also encountered an issue where gel puddles would remain on-screen across organ transitions, so I added a function to clear out all the Stuff spawned by tools, such as gel puddles and scalpel trails. Added polyps too. And also put a little surprise at the end...

[magentagalaxies]

do any of the kith guys like cats/interacted with cats (minus kevin, hes clearly a cat guy)?

YES!!! i got to personally hang out with three different CITH (cats in the hall) just in the past few days and i love them so much

idk about dave/kevin/mark's pet situations and bruce only has dogs (tho i have also met his dogs and they are delightful) but scott has two cats and bellini has one

scott's cats are named rusty and dusty, they're brothers, and he first got them in 2020. when i'm at scott's place sometimes dusty will like do a loop around me keeping his distance but rusty has walked over to lay on me multiple times. i can't find a photo of the two cats together but here's rusty - dusty looks the same but slightly bigger

bellini's cat is named "early" and he's had him since 2011 i think. i'm obsessed with the story behind the cat's name - paul's partner always named his cats after their personality traits, but after several days paul kept asking to pick a name and his partner kept saying "we can't! it's too early!" and the name stuck. early is one of those cats that lets you pet him for like 5 seconds then immediately wants to roughhouse lmao but i think i've been around him enough that he's accepted me as a friend-of-cats

and of course i'm not a kid in the hall but here's a photo of my cat "sprout." i got her in 2019 and she's the best cat ever lmao. also i think she must have smelled that i was hanging out with the aforementioned cats this week bc when i opened up my suitcase to unpack she started rubbing against it which was very cute (she also did the same to a script scott gave me lmao)

[arsenicflame]

it was nice to remember when i liked ofmd

[eeunwoo]

actually if you wanna talk to me about anything you should probably reach out on instagram bc im not answering dms or asks if they’re not about requesting content anymore (unless it’s bio anon). otherwise it’s business as usual :3

[always-a-slut-4-ghouls]

I gotta stop saying "left eye" first whenever someone proposes a saw trap where they remove parts of your body. I could be getting free wisdom tooth surgery

[cringefailfagcat]

god i just love having little to no autonomy with the relationship with my ex who i have to be friends with

[deathxproof]

Once more thinking about how Susan (“and what do you do?” “I eat”) Foreman probably learned about humans and how they work maybe like 5 years ago at best, and then suddenly being stranded on their planet and also immediately needing to learn not only how to irrevocably Be Human to anyone but this human husband she acquired, but also how to mother like. Fucking four little tiny baby infant humans at least.

And she does! She does so pretty well! She can even get over the fact that humans are scared little astroxenophobic assholes considering their main source of contact right now was an unending barrage of Daleks! It’s okay, because this is her life now, away from literally anyone else who’s ever known her her entire life, and even though she doesn’t have a choice she’s choosing all of this because it makes it better—

But she still likes that life— she likes that life a lot, so much so that she can ignore that eventually it’ll end, because Susan Foreman, not Arkytior, has built a nice little life for herself far away from any other Time Lords and anything they can touch. And it’s nice, but she’s also far away from any other Time Lords and anything they can touch, too. Until she’s Very Much Not and is thrust back into not only THE, HER two Time Lords, but one of them is directly responsible for her husband dying, and the other is inadvertently responsible for her son dying. But she has a TARDIS again now! Wow! And what perfect timing at that, considering her Grandfather is Gone again and the family she built is suddenly very much uneasy with the whole idea of, well, not their mom, but of Susan Foreman. She’s fully alien now, and that is harmful, that is toxic, that has gotten their dad and their youngest brother killed. And there are times she could go back to Gallifrey, but she’s lived off of Gallifrey for far longer than she ever lived underfoot of the planet. It’s not home. She barely even knows a handful of people there. She Cannot Catch A Fucking Break. She Cannot Keep A Home. She’s pretty convinced that if she tries to get too comfortable with anyone anywhere it will end horribly in some way or another. The fact that she’s held onto her TARDIS for so long makes Susan 4 & 5 wonder when it’s going to get ripped away from her too. It’s home, and you wouldn’t believe it based on the setup, but you can bet she won’t get comfortable.

[cuteniaarts]

In another world, fate was just a little bit kinder

[professorlegaspi]

AU in which Aunt Agatha is more uptight and disallows Celia to go to Renasci. Instead, she sends her to finishing school

[newtness532]

unreasonable complaining in the tags lol

[depresseddepot]

IM GOING TO A LORD HURON CONCERT??????