A Horrible Virus

No, Cabana isn't sick (she's just sleepy because I accidentally woke her up by taking this photo), and no one in our family has the dreaded H1N1. It's my poor computer that has the VIRUS!! Grrrrr....What a waste of someone's knowledge and time to develop such mean-spirited beastly machinations to inflict upon the general populace.

My computer was infected about a week ago, and at first, all it did was put little x-rated icons all over my desktop. I would drag these little pictures of people's nether-regions into the trash, only to have them replaced with a new batch an hour or two later. But now, the virus has infiltrated all my executable files, meaning that none of my programs work anymore. I can't use Photoshop, Word, or even my email program. Thankfully, the internet still works, but at an excruciatingly slow pace.

Next week, I will be forced to reformat my hard drive and reinstall all my drivers and programs. Not a fun way to spend the day! So, I will have to wait until next week to catch up on everyone's blogs. This also explains my lack of activity on Cabana's blog.

Overall, Cabana has been doing well--and she's 13 months old today (but still hasn't gone into heat). She's officially on food protocol, which means that she gets tons of treats while we're on our walks (which we take out of her 4 cups of food per day so she won't get chubby, not that that's much of a concern at this point).

About halfway through our walk today, I noticed that Cabana was taking the kibble from my fingers SO gently. I thought, wow, that's so sweet how she's being so careful. Although Cabana is fairly good about taking the kibble nicely, she can get over-zealous when she's excited about something or someone (i.e. canine someones). But today, she just seemed extra, EXTRA careful.

Then, just as our walk was ending, I happened to look down at my hand and was shocked to see that my thumbnail was covered in blood! After a week of having my thumb and forefinger shoveling hundreds of pieces of kibble into Cabana's mouth, I guess the cuticle on my thumb had gotten a bit sore, and on our walk today, had split open.

Ha! No wonder Cabana was being so careful taking the kibble! She didn't want it seasoned with my blood! Gaahhh.

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Distracted by Poppy

This is Cabana's pal and fellow puppy-in-training, Poppy. Poppy is just a couple weeks older than Cabana, and Poppy's puppy raiser is our puppy group leader.

This morning, Poppy and her raisers came over to give us instruction on food protocol for Cabana's raging dog distraction. Basically, we had Cabana sit on the sidewalk in front of our house, while Poppy sat several yards away. Every time Cabana looked away from Poppy, she got a treat. Eventually, Poppy got closer and closer, while I kept marking Cabana's positive behavior with "nice" and a piece of kibble.

Next step was to have Poppy walk toward Cabana, with Cabana stationary, while still encouraging Cabana to pay attention to me as her handler and ignore Poppy. Finally, we progressed to both Cabana and Poppy walking past each other. Normally, Cabana would have been pulling and going bonkers, wanting to play with Poppy. But thanks to all the positive reinforcement, Cabana was able to walk past Poppy with barely a glance. Miraculous!

Of course, the real test will come when we go for a regular walk and pass some big fluffy German shepherds or huskies (Cabana likes fluffy big dogs best). But I felt like we made a lot of progress today. The challenge for me will be to take it slow. I think I have a tendency to expect too much, too soon.

After the training session, we let Cabana and Poppy play--and boy, did they ever play! They were so happy to run around with each other, cavorting and nipping and jumping. They're so similar in size that it was sometimes hard to tell them apart.

Here they are drinking water after their romp session. Cabana is darker and redder, pictured in the back.

I think Poppy's raiser had called Poppy to come to her and was rewarding Poppy with a piece of kibble. But it looks like Cabana was horning in, even though she'd already received plenty of kibble earlier.

Tonight, I'm looking forward to the opportunity to teach some good manners when someone comes to the door. We don't get many visitors at our house, so when the doorbell rings, Cabana becomes overly excited. This evening, when trick-or-treaters ring our doorbell, I'm going to give the "go to bed" command while someone else in my family hands out the candy. So hopefully, in the future, Cabana will know that's what I want her to do when someone really is coming over, instead of running to the door to jump all over the person who enters.

Happy Halloween to everyone!! Don't eat too much candy! Well, go ahead if you want to--it's once a year, after all!

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