Yesterday was really a beautiful day in central Iowa and today is a really gloomy day outside.
I changed out my smoke detector batteries yesterday - I try to be a good girl and do this at least once a year when the time changes. If I'm really on my game I'll do it both times the time changes in one year.
Bark Busters came last Monday and Cruz is kind of at a lull in her training/trusting me. She still won't come to me when I call her inside the house unless she knows it's to go outside - but sometimes she just trots down the stairs with me from the upstairs to the main level to see what I'm going to do. And she will come near me when I'm in the bathroom doing something - sometimes. The last few mornings she's really been a goof running around and sliding on the carpet when I'm getting ready to put my robe on to take her out for the first time.
She still does her sniffing of me after I turn off the lights and then walks back and forth by the side of my bed with my hand "petting" her. When my hand gets to the end of her, she'll take my hand in her mouth and turn around so she can walk the other way for me to pet her. This can go on for 5-10 minutes. Yesterday she actually did this during the afternoon and the first time she took my hand in her mouth if kind of alarmed me because it looked like she was going to bite me - I'd never seen how this looked in the dark. So I had to tell myself it was ok, she was just playing and we did our routine for a few minutes. I knew she wasn't going to bite me but it looked a little scary for a minute.
And when I have her on leash and we're on a walk she is a happy, happy, happy puppy. Likes to jump at me as we walk on the sidewalk on the south side of the house before getting out of the gate and then she'll try to bite at my hand while we walk if I tease her. She's pretty good at "sit" when I tell her, if she doesn't do it right away I just have to take a step toward her and she sits. She's pretty good at "stay" too but if I try to get her attention by calling her name to release her from stay - she's looking all over the place - goober. I realized that when I'd say "free" to release her from stay that I was also giving her leash a tug at the same time I'd say "free" and I didn't want her to associate the tug on the leash to be part of the "free" command so I've stopped doing that. I've had to say "free, Cruz, free" a couple of times (sometimes) to get her walking again.......
The Bark Buster lady said she would ask the home office about Cruz still not really coming to me and then waiting until after I turn off the lights at night to eat her food. So....I'm supposed to put her leash on her at different times while we're in the house and do some funky things to try to get her to come to me - I haven't done this yet. And the other thing is to put her food on the floor by me (I have to be on the floor too) and have her eat it - the goal is that she will take the food from my hand. She sure takes treats from my hand....... And if after 20 minutes she hasn't eaten all the food I'm supposed to put it up for the night so she doesn't eat after "lights out".
I tried this last night for the first time and it went so/so. I laid food out by me while sitting on the floor 3-4 different times during the evening - with my hand close to the food. She'd eat some of the food with me on the floor and then my butt would get sore so I'd sit back on the bed next to her and she'd finish eating the rest of the food. I'll try again tonight...............
When I walked Cruz yesterday I ran into my postal carrier that had left me a sympathy card when Mike passed and had talked to Dad different times last summer when he was staying with me when Mom was in the hospital. The postal carrier commented on how pretty Cruz was and asked her name. She then asked if I still had my greyhounds and I told her about putting my girl (Milly) down the winter after my husband passed and then putting Butler down this past August. She's a real nice lady and after we parted so Cruz and I could finish our walk, I told Cruz how the lady had said she was real pretty.
This morning at church my small group set up the Bread on the Waters table - this is our grocery drive to make baskets of food and toiletry times for 22 families this year. Last year the church got behind this and our goal was to make 20 baskets. We'll have the table up all of November for people to take tags to sign up for different items to bring and then the first Sunday of December is when all the items need to be turned in by so my small group can put the baskets together that Wednesday night. Today we had a really good response by the number of tags taken.
