Generous Girl and Rusty Update

Generous Girl

Give me a minute and I’ll get around to the punch-line. Rusty was neutered today, and instead of sending us home with an Elizabethan collar, the vet’s office said, “if he starts to lick himself, even once, then you’ll need to get an “E collar.” Of course, within minutes of getting him home, he had begun to try to lick himself, so off to Petsmart Eva and I went. Well, Petsmart is very near Michael’s, and I needed to get something for Eva’s class, and Eva had $3 burning a hole in her pocket (I don’t know what it is about money and that pocket of hers). Well, when I saw that some American Girl stickers (for scrapbooking, but Eva uses them to create “stories”) were on sale, I offered to get her a few. We also got a little something for Eva’s cousin, who will soon turn 10, and a like object for Eva (won’t mention it in case said cousin reads this – love you Sydney!). Well, right there in the American Girl section, Eva grabbed onto me and said, “Thank you, Mama. You are a very generous girl”! Looks like our conversation about generosity yesterday sunk in (some girls at a neighborhood parade weren’t generous with Eva yesterday when I thought they could have been, and we had a long conversation about how I hoped that would have gone if the situation were reversed)!

Rusty Update

Since I mentioned little Rusty’s surgery, I thought you might want a general update. We had our first session with Kat, the trainer, on Saturday. Rusty wasn’t so sure about Kat until he learned that she was an un-ending source of tiny bites of cheese! He’s finally begun to be food-motivated – just at the right time. I can’t say he totally warmed up or trusted her, but he did allow her to work with him, and he made great progress. I have been concerned about how I can get him to like our babysitter, so that I can have a sitter with comfort/ease, and Kat recommended a spoonful of peanut butter held under the table and offered in small increments over the course of some time. She said he’ll be wondering when “that girl with the peanut butter will be back.” A friend and her two girls came by on Saturday morning, and Rusty did pretty well. We’re finding that if he meets people outside first, he is OK with them coming in the house with us. If they just come in, then he isn’t so happy to see them – he feels like they are a threat to Eva and me and “his job” is to protect us. We’ll get there; we’re just moving at a glacial pace, as far as I am concerned. He has a super sunny disposition when he is home with us or we are out and about, and he’s doing very well on the house training – just the occasional accident that is as often my fault as his (i.e., not getting him out right after he’s been asleep at my feet for a while (like he is right now)).