The Tenth Mission: #42: Grow

The 4 R's:

Reading, (w)Riting, (a)Rithmetic, Rhetoric

I may have stretched this one...just a bit. As I only have a week for each Mission, I didn't necessarily have the time to find a class, apply, attend, or whatever...BUT...I had already scheduled our first session with a Trainer from Affectionate Pet Care for our dog Daisy.

Daisy waiting
to get adopted
January 2015

From earlier blogs, you all know that we have a dog. Two years ago, my wife and I rescued a 9-year old retriever mix and she had a bit of a rough go the year before we adopted her. As much as we can tell from her medical records, a divorce (her owners, not a puppy divorce), and there was another dog in the house and it looks like the two got separated through the divorce. At that point she was exhibiting signs of separation anxiety and was put on heavy doses of prozac. A year later she was left at the vet for a new family to take care of her and that's where we come in.

First Weekend Home
February 2015

At first she was mentally not all there, you could see the fog, until we weaned her off the prozac and then she became attentive and responsive to food and got closer and closer to my wife and myself. Daisy is a sweet girl, but can't be left alone. Her anxieties are a lot to overcome, but we've made it work. Our family's schedules are off-set a little, so at least one of us is home 3 days out of the week, but on the days neither of us can be around, we put her in day care. After a little over a year of going to day care and getting to know the staff there, we finally got a meeting with a trainer.

Pumpkin Picking
November 2015

Looking Out My Favorite Window
February 2016

Papa's Production Assistant
August 2016

Happy 11th Birthday
October 2016

Our Trainer, Mary came for a house visit and we started working on a plan for Daisy. Our hope is we will get better at recognizing some of the signals of her anxiety and getting ahead of them and redirecting her behavior. We also hope that we can get to the point of leaving her alone for a couple hours.  We'll see how it goes.  In the meantime, Mary was given card #42 and when she received it, she was a little worried because we already gave one of her coworkers something to work on (see The Eighth Mission - #39: Grow). Apparently that has gone around their office (again...maniacal laughter). I am really loving this game!