We’re Ba-ack . . . and We’ve Moved!

Hi everyone.

Barnum and I are still around. I’m still having issues with my hands and wrists, but it’s not as severe as it was, thanks to ice, rest, and a change of medication.  In case you’re curious, I have tenosynivitis, which is basically tendonitis of the wrists, and some tendonitis in my hands, too. I’m doing things like icing three or four times a day, researching wrist braces that I can tolerate (most are made with neoprene, which is super toxic and not an option for me due to my MCS), and trying to mouse and type less. It seems to have been caused by a combination of the Lyme drug I was using, Rifampin, damaging my tendons, along with my constant computer use and my various other inflammatory diseases. My OT said it was “the perfect storm.” Terrific.

I’ve tried various software and hardware solutions:

• I’ve got a more ergonomic keyboard now and am still trying to find a “pointing device” (mouse, touchpad, etc.) that doesn’t injure me more.
• I got speech-recognition software (Dragon Naturally Speaking), which works pretty well for things like emails when my voice is also working well, which is about half the time. The other half of the time, when the dysphonia kicks in, Dragon is completely useless. And using it for editing and blogging is mostly an exercise in frustration.

So Far, Barnum hasn’t been much help with this new disability. The main things I’ve had to change our how a transfer out of bed and how I type, and Barnum can’t help with either of those. In fact, Barnum has been living up to his full Bouvier des Flandres potential as a service/hindrance dog: he broke my computer.

I have an all-in-one computer, which is basically like a screen with no tower. The CD/DVD disc tray slides out of the side. The computer lives on my overbed table, and I live in bed. And Barnum spends a lot of his time on my bed because otherwise we wouldn’t get to interact much!

One day, I’d taken out a disc and was about to put in another one, and Barnum glimpsed Something Very Exciting out the window and whipped his big, hard, heavy Bouvier head around, smacking my disc drive as he went. The disc drive cracked and a piece fell off. Barnum, of course, didn’t even notice that he’d hit anything.

I got the drive replaced, but even though that was a hardware issue, not a software issue, ever since then my computer has been extra glitchy. Let this be a lesson to you. (I don’t know what the lesson is, except maybe, “Never ever wever bever leave your disc drive open, especially if you have a big, enthusiastic, klutzy dog in the vicinity.” Yeah, I’m gonna go with that as the lesson.)

Anynoodle, it especially sucked because I COULD NOT USE MY HANDS and I didn’t yet have my speech software, so I was extremely bored because now I couldn’t watch DVDs, which — aside from listening to books on tape — was about the only form of entertainment or activity available to me. And what is the thing that has been the most buggy ever since I got the drive replaced? The media player. Le sigh.

I’ll post in the future (at my new blog) about the training we’ve been doing. The tedious training has been extinguishing barking out the window which is a behavior that I created and reinforced for a long time before I realized I was the cause. Facepalm, indeed.

The more fun behaviors, on those rare days I’m up to doing them, are working on calm behavior for hind toenail trimming, which involves clicking him for tail position (which I’m using as an indicator of his level of arousal) and teaching Barnum to carry a bag and deposit it in a box near the kitchen. Once this behavior is solid, I can have him deliver dishes and things I’m done with to my PCAs, even when they’re not here. It will be quite a while before that’s a finished behavior. I hope to blog about these training issues in the coming weeks . . . but not here!

Which leads me to my Very Exciting News:

My brand new website is up! Yeehaw!

Do you want a tour?!

You do? (I’m just pretending you said yes.)

GREAT! Follow me. . . .

This is the foyer. Some people call it the “home page,” but I think foyer sounds better (especially if you pronounce it the French way — foy-`yay!) — or the vestibulary, if you prefer.

As you can probably tell, the walls (and ceilings and floors) have just been cleaned and painted (all nontoxic virtual paint, of course), so I hope you don’t mind taking off your shoes. And your dogs’ shoes. Thanks.

OK, we’ll start our tour with the south wing of the house. First stop is the writing parlor. all furniture hasn’t been moved in yet. We’ll get there. But adjoining the writing parlor is. . . .

The literary salon! Where discussions about being a writer with a disability or writing about disability take place. And you’ll notice just off to the side, this room leads to an even larger room which is . . .

Yes, I know it’s empty now. There are just some packing crates and suchlike. BUT, this is the nursery of my mind. This room — Crip Erotica: The Book! — is the one I am the most excited about! I have been dreaming of building this room for years, and I already have a lot of the plans drawn up. I am really looking forward to using this website is to nurture, support, and grow what will be born in this room.* But it takes a village, to uh, you know, create a crip smut collection. I don’t know which village that would be, but I’m hoping to start finding the villagers soon. (More on that later.)

Moving to the next room is the disability erotica I’ve already published. This is cozy, don’t you think? There’s art on the walls. Has a more lived-in feel. I’ve been hanging out in this room for over ten years! It’s helped give me the confidence to build the “nursery” mentioned above.

Now, if we’ll take a stroll across hall we can enter the north wing of the house, where you can see the Activisting center. My longtime readers will find posts you remember about disability rights, access, environmental health issues, service dog awareness, and other assorted (no, not sordid — that’s the south wing) posts.

And I’ll still be blogging about lots of the stuff you’re used to. For example, I’m writing a couple of posts now for the Assistance Dog Blog Carnival. I’m going to try to get those of you who are WordPress subscribers to After Gadget transferred over as subscribers to SharonWachsler.com. I hope the rest of you will subscribe to the new website/blog, too. (Pretty please?)

See you all at the new pad (I hope)!

Peace.

-Sharon, the muse of Gadget, and Barnum, Disc Drive Destroyer

Barnum Models His New Blue “Birthday Suit”

Cuz he shaved him naked a few weeks ago, see? And then it was his birthday….

Here’s the confluence of events: Winter arrived late. Thus deer sticks were still active. Barnum’s long, thick coat made attached ticks hard to find. Thus we shaved him down. I had a fleece coat from Gadget that I put on Barnum, but it didn’t stay on well because it was too small. I modified it unsuccessfully. With Barnum’s birthday was coming up it was the perfect time to buy him a new coat. I I gave Voyagers K9 Apparel Barnum’s measurements and requested they use “Sea Blue” polar fleece to make a “tummy warmer” for him.

Let the fashion show begin!

Lounging in bed: Front view

Does this fleece make my head look big?

Comfortable enough for a dog to check his Twitter stream in!

It’s like I’m on the cat walk! (Though I’d prefer a cat chase.)

Two proofs that this coat is snuggly warm:

1. Barnum does not smoosh up against me in bed every night now. Often he does, but he will also sleep on his own bed or on another part of my bed. (And it was three degrees Fahrenheit when I went to sleep last night.)

2. When wearing the coat he went out and threw himself into the snow and rolled around, snorfled, and romped. Fortunately, the fleece is light and dries out very fast!

Happy winter, everybody!

– Sharon, the muse of Gadget, and Barnum, SD and Fashion Hound

Photo Essay: A Visit from Mina the Basenji

On Sunday we had a visit from a Basenji named Mina. I couldn’t resist the opportunity of working with a different dog — and an unusual breed of dog — which also afforded me the chance to work on Barnum’s self-control in a novel situation: focusing on me and holding stays when another dog was getting trained inside his house. Despite that I was really too sick — I have been paying the price since — it was an educational experience for all of us, I think. (Mostly for me!)

Mina very helpfully let me know our starting place should be Four-on-the-Floor.  (I’ve noticed that enthusiastic, food-driven dogs, especially small- or medium-sized dogs, tend to jump up with their paws on my lap because I’m sitting instead of standing.)

Beginning session: Barnum needs direction, Mina needs self control.

I started with ignoring her when she was on my lap and clicking/treating when her paws were all on the ground. A couple of times I lured her to get her paws off. I c/t Barnum for staying on his mat and not nosing into my session with Mina. He has a lifetime of clicker experience, whereas Mina was learning the clicker and everything else in a new environment — a big challenge. Barnum had a pretty clear idea of what was being asked of him or of behaviors to try to get treats, whereas Mina was really excited that she was getting all these treats without a clear idea of why at first. I bet she slept well that night!

But positive reinforcement works even before the learner has comprehended the “why,” so we were able to quickly move to having all her feet on the ground even before she’d figured out the clicker.

Mina now has four-on-the-floor and Barnum’s sitting on his mat.

We move on to “sit” for Mina and down-stay for Barnum.

Hm, we’re back to paws-on-lap. Can you see what I’m doing wrong to cause this?

Hint: I’m not used to working with little dogs! I’m used to working with a dog for whom my lap is nose height!

Also, see how she’s pawing at my hand, above? That was interesting for me. I’ve taught a few dogs the beginning steps of Zen, and she was the first who tried lots of different strategies — biting, pawing, licking, etc., before finally backing off at all. Very smart and persistent. She’s a problem-solver. Using her paws like that reminded me of a cat.

Once I moved my fist down to nose level, Mina kept “four on the floor” to learn Zen.

But this position (above) was not sustainable for me, physically, so I adjusted. . . .

I get on the floor to present my fist at nose height for Mina to learn Zen. Barnum chin targets the mat as his duration behavior.

Below is another behavior I’m not used to! Mina decided she’d had enough training and just hopped right onto my powerchair seat. I laughed really hard. A large, more cautious dog like Barnum learned to jump and sit in my powerchair after several shaping sessions. It took a lot of careful balancing for him. Meanwhile, Mina, the little, bold, curious, and nimble thing, just nipped up there herself as if she’d been doing it all her life. She wanted to see what she could see, I think. Or she was pretending to be a spaceship captain. Or both?

Call me Captain Mina! Full throttle, ready for blastoff!

What a way to start the new year!

– Sharon and Barnum, SD

P.S. Mina was gracious enough to let me back onto my chair once she’d finished training me to give her treats.

Barnum is 3! (in Hedgehog Years)

Barnum turned three today! This is one of the fun things about getting a dog from puppyhood that I never experienced before with rescues: knowing when they were born and remembering the day.

You might have noticed I’ve done very little blogging lately. That’s because I’ve been quite ill this month. Barnum has a lot of blog-worthy activities going on, I just haven’t been up to writing about them. But I really wanted to post something for his birthday, even if it’s just silly.

So, here’s what Barnum looked like three years ago today:

I’m not sure this is Barnum, but it’s either him or one of his littermates.

Now even his paw is bigger than that puppy’s head. Even his ear is twice as big as that head. But anyway. . . .

He arrived in February 2010 at eight weeks old, and his favorite toy to play with was a hedgehog. We played with that hedgehog a lot. Here are some pics of Barnum and me on the day after he arrived:

Do you want the hedgehog?

 

Barnum chases hedgehog.

 

Barnum grabs hedgehog.

 

Chomp, chomp, chomp….

When I talked to Barnum’s breeder a few days (or weeks? Who knows? I was completely sleep deprived during Barnum’s puppyhood; the whole time is a blur) after he arrived, I told her his favorite toy was a hedgehog, and she said he had a hedgehog there, too, that he liked to play with.

Today, for his birthday, one of my assistants surprised Barnum and me with a lovely big, soft plushy hedgehog with a loud “squeaker.” It didn’t actually squeak. It was more a sort of honk or oink. Barnum looooves plushy toys that squeak — the louder, the better.

He grabbed it and very happily chomped it, making it squeal again and again, his stubby tail wagging the whole time. And when he’d had enough of that, he started to full its feet off. I told him to stop because appendage removal is always the precursor to a complete disembowelment, but my assistant said it’s his birthday, he could do what he wanted. So I let him go ahead. It took him less than a minute to pull off all the feet, unstuff it, and pull out the honker.

We picked up the random bits of hedgehog fluff and fur and body parts. I didn’t get a picture of the hedgehog in its pristine state or even when Barnum was chewing it, because he was on my bed, his butt to me. Not a good angle for photography!

My assistant said, “This was poorly made. It wasn’t stitched tightly enough. That’s why he was able to pull it apart so fast.” Uh-huh. . . .

She put it back together with reinforced the stitching. I got my camera. I played a very short game of fetch and tug with Barnum and his refurbished hedgehog. I tried to get pictures of it in his mouth, which was very cute, but he was always moving so fast I couldn’t take the picture in time. This was the best I could do:

That’s his face in the upper left corner. He’s running back to his mat with the hedgehog…

… to dismember it. It was easy to get pictures of that!

Grab hedgehog and SHAKE.

Hold it so it can’t escape (and to get better leverage).

Yes! We have FLUFF!

No destuffing is complete until a squeakerectomy has been performed. (That’s the long white thing in the plastic bag that got flung a couple of feet away.)

My work here is done.

What’s next? How about that squirrel you’re holding?

Barnum has grown up. He’s a much bigger dog. He’s got a lot of talents and skills he didn’t have as a puppy. He got a much bigger hedgehog. And he destroyed it much more quickly. The great circle of life is complete.

By the way, I know he is naked. Here’s why: We were letting his coat grow out for the winter till we found three deer ticks on him between the end of November and early December. They are very hard to find when his coat is full. So we shaved him. Now we finally have snow so we can stop tick checking till the thaw. Never fear! Barnum’s got a new fleece coat to keep him warm indoors, in addition to the coat he already had for walks. At night, when the house is chilly, he sleeps under my comforter pressed against me, taking up three-quarters of my queen-sized bed. He suffers terribly.

Happy New Year!

– Sharon and Barnum, SD and Birthday Boy

Dog Faming – Picture It!

My friend Eileen did a terrific blog post on Dog Faming — an alternative to the current trend of “Dog Shaming.”

What? You haven’t heard of dog shaming? Neither had I. Sadly, now I have. There are multiple “dog shaming” websites and Facebook pages devoted to people posting pics of their dogs doing (or having done) things the people Are Not At All Happy About, with a sign saying what misbehavior the dog has engaged in.

I understand that these pictures and comments are supposed to be funny (and every once in a while, I do find one genuinely funny), and I also don’t believe the dog knows their picture is on the internet. I’m glad that one of the most popular sites (over 100,000 “Likes” on its Facebook page!) now has an “Adoptable Friday” feature which shows a “shamed” rescue dog available for adoption every week. I’m certain the vast majority of people who post on these sites love their dogs.

Nevertheless, there’s a dark side to all this: This trend supports ideas about dogs and dog behavior that are inaccurate and that can cause a lot of misunderstanding and misery for those on both ends of the leash. When I read these sites, I feel sad — and frustrated.

One problem is that I see many dogs displaying unhappy body language, which leads me to believe that the person taking the picture has already made it clear to their dog that they are mad. The dogs are displaying appeasement signals. In other words, they know their person is upset and this is stressful to the dog, so the dog uses these signals to say, “Please calm down. Can’t we just get along?”

Unfortunately, people tend to misunderstand this dog body language. Here is a quote I lifted from one of the dog shaming Facebook pages that sums up the problem:

The funniest thing about some of these dogs is that they know they did wrong and their lil ears are back because they KNOW they messed up. I just love dogs so much.

Comments about dogs “looking guilty” or “acting guilty” are a common theme on these sites. In actuality, scientific studies show that dogs “look guilty” to humans whether or not they have actually done anything “wrong.”

A lot of the pictures show dogs who look blissfully unaware that their owners are “shaming” them. They are asleep or lounging around looking relaxed. The pictures that make me sad or concerned are like the two below. The white dog on the left (Miniature Poodle?) looks scared and miserable. The Husky on the right looks like it’s super pissed off and is about to attack if given any provocation.

Whatever happened before or during the taking of these pictures is probably pretty miserable for both human and canine.

Another problem is the number of posts of dogs who do something frequently — in many cases, apparently (like the poodle on the left) every day — and I have to ask myself, “Why are the owners continuing to support this behavior in their dog?” If they know the dog rolls in poop, destroys the sofa, eats socks, etc., why are they giving the dog unsupervised access to poop, sofas, and socks? In some photos, there are even dog crates in the background, and I have to wonder if those crates are ever USED?

I think the fact that people are posting these pictures about “dogs who need to be shamed” points to some of the answer. If you think the dog knows what they did was “wrong,” you might think that telling them off and/or shaming them is an effective way to change their behavior. So, management (use of crates or X-pens or tie-downs to prevent access to the poop or couch or socks) and training (teaching the dog to chew on a Kong or play with a toy or get a treat instead of the undesirable behavior), don’t enter into it. And the problem behavior continues.

Finally, the more you focus on mistakes (or accidents or “bad behavior”), the more you tend to encourage that kind of behavior. Here’s a rather amusing post on this phenomenon.

The flip side is also true: One of the most wonderful aspects of positive-reinforcement training (clicker training) is that by focusing on what your dog is doing right, you both tend to feel good because you are both “winning” over and over again. Both dog and human are generally very happy during and after a clicker session. In fact, if you find yourself becoming tense or angry, all the trainers I know advocate quitting the session ASAP and doing something else instead. Nobody learns (or teaches) well if they are stressed out.

So, one dog trainer started a Dog Faming contest on her Facebook page.

Still time to FAME your dog in November! Post a staged pic or your dogs w/ a sign telling us something you love/admire/are thankful for about them. It’s a photo op and a training op all rolled into one! Best pic wins a prize! Please share, and consider ‘liking’ Caninestein Dog Training’s page while you’re there.
More training/photo challenges coming soon! Let’s go ‘viral’ with positive messages about our dogs!

So, over the course of the last few days, Barnum and I have had some fun with my new camera, the signs I made, and of course, a bunch of treats. Something very interesting happened during the course of these photo shoots which I’ll tell you about at the end of this post. Meanwhile. . . . Let the show begin!

Bouviers require a lot of grooming while also not being the most touchy-feelly dogs, so I’ve put a lot of effort into Barnum being cooperative with grooming….

I couldn’t find a good place to put the sign, so I taped it to his collar.

Inside and out….

I wanted to show the brush ON his actual teeth, but I’d need a third hand to lift his lips.

Certain themes did arise…

Pulling the bathroom door shut..

Nudging the bedroom door shut.

Fortunately, Barnum doesn’t seem bothered by the repetitive nature of some tasks.

Aaaaand this door, too….

 

The whole house is made of doors.

Okay, but there is stuff to do besides closing doors. Well, except that this is technically still a door, I suppose. . . .

It’s open. Now what?

He’s also good with retrieving skills, like this….

“Moo yoo wahn gees now?”

And this….

He retrieves my slippers more often than anything else.

And this….

That’s a piece of hot dog and a piece of raw beef on the fork.

He had to hold this still for quite a while so I could get a picture where the sign wasn’t blurry from swinging around:

Tadah! I’m a trick dog, too!

What I noticed was this: After every photo session, I was so damn happy. I felt such warm, tender, joyous feelings toward Barnum. He was all waggy and bouncy, and I was all smiley and delighted. I’d invite him up on the bed and moosh on him and give him treats. It really did affect me to focus on all these things he does that make my life easier or that make it easier for me to care for him. Even the “trick” of sitting on the table holding the sign, while not a useful behavior in itself, showed me how solid some of the component behaviors are, which ARE useful and important. There’s nothing groovier than loving a Bouvier!

Go check out Eileen’s dog faming post and the other dog faming posts at Caninestein on Facebook and give them some “Likes” and comment love!

If you have a dog faming post to share, please provide links in the comments!

-Sharon, the muse of Gadget (famous without the signs), and Barnum, SD

P.S. Wasn’t this post enLIGHTening?

Barnum nudges the light switch with his nose.

Product Review: Fragrance-Free Dog Shampoo Bars

As a service dog partner with multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), I’ve gone through a lot of trial and error in finding a shampoo that I tolerate that also works well for my dogs. This is especially important because whenever I went anywhere, my service dog would go with me, and when we came home, we’d both need to bathe to get fragrance residues off our hair and skin.

The Bad Old Days

The only “all-natural” dog shampoo I found that was supposed to be safe for people with MCS (I bought it from a mail-order business that caters to people with MCS) turned out to be made up of numerous essential oils and reeked to high heaven. Even friends without MCS said it was like a perfume bomb. I can’t imagine someone with MCS using it safely.

I turned to the only other option I could think of — a gentle, fragrance-free human shampoo. This worked okay with Jersey. But when Gadget came along, I discovered that over time the shampoo dried out his coat, stimulating his body to secrete more oils to protect his skin. This led to a dog who had a dry AND oily coat, which caused him to smell very “doggy.” Eventually, I tried mixing fragrance-free human conditioner and shampoo, and that seemed to do the trick: his coat became softer and the oily secretions went away.

Even though these products were better than the toxic and/or fragranced dog shampoos on the market, I wondered how healthy it was for them to eat so much of it (because I gave out a lot of treats to make baths fun, so a lot of snorking treats out of the bath water took place). And sometimes my dogs have not liked the feel or smell of the products.

A Potential New Solution!

Then, a couple of months ago, I learned of fragrance-free dog shampoo bars made by a person with MCS! Barbara’s online store, Baltimore Soaps and More, sells four kinds of dog shampoo bars.

Baltimore soaps and shampoo bars

Barbara was kind enough to send me samples of three of these (she’s out of stock of the fourth, see below), and I tried them out on Barnum.

They were

• Sadie’s Choice — with shea butter

• Scrub-a-Dub Dog — with goat’s milk

• Oats and Honey — with oats and honey

The first time I used one was to clean Barnum’s beard. Bouvier beards are nasty things. In fact, the Dutch nickname for Bouviers des Flandres is “Vuilbaard” which means “vile beard” or “dirty beard.” I used to use unscented baby wipes to try to clean his beard, but they didn’t work very well, and Barnum was uncooperative because he hated the smell.

The First Test: The Beard

So, to test out the new shampoo bars, I first let Barnum decide which soap he liked best. I held each one up to his nose, one at a time. The goat’s milk one was of no interest — he didn’t move away, but he didn’t move toward it. The oats and honey he moved toward a bit. But the shea butter one he sniffed it, then he moved in to sniff it again, and licked his lips. The clear winner! (Later, when I retested the soaps, he tried to gently take a bite of the shea butter soap.)

Sadie’s Choice Shampoo Bars

I discovered what worked best was to lather a rag or wash cloth with a bit of the soap and then massage it into his beard, and then once the nastiness had been removed, to rinse the rag free of soap to rinse his beard with. Barnum seemed comfortable and held still for all this, which he usually does not do when I go tugging at and mutchering his beard. The fact that he liked the smell seemed to make a big difference to him. Afterward, his kisses smelled much sweeter (without all that rotten food in his beard)!

The Real Test: The Bath!

I’ve cleaned his beard with Sadie’s Choice a couple of times since then, but the real test was for the total bath, which we did a few weeks ago.

Betsy helps me bathe Barnum. I wasn’t sure how the shampoo bar would go over with her since we’ve always used liquid shampoo before.

We wetted Barnum down with the shower sprayer as usual, and then she started rubbing the bar all over him. After a minute of lathering, Betsy said, “I like this soap much better than the shampoo.”

“Really?” I said. “Why?”

“With this you can hit the spots you need to hit with it,” she gestured to his hindquarters and tail, which she was soaping up. “I always felt like we were using more than we needed with the shampoo. We had to use so much. This is not as wasteful.”

I will add my own observations about the shampoo:

It had a pleasant smell, by which I means practically no smell, but what there was smelled clean and pleasant and not fragrance-y or chemical-y. Even fragrance-free shampoo has more of a smell than this did, to me.

Barnum seemed to like the smell and feel of it better, so he was very happy and cooperative (although the hot dog slices were a major factor, too).

It rinsed off much faster and easier than any other soap/shampoo/conditioner I’ve used on a dog before. It rinsed very clean and easy. I had not expected that.

In the time since that bath, Barnum’s coat has stayed in good condition. It didn’t get oily or smelly like used to happen when I used people shampoo, and it also is not dried out. It is crisp and soft, without a doggy smell, the way a bouv coat should be.

We give Baltimore Soaps and More doggy shampoo bars four paws up!

Four Paws UP!

The Interview: Barbara, the Soap Maker

To round off this review, I thought it would be fun to interview Barbara about her soap-making business, her dog shampoo bars, what it’s like to run a small business when you live with MCS, and her life with dogs. Here it is!

Sharon: What gave you the idea to start a soap business? And how do you actually make these soaps and shampoo bars?

Barbara: I have always been a fan of wonderful bath soaps and looked forward to the thrill of opening a new bar. After being chemically injured in 2005 and developing multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), I quickly realized that my soap options were very limited and it made me a little depressed. I decided to start making my own soaps so that I wouldn’t be stuck with the same boring bars all of the time and figured that there must be other people out there who felt the same way I did!

Sharon: Why do you make soaps and shampoos without fragrances, essential oils, or chemicals?

Barbara: Fragrance oils are bad news for all involved since they are known endocrine disruptors, and the manufacturers aren’t required to disclose ingredients. Tell everyone you know to avoid them! Although some people with MCS tolerate essential oils, if I used them in some of my soap batches, other batches would be cross contaminated due to residue left behind in the molds plus contamination from my hands and contamination during curing and storage. I’ve had soap-making supplies shipped to me where the entire package was fragrance contaminated and unusable so I recommend that people who have sensitivities only purchase soap from a seller who doesn’t use fragrances of any kind in their business or in their home.

Soap is a chemical reaction between fats/oils and lye (sodium hydroxide) that has been dissolved in water. Once the reaction takes place you are left with true soap (as opposed synthetic detergent bars like Dove or Irish Spring) and the lye is used up. Other than lye, no other chemicals are needed for soap making. I tell people that if you are purchasing soap and notice ingredients that aren’t something you would find in your kitchen then don’t buy it because it isn’t a truly natural product. On the same note, avoid buying soap from anyone who doesn’t fully disclose the ingredients on the label.

Sharon: Who is Sadie (of Sadie’s Choice) and why did you name a shampoo after her?

Barbara: I know we aren’t supposed to pick favorites amongst our furry friends but Sadie was THE BEST DOG EVER! Our family rescued her from a shelter four hours away from our home when she was already probably 12 years old, never spayed, infested with fleas, arthritic and had a lump growing on her leg that the shelter staff feared was cancer. I talk about Sadie on my website.

Sharon: Why do you choose the ingredients you do (honey, shea butter, goat’s milk) for dog shampoo?

Barbara: It seems like so many dogs are plagued with skin irritations and so my first goal was to make dog shampoo that didn’t contribute to the problem due to added fragrances. I have made four varieties of dog shampoo bars so far and three of them each have an ingredient known for being soothing for the skin – honey/oats, shea butter, and goat’s milk. I also make a coffee shampoo for dogs because coffee in soap is a natural deodorizer and our current dog had such a funk from her time as a stray that the other bars weren’t enough to remove the odor. The Doggie Deodorizer bar has been very popular which is why I’m currently out of stock! I’m also considering making a dog shampoo with tomato juice for… you guessed it…skunk encounters!

Sharon: I had never heard of dog shampoo bars before I came across your site. Why bars instead of liquids?

Barbara: The eco reasons for shampoo bars include that you aren’t paying for a product that is mostly water and you don’t have any plastic bottle waste. Also, I have found that shampoo bars do a better job of breaking through the oils on the dog’s coat in order to get that first lather going. Simply wet your dog and rub the bar across his/her coat and you will quickly develop a rich, shampoo like lather.

Sharon: What’s it like to run a business when you have MCS?

Barbara: Being a business owner with MCS means that, like with the rest of my life, I spend a lot of time making special requests of people such as not to handle my soap-making supply orders with fragrance on their hands and not to place my vendor spot near anyone selling scented products or running generators or cooking food on grills or gas-powered appliances. I also make all of my business decisions based on my own needs and that of my MCS customers which includes using brown kraft paper with black ink for labels and using mostly brown craft paper and shreds for packaging when shipping orders.

Sharon: Since you make dog shampoo, I’m assuming you have dogs! Can you tell me about them?

Barbara: Our family likes to rescue senior dogs and so we have a fairly high turnover rate. Our current companion is a Jack Russell who lost her way three years ago during a blizzard and had four failed adoptions plus a night in doggie jail before we made her part of our family. We are used to lab mixes and so having a Jack Russell has been quite a change for us. Lucy is a better mouser than our cats!

Sharon: Do your dogs have a favorite shampoo bar? Or do you find that certain bars work better on certain types of coats or breeds?

Barbara: Lucy sleeps on our bed and so I like to bathe her once a month. I find that having a removable shower head on a long hose is a must. She doesn’t seem to have a preference – all of my soaps leave her coat clean, soft and smelling sweet and neutral.

Sharon: I read a mention of rescue dogs on your site. Are you involved in rescue?

Barbara: Since I’m raising two sons my rescue work has been limited to adopting carefully selected dogs who needed homes. Someday I picture myself fostering dogs that need rehabilitation before they can be placed for adoption.

Sharon: I read on your site that you lost two dogs to cancer. Has that experience affected your business or other parts of your life?

Barbara: Our family has lost three dogs to cancer in the past 12 years. When we adopted Sadie, some of our friends and even the workers at the shelter asked us why we would put our older son (our second son hadn’t been born yet) through possibly losing a dog soon after adoption? In our minds, we felt that showing him that a dog deserves a good home no matter how few days she may have left was an important lesson in compassion. Sadie ended up living for two years and four months after her placement with us. She was a joy for each day we had her as part of our family.

Sharon: Can people use your dog shampoo bars? I’m kind of tempted to try out that honey and oats one on myself, just for fun! Is there any reason I shouldn’t?

Barbara: Sure you can, and I won’t tell anyone! My dog shampoo bars are made of the same type of ingredients as my human bars. I would recommend trying it out BEFORE it gets covered in dog hair though.

Sharon: Do people ever ask you for dog shampoos that contain flea or tick chemicals? If so, what do you tell them?

Barbara: No one has so far. At vendor events I have a banner above my booth that reads, “Perfume Free Natural Soap” and I tell everyone who approaches that I don’t use any perfumes, dyes, or essential oils in my bars. I have, however, had numerous people ask, “But then what do you SCENT them with?”

Chocolate Orange Soap

Sharon: Do you have some sort of culinary background? Many soaps look good enough to eat. (It makes me hungry to look at them. I have to keep reminding myself that these are not food, they are soap. Which makes me similar to my second service dog, Gadget, who was fond of eating bars of olive oil soap.)

Barbara: Thanks for the compliment. I am an experienced cook and find a lot of inspiration for my soaps from the food world.

Sharon: Anything else you’d like to add?

Barbara: Make sure you store your natural soaps in a well draining soap dish and not in the path of the shower spray in order to prolong their life. Also, one thing folks may not know is that due to curing time it takes at least a month to make each bar of soap.

Sharon: Thank you for your time!

– Sharon, the muse of Gadget (who liked to eat soap, even if it didn’t look like food!), and Barnum, relatively clean SD/SDiT

They’re “Assistance Dogs,” Not “Public Access Dogs”

Brooke at ruled by paws is hosting Assistance Dog Blog Carnival #8 on the theme of “Marchin’ to Your Own Drum.”

Marching to Our Own Drum!

Lately I’ve begun to realize just how much my current approach to training my service dog (SD) diverges from ideas, approaches, and perceptions of SDs in the larger US culture. Specifically, my main focus is on training my assistance dog to perform behaviors that assist me, due to my disabilities. This would seem to be not only sensible, but the very definition of an assistance dog, wouldn’t it? Indeed, it is. If you read the service animal section of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), you will find this:

Service animals are defined as dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities. Examples of such work or tasks include guiding people who are blind, alerting people who are deaf, pulling a wheelchair, alerting and protecting a person who is having a seizure, reminding a person with mental illness to take prescribed medications, calming a person with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) during an anxiety attack, or performing other duties. Service animals are working animals, not pets. The work or task a dog has been trained to provide must be directly related to the person’s disability. Dogs whose sole function is to provide comfort or emotional support do not qualify as service animals under the ADA.

Yet, more and more I am coming across individuals, organizations, and websites focused primarily, or in some cases, exclusively, on training dogs in obedience and manners so that the dog can accompany its person in public. (Here is an organizational example of a focus that is primarily on public access. Here is an organizational example of a non-task training approach to SD work.)

It’s understandable that public access training (which includes a dog being obedient, well-mannered, and unobtrusive in public as well as being able to perform necessary assistance tasks in public) is receiving so much attention. Public access is a legal issue, so it’s natural that organizations and individuals are concerned about complying with the law. Further, there are more assistance dogs working and being trained than ever before, which means more SDs are showing up in public. Into the mix add that more people are partner-training than ever before (with a great range of experience and skill) and that many partners have hidden disabilities that make them more vulnerable to access challenges. Finally, and sadly, there are an increasing number of people who wish to commit fraud by trying to pass off their pet dogs as SDs — both people with disabilities who have not done the necessary training and people without disabilities who simply want the companionship of their dog away from home. The pressure on the SD handler to make sure their dog behaves with perfect comportment at all times is thus a very big deal in the assistance dog world.

Meanwhile, here I am, training my dog to help me around the house — open and shut doors, turn on and off lights, pick up things I drop, carry messages to my human assistants, etc. We are barely doing any public access training simply because I spend almost all my time in bed and very rarely leave the house, so training in public is very difficult, and having a working dog in public is much less important than one who helps me at home. Barnum has to be “on call” at home at any time I might need him. Fortunately, his personality and the way we have trained mean that he is eager to jump into action.

Barnum opens the fridge for me.

I realize our situation is not that of most teams. In some cases public access is always crucial to the dog’s work. Guide dogs often work exclusively outside the home and are off duty at home. Their work involves assisting their human partners to get to and from work, school, restaurants, hotels, conferences, and subways. Thus, public work is essential for a guide dog.

For people with other types of assistance dogs, too, there is usually an expectation of public work — alerting or guiding or providing mobility assistance in stores, on the street, at work, etc. Most people with assistance dogs bring their SD with them everywhere for two reasons:

1. The dog’s work is necessary or important for the disabled person in public, and
2. The working bond between the partners is strengthened by ongoing work and training in a variety of settings and/or on a daily basis

Still, the proliferation of both SD fraud and poorly trained SDs have led some assistance dog organizations to require passing a public access test as proof that a dog is a service dog. For example, to be a partner member of the International Association of Assistance Dog Partners (IAADP), I have to sign a form saying that my SD has or would be able to pass their public access test/definition. So, even though I have had two previous SDs and have been an IAADP member for a dozen years, now I’m no longer a partner member because Barnum and I don’t go out. I feel very sad about this.

Yet, Barnum is a working service dog around the house. You can see how much we’ve accomplished in this regard in just a month by comparing this recent post from July to this one from June.

I feel frustrated by this, and the irony does not escape me: the more disabled I am, and the more I need my service dog, the less I fit neatly into the category of a SD team. In fact, I can trace the changes in my disabilities in part by what my service dogs have done for me at a given time.

My first service dog, Jersey, did help me around the house, but the biggest difference she made for me was that she enabled me to occasionally go out by myself. I trained her to cart my oxygen tanks to and from the car, and to carry groceries from the van to the front door and then to the fridge. At doctor’s appointments or other occasional outings, her carrying my water and other things in a pack left my hands free to push my oxygen cart if I was walking. I went grocery shopping once every month or two with her and my mobility scooter, which was something I had previously not been able to do since I got sick. Before Jersey, I always needed someone to take me shopping.

[Note: I have some great photographs of Jersey working, but they haven’t been scanned into a computer yet. I hope to get the pics inserted by the time the Carnival goes up. Please come back in a week or two, and hopefully they’ll be here!]

Even the things she helped me out with around the house are different from the tasks I need canine assistance with now. For example, Jersey helped me fold and put away the laundry. But now I have human assistants do that. She also carted gardening supplies, which enabled me to garden. Now I’m much too sick to garden. Once, when I walked into my backyard to pick apples, I was too sick to walk back unaided, and she helped me get back home. Now there’s no question of me wandering out on foot into a field.

Gadget in a calm down-stay and paying attention to me while surrounded by little kids.

Gadget, my second SD, learned the same things Jersey did — bracing, carrying a pack, retrieving, loading and unloading groceries — but I also added some additional skills so that he could help out with more stuff at home.

One of Gadgets favorite skills, carrying groceries to the house.

He learned how to alert me to the kitchen timer, to let the cat and himself in and out, to open and shut doors, to bring me the phone. When I got Lyme disease and became much more disabled than before, those skills became much more crucial than the ones for going shopping or putting away laundry. And then I taught him new things that were much more important — getting Betsy or my PCA when I couldn’t speak, turning lights on and off and bringing me water from the refrigerator to take my pills when I couldn’t get out of bed, etc.

Meanwhile, Barnum has learned to do things that Gadget didn’t. Barnum has a much more refined “go get person/deliver message” than Gadget did. He is helping me with undressing, which Gadget never learned. He alerts to my various alarms and pumps. And I still have plans for him to learn additional skills that we haven’t gotten to yet.

This is the pouch Barnum wears for transporting messages or small items to or from others in my home.

Some of you may remember that when Barnum was younger, I was concerned that he’d never make it as my service dog because he was such a distracted, hyper flake in public. The irony is that since he’s matured, on the occasions I have taken him into public to train, he’s done really well — especially considering his age and his bouncy nature. I could have passed Jersey off as a fully trained SD before she had finished her training because her manners were so perfect and calm in public. She could have been doing nothing to help me, and we wouldn’t have been challenged because we “looked like” a SD team.

I once read about a SD program which had a separate category for dogs who could assist their people in the home but not work in public (due to anxiety or distractibility); they called these dogs “companion dogs” and they were not considered service animals. That has always bothered me. A “companion animal” is a pet. Dogs, cats, birds are all referred to as “companion animals.” However, a dog that opens and shuts the fridge, turns lights on and off, helps with the laundry, and retrieves dropped items for her disabled handler is a service dog, not a pet. If that dog doesn’t do well in public, obviously the dog should be left home when the person goes out. But that doesn’t make the dog any less a service dog. Why not just call that type of dog an “in-home service dog”? It would be more accurate, and in my opinion, more respectful to both members of the team.

Barnum turns off the lights.

Barnum is already, by legal definition, a service dog: he increases my independence and safety by performing assistance tasks, which is what assistance dogs are supposed to do. The fact that my level of function and my level of dependence on humans is more than most assistance dog partners (and more than my previous level) doesn’t change that. However, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to say he’s a SD in the eyes of assistance dog organizations, because I don’t know if we’ll do enough training — if I, myself, will leave the house enough, let alone with him — for him to pass a public access test. I try not to let it get to me. In the scheme of things, what’s most important is that Barnum and I are happy and productive together. I do hope, though, to feel a greater sense of acceptance and respect from the assistance dog community one day.

– Sharon, the muse of Gadget, and Barnum SD/SDiT

The Little Things in Life (and Dog Training)…

…are not free, but sometimes they feel like “Amazing Free Gifts!!” when you forget how hard you worked to get to something “easy.” Lately, I’ve seen how the foundation training I’ve done with Barnum (via Sue Ailsby’s Training Levels) has increased our team repertoire, allowing me to communicate more easily with Barnum and request behaviors my previous SDs didn’t know.

Spending so much time training and longing for the day when I can definitively take the “iT” off of “SDiT” sometimes leads me to lose track of the point of it all: the end product. Yesterday was one of those days when I was able to marvel at my dog actually doing the shit I’d trained him to do! Not Big Impressive Service Skills (that’s a post for another time), but “little things.”

You see, yesterday was “Doggy Spa Day” here at Chez Wachsler. All those handling sessions — holding his paws, messing with his muzzle and tail, digging in his hears — certainly came in handy when I had to clip between his toes and when Betsy buzzed his tail and butthole and I debouverized him (removed his bouvier beard).

The positioning cues like stand and stay are gold when you need a duration stand for clipping. After all, there is a lot of dog to clip, and with my very limited stamina, time is of the essence.

A crucial skill for grooming is a targeting skilled I call “chin.” Chin means, “Rest your chin in my palm until you are released.” Or, “Rest your chin on the surface I’m pointing to until you are released.”

When I need Barnum to hold really still — such as when I am clipping his ears, which is anxiety-producing for me because I once nicked Gadget’s ear, and it bled profusely — I have him put his chin in Betsy’s palm. Then I lay his ear flat in my left hand or over the top of his head and carefully guide the clippers with my right hand.

It was also lovely today to be able to easily brush his teeth and to do some touch-ups with my curved, blunt-tipped scissors of the hair between his toes. Having him cooperate — not pull away or get antsy — uses less energy and is more pleasant for both of us.

But the most exciting moment was when we needed to do some cleaning and reorganizing mid-haircut yesterday. I have a large enough bathroom that I can easily turn my powerchair around in it, but it is still, after all, a bathroom. When it contains two large people, one large dog, a coffee table (which is what I use as a grooming table), and all the grooming paraphanelia (clippers, sheers, brushes, combs, broom, dustpan, bag to collect dog fur, hedge trimmers, etc.), it can feel rather small. Betsy usually does most of the clipping from the floor, and then to do the trickier parts (his feet and head, especially), I take over, with Barnum standing on the table.

So, we were moving the table out of the way and needed to sweep up the hair before repositioning the table (and dog). We slid the table to the side.

I said, “Hup!”

Barnum jumped onto the table.

I said, “Sit,” and he sat on the table. I decided I wanted him to stay right there, out of the way, while we swept up and got the blades ready for the next assault phase of the haircut, so I added a “stay.”

And he just sat there on the table while we did what we needed to do. I thought of the introduction to “Stay” from the Training Levels:

There’s a wonderful sense of freedom that comes when you can “park” your dog on the grass while you spread the picnic blanket, park her off the bike path while you dust off your kid, or park her on the front step while you carry in the groceries.

I would add that it is even more convenient to be able to park your dog on an elevated surface, if need be, which is also something I learned from the Levels list. When we had the “sit” contest, I taught Barnum to jump onto the coffee table and sit on it. (Here’s a post with some of our fun sit contest photos.) Now sitting on the table is one of his favorite behaviors.

You might not think that training your dog to sit on a coffee table is such a terrific idea, but you never know when it will come in very handy.

– Sharon and Barnum, (bald bouvier) SD/SDiT

Training Update, Plus Where Is My Shark of Yesteryear?

Training Wrap-Up/Update

Barnum’s training moves apace. I try every day to do some handling (brushing teeth, coat upkeep, nail filing), some New Levels training (Sue Ailsby’s books), some service skills training, and/or some manners/basic obedience training. Most days we do not manage most of this! Still, almost every day we do some training.

The New Levels training is hard to track because a lot of it is review, and some of the “comeafters” require criteria that I’m not always able to do — like retrain it outside, or with another person, or in a different room. So, we speed through some of it, and then we stall out and wait on some until the weather or my pain level or whatnot enable me to do things in other rooms or outside, etcetera.

In preparation for future doctor’s appointments and things like that, we’ve been working on mat duration, down-stay, and relax. I’m loving combining shaping relax with down-stay and mat. These also mesh well with training default going to mat or crate when I’m eating, with which the MannersMinder has been very helpful. And we’ve also been adding new aspects of zen (“leave it”) into the mix, such as having my PCAs teach him zen when they’re doing food prep.

Most of the service skills we’ve been working on are doors (opening and shutting), light switch, and “Where is [person]?” He has made excellent progress on all of these. He can now turn on or off my bathroom light on one cue — the same cue (Lynn!) — pretty reliably, without flicking them on or off additional times. The most important light switch is my bedroom one. That’s still a challenge because the switch is right behind where I park my powerchair next to my bed, and that makes it hard for him to jump up and get it from the correct angle. We’ll get there, though.

Door shutting is, in some cases, completely reliable — such as if I’m in my powerchair — and in other cases, still not attached to the cue. He seems to know what I’m asking if I ask for him to shut my bedroom door when I’m in bed, but he still has some discomfort with it because of one time when the door bonked him in the butt when we were training that. Even though we’ve done it a hundred times (not exaggerating) since then, he hasn’t entirely gotten over that incident. Bouviers are like elephants: they never forget. They develop phobias at the drop of a hat.

With the bathroom door, he has no “issues,” he just doesn’t know what the cue is yet, and there are not as many obvious physical cues because I’m far enough away that he can’t tell if I’m pointing to the door, his crate, his mat, etc.

Where he is really shining, and what turns out to be one of the most useful skills, is finding the person. He loves this, and I’m very pleased with how I’ve trained it. I started teaching him when he was a baby to learn the names of my PCAs and Betsy, and my name, and that it was excellent fun to run to that person when he was asked, “Where’s Sharon/Betsy/PCA?” etc. What I’ve been working on lately is creating a behavior chain where he will open the door to get to that person, no matter where we are, and then nudge them until they ask him, “Where’s Sharon?”

I have discovered I most often need this skill when I’m in the bathroom, and I haven’t brought my walkie-talkie with me. So far, he will eagerly run and open my door and find and nudge the person if they are in an obvious location downstairs. It’s good training for both of us that we have to practice this skill with five different people, each of whom does it a bit differently.

Next I’ll be raising the criteria. It will become much harder if he has to open two doors (my bathroom door, which is probably the hardest door to open in the house, and then my bedroom door, which he does easily) or if he has to find the person in an unexpected location. When we have the entire behavior really solid, and he is nudging people in a totally obnoxious way, I will go back to teaching him to bark on cue so that he can bark in situations where he can’t get through a door, such as if I’m outside or if he needs to get Betsy, and she’s upstairs. I put bark/silence training on hold a few months ago because he was getting too barky (I started calling him, “Barkum”), but now that he’s had an attitude adjustment, I think it will go better.

Mais où est mon requin d’antan? (But where is my shark of yesteryear?)

One skill that is really important that we’ve had to return to basics on is his trained retrieve. He is great at picking up small things like pens, clickers, baggies, silverware, and even paper. He doesn’t chew or lick things. He doesn’t bat them around. He’s very purposeful about it. He usually remembers to hold things until I cue the release, even if my hand is on it.

The problem is that he somehow has learned that he can only open his mouth a leetle bit. Obviously I must have taught him this, because when he’s playing, and certainly when he was a pup, he had no problem opening his mouth very wide, as these pictures and this early post show.

Sure, it’s all fun until someone gets bit in the arm. Then it’s only fun for Barnum, not so fun for the owner of the arm.

“Mm, the lid to the bucket tastes as good as the bucket, itself.”

Now its a hose and a sprinkler all-in-one!

But somewhere along the way, when I taught him to take things from my hand and hold them, he got into the habit of opening his mouth just enough to bump his teeth against the thing, and then a bit more to hold the thing behind his canines. If I hold up something that is larger and requires a more open-mouthed grab, he is used to opening a bit and then a bit more, and then a bit more. So, he is sort of going, “nibble?? nibble? nibble,” until he has carefully and gingerly taken the item. However, the sequence occurred so quickly and seamlessly that I didn’t notice that’s what he was doing, because the end result was that he was holding the item the way I wanted.

It’s an excellent approach for helping me to dress or undress, a skill we recently started with sock removal. He’s very careful to avoid my fingers or toes. With removing a sock, you want a dog that will start with a careful, gingerly nibble. But for grabbing and pulling the front of a sneaker, it doesn’t work at all because he won’t open his mouth wide enough to take the front of the sneaker!

Further, when it comes to picking things up off the ground, this method fails miserably for anything that requires a wide, firm grip. What happens then is that he ends up pushing the thing around because he’s not lowering his mouth over it wide enough to grasp it with the first attempt. Round or slippery things roll away as he tries repeatedly to nibble at them. He ends up getting frustrated and giving up.

So, I have stopped most of our retrieve work and gone back to the beginning. I decided I needed to mark the moment when his mouth is open and to keep shaping him to open it wider. This is easier said than done. For one thing, I use a verbal marker (“Yes!”) for this work, and it’s harder to be precise with timing with a verbal marker than with a clicker. For another, he is a bouvier des Flandres, not a Lab or Weimaraner — in other words, he has a lot of hair obscuring his mouth. Even though he has a very short haircut for a bouv, it’s still not always possible to see whether or how much his mouth is open from the side.

Also, my original idea had been to do the training the way we’d started, but use fatter objects, but he just did the nibblenibblenibble thing with the bigger objects, so I knew we had to go further back to kindergarten. Instead, I’ve been using items he is very familiar and comfortable with, such as pens, and very high value treats when he’s very hungry and eager to work. Then I wave the item around in front of me and a little high for him so I can see when his mouth is opening. A lot of the work has just been me learning how to time my “Yes!” — which involves anticipating when he is about to open and trying to say it right before his mouth gets to its widest point — and how to position him so I can see his open mouth. I actually ended up training a little hop because he was having to jump up to grab for the item. That went away as soon as I lowered it a bit.

Once we both got used to the idea that he didn’t actually have to take the item, he just had to open up and grab for it, we started to make some progress. Last session, I had worked him up to grabbing — opening wide enough to take it in his mouth on the first grab — a wide handle of a dog brush. That’s where we are now. I am trying to regain my shark of yesteryear. If anyone had told me a year ago (or two years ago!) that I’d have to put lots of effort into getting him to open his mouth wide and grab willy-nilly at things, I’d never have believed it!

– Sharon, the muse of Gadget (I liked grabbing things!), and Barnum SD/SDiT and reformed shark

Photo Essay: Barnum’s Service Skills

In honor of our Gotcha Day a few days ago — two years together — I took a bunch of pictures of Barnum doing stuff. The idea was to show all the things we’ve learned in the past two years. Of course, it didn’t show everything he’s learned, like not eating the furniture or pooping indoors or attacking people’s pants, etc.

We also didn’t take pictures of some of the skills we’ve been working on all along, and that I have blogged about before: sit, down, come, crate, go to mat, zen, etc. This does not mean we’re finished training these behaviors, but I thought it would be more fun (and we only had so much time and energy) to photograph the newer, flashier stuff.

It’s taken me till now to get the pictures uploaded, then downloaded, then captioned, etc., but here ’tis!

I didn’t know how to adjust the camera settings, and since these tended to be action shots, there are very few that are not artistically blurred. That’s right, it’s not a defect, it’s a feature. Thus, I now present . . .

The Post-Realist Photography Exhibit of Barnum at Year Two

Stand tall to turn on and off the lights!

Turning off the lights!

Open the bedroom door….

First, grab the cord and pull back.

Step 2:

Aaaand pull BACK and DOWN!

Step 3:

Eh viola! The door, she is open!

And then close it!

Get that nose behind it, and in one fluid motion, SLAM it shut!

Done!

The second the door latches, whirl around to collect your treat!

Where’s the PCA?

Sharon asks me "Where?" is the PCA?

I know! I’ll find her!

I have found you. I am staring at you. Do you get the message?

When that doesn’t work. . . .

Hello! I'm bopping your hand! Pay attention!

Since we’re in the kitchen, he might as well open the fridge. . . .

I got it!

Mmmf. Riss iss harder dan id loogs.

Puuuuuuull!

Persistence pays off!

Okay, it's open! Can I close it now?

Yes! Shut the fridge!

Shutting is more funner.

I’m a clumsy human, which  means a dog’s job is never done. First, the clicker I dropped accidentally. . .

She's always dropping these clickers!

Then the pen I dropped on purpose.

She made me sit so I wouldn't keep picking things up before they could manage to take the picture. Humans can be so slow.

Ah gah da peh im my ma-ow….

Mm-kay. I'b gedding ib.

I got it!

Ah brinnin eh peh...!

And now the retrieval of the “dropped” leash….

Why are you putting on my leash now?

You’re welcome. (By which I mean, “Where’s my treat?”)

Honestly, you drop this thing so often it's like it's intentional. . . .

Two years ago he looked like this:

What a face!

And now!…

Look at me now, world!

Love from Sharon, the muse of Gadget, and Barnum, SD/SDiT