Greenstorm's Journal

...or is that the pain meds for the headache kicking in?

Fencing guy came yesterday. His dog played with Robs: excellent. He vaped and although I thought six feet away for a few minutes a couple times and no other people around also vaping would be fine, oof. Aside from the usual, I feel like my brainstem is swollen.

I think when writing about Robs and the dogs I keep veering off a bit into laundry lists rather than capturing the ideas I'm trying for. It's hard to retain things until I have ability to write, after thinking of them.

But very generally, although obedience is nice, what I really want is us both trusting each other, and that means that if a situation demands it nothing is really off-limits. That's where learning appropriate barking is a great example: young dogs tend to fear-bark, but the goal isn't no barking but instead several different kinds of barking. There's a scare-away-specific-animals bark, a general my-territory deterrance bark used at appropriate times, a neighbourhood communication bark that assists with neighbourhood deterrance and specifically chains along the road (I love listening to this, though it's rare outside of fall season), a please-help bark, all that sort of thing.

It gets more complicated for something like a "sit" or "go home" when the dog senses a real threat. This isn't the same as not listening because they're overstimulated; it's assessing the situation and making an appropriate choice where I may not have full information, but also trusting my own information.

And to teach this kind of behaviour I need to do a lot of "hey, I see you doing something, are you sure?" and then check it out and weigh in either "yeah, great decision" or "that's silly" so the dog knows it. And then there's the occasional "absolutely not, that thing is nor an acceptable method" which I want eventually to be things like teeth on skin.

And doing that, paying that kind of attention, then clearly communicating "I see this, I've checked it out and taken you seriously and I'm not dismissing it, and this is my verdict" is fully exhausting over the course of a couple hours a day. This is where Thea or Solly should be stepping in and doing a bunch, but I need to get the muscovies into their own enclosure for it to work. He's really really really good with ignoring the birds now, much better than with the cats, but I don't want any accidents.

We have done several sedate "oh, there's Hazard, let's go say hi and touch noses and sniff butts" now, though and even had some success in "that's done, he doesn't want to play, let's go do something else now". I'm very proud and relieved. Little Bear is a different story, as is Siri-who-swiped-his-nose-on-his-bed-that-one-time.

I'm very interested to see how Solly and Robs interact once they're allowed to. She obviously defends her "lair" (under my pottery table that she's pretending is her create, and I'm agreeing as long as she keeps pretending appropriately) and has a nice tight radius on its defense and a very appropriate growl-first communication, it's over there from the path to the bedroom. And he accepts her going past his run on the way in and out, and they both watch each other interestedly but obediently go through in those situations. They don't appear to be building up animus to the other as intruders, but the proof will be in the pudding on July 2nd when Sol gets her x-rays.

Brain mush. Rest then plant corn.

It's quiet here. Yesterday the power was out for thirteen hours (we were advised about twelve of them in advance) which for me means I can only use one pressure tank full of water and I need to barely open the fridge. The internet goes down, of course, but I have a backup power bank to recharge my phone if need be. The fridge goes quiet; the well pump goes quiet; the lights go quiet.

This morning the power is on but upstairs is still quiet. Everyone mowed their lawns yesterday during the outage and returned to work today; there's an occasional creak of birdsong but no background drone. My roosters have all been eaten by the fox teaching her young how to hunt. Even the sleeping cats aren't snoring yet.

After the amount of pain and weird signals my body was giving me yesterday, upon second waking it, too, is now quiet. There's a rustling sort of ache along my back and shoulders, I keep my awareness out of my fingers, but what used to be a shriek is now more of a whisper.

I felt well enough that I found a game to play with Robs this morning, a physical one, based on a video I'd seen. He won't drop a toy he's playing with for food, but if the toy goes limp and boring he *will* switch to a different toy that's being interesting. We played tug/chew switching toys back and forth from one to the other. It kept him at a reasonable level of interaction, not super overdone. He's still not 100% for teeth placement but when he does get my hand it's an accident and he switches away, in that context of active play.

Frost showed up in tiny patches in a few places on the morning walks. Of the frosted tomatoes, Russian Saskatchewan came away particularly well. Others did too but I need to look through them all. I've realized that since most of the birds are gone I can toss the tomatoes in pots in the greenhouses. The raised night temps in there will really quicken them, though of course that makes it less of a trial. Maybe I've had enough trials this spring. Anyhow the one early red is still in the ground, somewhat frosted but it'll come back.

The corn has been soaking. This is the second round, the first round rotted on my counter since they day I'd been planning to plant it was a bit of the Robs acquisition saga. They say it'll be a late warm fall. If it is that will be helpful. It's a late cool spring, except for that weird warm patch in April.

I've been absorbing tiny amounts of climate pattern and my original feeling, that we're at a nexus here between the prairie, coast, and northern chunks of temperature, is pretty much accurate. When the edges of those chunks fluctuate we end up in one or the other, which is why we get such variable weather.

My figs seem to be perfectly happy outside through all this. Some mugs may have been sold to a local event, which is nice. It's feeling like summer dress weather soon, I don't remember where I put any of those.

The cats are snoring now, and the tap of keys has broken the silence. I'm reluctant to get up because it'll reengage my muscle pain but it needs to be done.

I've had a very unpleasant training issue with Robs. He's been doing mostly ok with cats, but occasionally he'll take off after one, the cat will run, and he'll chase because it's running (I'd run too! But it reinforces him to do it more). I had him on a long line up in the garden while I was gardening, he saw a cat, and took off after the cat. He's not super respectful of leads and lines yet, and one of his tricks is immediately trying to chew through them, so he's on coated metal cords at the moment. Anyhow, the line was long enough that he could get up enough speed to pop the latch that attached it to his collar on the first try, so he took off after the cat. Bad equipment, it sucks, ok.

Well I had him on a bit shorter line and was keeping an eye, but apparently not enough, and a week later he broke one in the same way. He's picked up the idea that if he starts at one end of the leash and fully accelerates as fast as possible towards the other end, he can break the latch I guess. Smart dog, right? But if he does that with me holding it, it pulls me over (I don't let go of the leash, but I do fall over and have some painful joint stuff, or if it's wrapped around my middle it's just very unpleasant).

I dislike situations where he gets *even more* restricted and then gets less good at handling restriction and it spirals like that, but he clearly can't be on a long lead that will break, and the long leads that can absorb that kind of energy (climbing ropes?) are almost certainly chewable. I've ordered a couple climbing caribiners, which are designed to take weight after a fall, so they likely will hold. I am, however, very very unimpressed with his new trick and I'm being very careful to keep the leash fully around part of my body because it's not ok for him to keep doing this, and so it needs to really not work at all. I could see him thinking today before he tried it on a much shorter leash and pulled me over.

In general he's getting better at calmer behaviour and attention, but his, maybe what trainers call threshold where he's just not in the same world with me is very touchy.

I really really wish I could put him in a harness instead of a collar, but I don't think there are any unchewable ones. If those hard pulls are doing this to my body, what are they doing to his neck?

Even with mosquito spray he's also been chewing on his front and inner legs, which at this point looks like it's creating its own discomfort and thus leading him to chew more. He's not bleeding, but he's staying red and irritated there. I don't know if this is food (I've ordered new food to try) or stress or just lingering from the mosquitoes, but it hurts me to look at. His vet appointment is a week away, I made it the day I got him to update his vaxxes. At least it's quicker to get a vet appointment than a doctor's appointment.

Let's try writing some more:

Very few training videos involve treating the dog like a partner. I get that many dogs are supposed to have less volition/be making fewer decisions/their job is to be instantly responsive to humans and they're bred for that etc. Livestock guardian dogs are bred to protect their important things. A lot of raising them is preparing them so that when the strong guarding instincts kick in, they know what's an important thing to guard, what's safe and they don't need to guard against, and who to trust to be involved in decision-making.

So for instance inconvenient resource guarding, which can look like guarding food, a person, a location, is just a slightly misplaced sense of what to guard. That said, my dogs do need to be able to guard their food from, for instance, crows and chickens or it'll all get stolen. So learning what kind of radius is appropriate to guard in, learning that I will not take their food and I will in fact add value (maybe throw hot dogs into the food bowl) instead of taking it away, and that if I take something it's often to move it to a safer/less anxious place like a corner of the yard instead of the middle of the driveway, rather than confiscate it-- all that's important, and it requires the dog learns to trust me.

This is also why I practice "the world is fair" treat-giving pretty often; I give them all treats in order, one after another, so they know that if someone else has something and they don't it's al oversight and I'll fix it. The alternative would be to try and take the thing from the other dog, who then guards their resource, and the tension spirals.

So if a baby dog grabs poop or a dead mouse my job is not to grab the dog and force the thing out of its mouth. It's to close my eyes, think "I'm not sleeping with this baby dog till later tonight and the gross will be worn off by then", give a treat and maybe ask to just look without taking it (very useful!) and deal with it. I remember when Solly was kill-stealing from Hazard (the cat) whenever he'd catch a vole she'd take it and eat it. I handled that well. The first couple days of Robs being here for some reason I could not handle him eating, particularly, dog poop or dead animals and I grabbed them from him. Now he's suspicious of me, and rightly so, so I have a lot of repair to do.

I think part if it might just be that, although he's not really a baby anymore, in the sense of being used to a farm he kind of still is. So he's putting everything in his mouth. He's particularly good at knowing that something "was" food, which I find fascinating. Like, how does a mostly decayed dried out black seed potato from last spring register as food? What about a pumpkin that dried out and sat in the field since October a year and a half ago? Also he eats the fresh mushrooms all over the yard, which are there because I put blocks of spent mushroom blocks in everything. I won't eat them because I can't ID them (bit of an oversight there when I put them in, there are so many kinds) but the ducks will even dig for the mycelium, and apparently Robs recognises them. At least he hasn't poisoned himself yet.

He's doing pretty well with the "it's your choice" game, I think it's called, where I put food in one hand and reward him with the other for not taking it. The next step would be to put the food on the ground but he's a lot faster than I can think. That's a problem with a lot of this, actually: my thoughts are so slow, and my body accordingly slow, that by the time I realize I want to tell him he's doing well he's gone onto doing something else. Likewise by the time I think "it's not worth it for this one dead mouse" I've already gone after it.

We're learning when we like to snuggle with each other, which is important for me. Excited and anxiety look the same to me in him, and he has a tendency to snap at my hand when he wants a hug but also when he wants space. This is difficult because I want to transfer him to a different signal for both of those things but it really helps to be able to first be able to give hi what he's asking for, and I can't tell them apart, and they're very different. When he comes out of the run he always wants a snuggle though.

There have been some good encounters with cats. The way they progress, though, is that if he sniffs quietly we're good, but sometimes he then does a play bow and when he doesn't get a response he likes he starts jumping up and down, which can cause running and wanting to chase, and definitely doesn't reinforce that calm is good. Instead it reinforces that jumping gets a toy to chase. I've been keeping him on a 25' lead that runs loose on the ground when we're up top, so I can step on it if he tries to chase something but he also has more freedom of movement than if I were holding onto things.

I've been rewarding him for looking at me when we do stuff, and rewarding him for sitting. He's doing both of those things more. He's starting to learn that sitting is for asking for something, mostly, though when he's excited he will forget.

He's picked up sit, lie down (though not duration for either of those), and we've been doing rounds of "come, sit" and "go get it" where I alternately treat him for coming to me and then throw a treat for him to get. He's bored of his ball at this point. He does not retain interest in any particular toy, but he is very very very food motivated. The former probably bodes well for flappy reinforcing things like chickens and running interesting things like cats in the long term., as long as he never learns they're food. That's my job: absolute prevention of a Really Bad Incident.

Because he's so food motivated he likes doing tricks. I remember Avallu was a bit like that, he liked tricks and training. The other LGDs are NOT. Honestly I've been with them so long though that we can kind of subtextually communicate about stuff that's important, and if it's not important they wouldn't do it anyhow. On various occasions when I'm out with Robs I'll offer either Thea or Solly some of his treats and they look at me like, "what are you doing?" but I can kind of nod into the corner when I'm coming into the house with a rambunctious Robs and Solly will go to the corner to get out of the way until I get him into the bedroom.

Learning that he wanted hugs when he came out of the run was helpful for me. I need to feel like the dog likes me, not just the treats, and because he's so food motivated and doesn't know me yet I can't really reward him effectively with praise. But being able to settle him with a hug, I at least know there's some component of me that helps. Also undoing my resource stealing issues-- who could trust someone who steals delicious dog poop --will likely help him. Anyhow, we're making progress on feeling like there's a bond but we're not there yet. There's some nice snuggling in bed, especially in the morning.

He's almost longer than I am tall already. He's gonna be a big boy, it's definitely my responsibility to make sure he keeps those teeth to himself. Well, himself and bears.

Meanwhile the cats took pity on me and Siri and Demon started getting along and sleeping on the bed together instead of fighting each other off it. One conflict at a time is enough for me. I'm very grateful.

The geese have raised 5 goslings to almost chicken-sized and another 2 appeared yesterday (they always hatch after a thunderstorm, I think it's the humidity). I hope the new 2 make it as well. I have to do a lot of bailing them out of drinking vessels since they're too tiny to hop out on their own, and if I leave a stick in there to climb out on the adult geese try to stand on it to mate and knock it out. Luckily I'm doing all these dog walks everyday...

There were deer in the back last night and this morning. Poor Solly screams like she's being pulled limb from limb when I won't let her chase them; meanwhile Thea might trot off after them but mostly doesn't care. That's probably why Solly is so upset. Meanwhile our daily walks take us in back past holes in the fence which Thea goes out and Solly wants to go out (but is on leash) so I go around and let Thea back in the front when Solly is away. Hazard and Little Bear come on these walks too.

Hazard and, to a lesser extent, Little Bear seem to want to be friends with Robs but he wants to chase and they want to ....?... Hazard headbutted his leg the other day and he was good with it, which is excellent. He definitely reacts differnetly to them situationally: on the other side of a fence or far away he's inappropriate, but up close he's more likely to make the right decision.

Three weeks till Solly can go out on her own, hopefully, and also meet Robs officially instead of just lurking while he is shepherded through quickly.

I'm sure there was more I wanted down but I'll leave it here for now, my midn is gone. If I trusted AI more I might give it acc3ss to email to try and let through only the ones, er. Nevermind. Less writing more resting.

Sending emails about disability and medical stuff to: professional association, insurance folks, psychiatrist, gyne. Gyne tried to refer me to a psychiatrist, psychiatrist said no and that I should try and on-call one from the hospital. Seems like a great idea given that it's a mix of reproductive medicine issues which half the world doesn't believe in, autism which another half the world doesn't believe in, and maybe-long-covid-or-something, and that altogether it's too complicated for either my GP or the gyne to touch anymore. A walk-in teledoc seems great. I should probably prepare a document for a psychiatrist to read with pertinent background info (have not yet), but doing so will probably be taken as evidence that I'm self-aware and so there's nothing wrong with me. OTOH if I don't they'll just give me stronger oldschool antidepressants.

The last couple days it's taken all my writing and productive-screen time to do medical stuff and I resent it becuse I want to talk about Robs and the garden. Writing is basically the way I stabilize my mental health right now but I don't have wherewithal while doing the other stuff. Also it's the only way I have to talk about my life; I don't talk to people or text them anymore really. That got shorn away last winter, and Josh is the only person I trust to respect my time enough to talk with anyhow. Plus if I don't write it down it will be lost forever since my memory isn't laying things down well.

Relatedly I tried to set a full cup in midair last night. It fell and broke, shockingly. I haven't finished getting the glass out of my feet from last time even.

Pears in the ground yesterday: Talitsa, Beedle, Marshal Zhukov, Chizhovsky from Prairie Hardy nursery. I tucked them in the southwest corner of the upper field, marking the corners of the walkway, where the soil is very sandy. They get a touch of afternoon-evening shade from the spruce for now but it's probably not there permanently.

Also popped a Ptitsin #5 plum down by Josh's shed, and a Big Red cherry in the front yard bed where one of last year's cherries didn't make it.

Even after all these years it's still tempting to pull up an elderberry cutting and make sure it's rooting. I got them in a little late this year. We shall see.

Everything has been tilled once, even the far pig berry patch, though we're again too dry to till properly.

I'm glad I'm getting corn in late, in hindsight, because the corn bed/cornfield is where I've been playing with Robs. Couldn't have done that if it was seeded. When I dig up dandelions he takes them from my hand and shakes them, and sometimes digs them up himself. He's an intense but short-lived digger so far.

Tonight is the last frost in the forecast, so I'm calling it the last frost. Tomatoes really do need to go out so they'll have to take their chances on being covered. It's an exciting set of trial varieties this year, I'm quite pleased with the list. It's really looking like Russian breeding is the way to go, we just don't have the research dollars here except for hothouse varieties, and between the Harper years and the current government I think we never will. Yet another public good sheared off into a "fund-it-yourself" "hobby".

That got dark fast. To brighten it, my figs are doing nicely and they will be repotted soon and hopefully grow fast to block my western window.

I also ended up popping runner beans in pots instead of ourdoors when the frost appeared in the forecast and I'm afraid they've woven themselves onto my shelves. They may need a bit of a shearing, we shall see.

Napa cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, and ethiopian kale in the ground yesterday. One thing I'm doing in the garden is using movable frames, it ends up looking a bit like raised beds or cold frames but I remove them, till the garden, then put them in with frost cloth over. The frost cloth keeps the muscovies out while the seeds are sprouting or the plants are just getting started, the frames mark the edges of the beds well, and they're still movable to be tilled. The tomatoes don't get anything like this, but for the greens and stuff it seems to work well.

I need to plant a flat of woad, lettuce, and kohlrabi.

Tomatoes should be starting to go in today though we may have a frost in a couple days, and I have almost disassembled the pig house in the corner where I'm putting a berry patch in; then I'll till that and interplant the rows with corn and tomatoes while the berries are small. Berries: sea buckthorn, raspberry, maybe evans cherry, and either haskap or apple-grafted saskatoons.

Long line for kiddo pup Robs arrived today so he can hang out while I garden, hopefully. I'm still trying to figure out what gets him into unable-to-regulate space. Hungry does, things I can tell are overstimulation does, but sometimes he just goes straight there out of the box. I'm looking forward to the back fencing being finished so he can run back there where there are no ducks and cats. Until I figure out the overstimulation thing he can't be trusted around them, sometimes he's really good and sometimes really not.

I'm doing A LOT between walking all the dogs and the garden, and it ends up being a pretty strict routine: dog walks and feed cats 6am-7:15am, nap till just shy of noon, dog walks and lunch, nap, an hour or two of gardening, dog walks 4-5, rest, feed other animals and maybe a touch of gardening, dinner, toothbrushing, walk dogs, shower if I'm lucky, bed at 9-10. Dog walks take less than 20 min for Solly, Robs 15 - 40 minutes depending. I think Solly will be happier if I move her outdoors to a small yard/large crate. Counting the days till she can officially play with Robs.

More rain. Robs does much better in a stable place, like weeding with me, than walking. Less overstimulated I guess. He's started experimenting with barking when alone. I wish I had a trail cam, there are so many things I'd like to see, including his behaviour and the inside of my chicken coops and and and.

The ravens/crows tattered the roof of my greenhouse standing on it and waiting for eggs to start peeping so they could go in and eat the unhatched chicks. A group of four geese managed five chickens between them for the last few days, my fingers are crossed they make it. Getting closer to having proper enclosures. Very interested to see if we do go into food scarcity (which I kinda doubt about calories, but not about variety) whether people's attitudes towards the kind of animals which damage foodstuffs change. Semi-suburb areas, the five acre sort of spots, are banning chickens (municipal/regional bylaw sort of things) on Vancouver Island for what appears to be fear of disease transmission reasons.

I think the PEM symptom of "everything swollen above the larynx" is here to stay. It seems to be pretty reliable.

Happy about the rain, I won't need to water before I till for tomatoes, and I can actually weed.