The Time Draws Nigh (In Which I Agonize About Going Back To Work And Am Both Successful And In Deep Trouble Simultaneously)

Tags

anxiety, depression, dog training, maternity leave, parenthood, Perfect Husband, work, working mother

How has it been nearly a year since Fritter was born? Where did the time go?

  
I have spent the last month or two slowly gearing back up to work mode, because in a month I am going to have to go back into the world of unmet expectations and absolutely no down time which is the life of the working mother.

I don’t wanna.

I don’t want my cuddly baby to get bigger.

I don’t want to leave her at daycare because she has some stranger issues (which I will discuss at some point).

I don’t want the stress of having to meet people’s expectations, avoid judgement, etc.

I don’t want to lose the hour and a half of down time I get every day during Fritter’s morning nap while Owl is at school.

I don’t want any of it. I LIKE maternity leave.

 
But, since it isn’t a choice, what I really want is to get my dog training business going, and going HARD. Because training dogs pays between 40 and 70 dollars an hour and working at the vet clinic… doesn’t. Also because it’s one of my life dreams, along with being an author.

Learning to Read: Toddler vs Dog – An Update

Tags

development, dogs, first words, intelligence, reading, symbol recognition, toddlers, training

Back in March, I proposed a battle of wits between my baby and my dog.

It didn’t seem so far fetched, back then. Owl was still speaking in mostly single-word sentences, although with signs he often made two or three word combinations. The average dog has been judged to have the intelligence of an 18-22 month old.

My fellow dog trainer has seen dogs who have learned to differentiate between written words.

So!

To be honest, I was sort of rooting for Beloved Dog, because COME ON, that would have been an AWESOME result.

The problem was, it wasn’t really a fair contest. I could work on Owl’s word recognition at various points throughout the day, like after breakfast, and in the bath, plus he got alphabet work at Daycare.

Beloved Dog got maybe a couple of minutes before his dinner every night.

Within a month, Owl had learned to recognize five words: Ball, Apple, Dog, Car, and Foot. Eye gave him some trouble, as did Bear.

I figured out pretty fast that Owl was not recognizing the word as a whole: he was recognizing the word based on the first letter only.

I was disappointed with this result, but he was still doing way better than Beloved Dog.

I managed to teach Beloved Dog to sit when I held up the “sit” card within a single session, and things were looking good. Unfortunately, when I introduced a second word, things went downhill.

Beloved Dog is paying zero attention to the actual words on the cards. He knows that he should sit sometimes, and down other times, but he’s never sure which he should be doing.

I got disheartened and put the cards away, which wasn’t quite fair to him. I should bring them out and work them more, give him another chance, because Owl has left Beloved Dog IN HIS DUST.

I was able to introduce some more written words to Owl’s vocabulary, but Owl continued to recognize them based on first letter. Watch this video, how he’s guessing the word before I’ve even finished writing it, based on the first letter.

In fact, I began to feel that he was getting entirely the wrong idea from his alphabet work at daycare, and now believed that A MEANT Apple, and B MEANT Ball, and so on. So he just dismissed the trailing letters as meaningless.

And then (and I’m still debating the wisdom of this choice) I downloaded a trial version of a toddler iphone app.

Yes, let the judging begin.

Aside: I have very mixed feelings about letting kids use technology like iphones. First, there’s health. Cell phones are known to give out radiation. Now, I don’t have an iphone, I have an ipod, but I’m not sure that’s really the point.

Second, I think that interacting with the real world is an important part of growing up, and that too many video games robs children of active play.

Nor do I agree with people who say that children should be exposed to technology, since they’ll need it to function in today’s world. I didn’t have an ipod until last Christmas, and I learned to use it within days. I didn’t need to start from toddlerhood. It’s not that hard.

On the other hand, videogames aren’t the demons some make them out to be. People who play a lot of video games have been found to have faster reaction times, better decision making skills, and better fine motor control. Put it this way – if you’re ever looking for a heart or brain surgeon, choose one who owns a video game console and plays it regularly.

Anyway, I couldn’t be a hypocrite – I was always playing on that ipod and Owl wanted to play too, so I found something educational and let him at it. The game was First Words Sampler, a free version of several different paid game options. The idea is for the child to take letters scattered over the screen and slot them into  the correct order to spell the word.

So it’s basically a matching game – put the C in the slot that says “C”, and so on. But a voice announced each letter, and when the word is complete, the word is spelled aloud and then a moving picture and an accompanying sound bite of the object in question – a cat meowing or whatever, is played.

Owl loves it. He could play it forever, which is a problem so we don’t let him have it very often.

Then I discovered something. One day while were playing with words on his magnadoodle with the usual mixed success, I wrote out and spelled aloud one of the words from his game. He recognized it immediately.

I found that he could identify all of the words from that game. He sits there and actually puzzles it out, letter by letter, and then announces the word.

Meanwhile, Beloved Dog has learned to spin in a circle on command. So that’s something.

Let’s give them both an A for effort, shall we? That ought to confuse both of them.

The Potty Fairy (aka The Grossest Blog Post You’ll Read Today. Or This Week. Or Ever.)

Tags

dogs, gross stories, poop, potty training

We have a potty fairy!

Now, you guys know that I was worried about the whole cleaning-the-potty thing. I was originally hoping to get Owl using a regular toilet all the time and totally skip the plastic potty because I didn’t see the value of having to clean a potty vs having to clean a child’s bum. It’s still cleaning up poop.

Not that I’m unfamiliar with poop.

In fact, the other day at work when a client handed me his dog’s poop sample, and his nine year old daughter recoiled in disgust, I brought it up to my nose and dramatically inhaled its bouquet, just for the fun of making her gag in horror

But since the whole benefit of potty training is supposed to be a reduction in your daily poop quota, cleaning soft, squishy poop off the bottom of a plastic cup didn’t really entice me.

I ended up laying some toilet paper in the bottom of the cup, so that when I dump the potty into the toilet, the whole thing comes off leaving the remained relatively clean and in need of a minimal wipe.

That works pretty well.

But we may have an even easier solution:

The Potty Fairy.

I was staggering with exhaustion when I went to bed last night – bowed down by a long day at work, followed by a dog training session, not to mention many late nights of NaNoWriMo over the past couple of weeks.

I noticed a puddle of yellow pee in the potty, which PH must have forgotten to empty before putting Owl to bed. I intended to empty it, but by the time I passed that way again, I had forgotten.

When I came down in the morning, though, the cup was empty and clean, so I figured PH must have emptied it before leaving for work.

I only found out later that he had seen the empty potty and assumed that I cleaned it before bed last night.

Shortly after, Owl peed in the potty. We did a potty dance, I gave him a sticker, and he demanded his breakfast, so I took him into the kitchen and fed him.

When he was finished, I went to empty the potty. Except that the yellow first-pee-of-the-morning contents had entirely disappeared.

Like, it was bone dry.

That’s right, something had magically cleaned the potty for me while I was getting Owl his breakfast.

When I went into work that morning, I asked my boss if she had ever heard of a dog drinking urine.

“No, why?”

“Because I think my dog might have drunk Owl’s pee this morning.”

Beloved Dog has never shied away from eating most things organic. He will eat our cat litter if we give him half a chance, but he has never been interested in eating dog poop, and I’ve certainly never seen him try to drink urine.

Maybe we just had a magical fairy who was cleaning the potty for me.

Or maybe I was so tired from NaNoWriMo that I was cleaning the potty and then forgetting all about it.

This evening, after dinner, Owl announced that he had to poop on the potty and with much effort and facial contortions, produced a fat brown sausage of impressive proportions.

“Yay! You pooped on the potty!” This was only the second at-home poop since the Sunday Of Many Poops, so it was a big, big deal. “Look at the size of that poop! High five, buddy!”

PH came running into the room to join the celebration. “Whoa, and WHAT A POOP,” he said, glancing at the potty. This poop was the father of all poops. It left no doubt whatsoever that Owl had definitely defecated in the correct place. I had been able to correctly identify its presence from across the room.

“TANDY!” Owl squealed, and ran into the kitchen. I followed to finish wiping his bottom and to offer him a range of deluxe stickers in celebration of the occasion.

Only a moment later, I heard a rattle in the living room.

“LEAVE IT!” I bellowed, leaping into the hall. Beloved Dog scuttled away from the potty guiltily. I ran to the potty and…

The long brown sausage was gone.

GONE.

Only a couple of minor brown smudges remained, and a forlorn piece of toilet paper.

OH MY GOD.

“ON YOUR SPOT!” I ordered Beloved Dog to his bed. He wasn’t even licking his chops. No signs of the poop anywhere. Somehow he had swallowed that entire thing whole in a matter of mere seconds.

“IT’S GONE, LOVE, IT’S JUST GONE!” I said with a touch of hysteria.

“BAD DOG!”

“HE ATE THE WHOLE THING!”

“OKAY, BUT WE NEED TO STOP SHOUTING!”

“Doggy eat my food?” Owl asked worriedly, following us into the living room. We turned and put on big smiles.

“No, no, honey,” I said hurriedly, “EVERYTHING IS FINE. Mommy is just going to go flush your… er… poop now…” I carried the potty upstairs and dumped the piece of toilet paper. Some part of me hoped that the poop would reappear like a magic trick, but it was definitely, unquestionably, eaten.

Does anyone want to buy a dog? You’ll never have to clean a potty ever again.

…But you might not want to let him lick your face.

…And if you were disgusted by this, I think you should share it. It’s like the ring. The only way to get it out of your head is to expose others to it.

Potty Training Your Puppy, I Mean, Toddler

Tags

2 year old, baby, conditioning, house breaking, motherhood, parenting, positive reinforcement, potty, potty training, puppy, toddler

So, when potty training Owl, I’ve been working off of the basic tenets of puppy potty training. I’ve received tons of advice for potty training Owl and have incorporated some of it into my program, but it’s always easier to work off of what you already know.

And so, for anyone else who finds dogs easier than kids, I present:

Potty Training Your Puppy Toddler

substitute dog with child and grass with potty

Step 1: Allow your  puppy toddler to roam around the house, while you watch carefully.

Step 2: Take your puppy toddler to the appropriate location on a regular basis, most notably whenever he/she wakes up, has played for 10-15 minutes, or has eaten.

Step 3: If your puppy toddler urinates or has a bowel movement in the correct place, make a big deal out of it. Have special, very high value treats that you dispense only when your puppy toddler has voided in the correct location.

Step 4: If your puppy toddler begins to urinate or have a bowel movement inside while playing, interrupt the behavior (by picking him/her up or simply saying “oops!” or clapping your hands to distract him/her) and immediately direct him/her to the correct location. Hopefully he/she will finish urinating or defecating there.

Do not punish mistakes; simply try to interrupt them. Potty training is about conditioning correct behaviors.

Step 5: If your puppy toddler manages to urinate or defecate in the correct place once redirected, throw a big party and dispense the usual treats, even though this started with a mistake. What your puppy toddler will remember is that urinating/defecating on the floor resulted in interruption, while urinating/defecating in the correct place was highly rewarded.

Further adjustments: Since puppies are naturally naked, it is easy to spot urination and bowel movements as they happen. For this to work with toddlers, they must be similarly unencumbered. A collar shirt is optional.

Further adjustments part the second: Toddlers seem to respond better to smarties and similar small sweets than they do to freeze dried liver or cut up hot dog, but this may vary from toddler to toddler.

Congratulations!

You have begun the process of potty training your puppy toddler! While you should see dramatic improvements within a few days, the process may take several weeks to months to complete. Consistency is key!

 

Potty Training: NO MORE EXCUSES

Tags

anxiety, biting the bullet, excuses, house breaking, parenting, potty training, puppies, toddler, trying new things

Since this is the long weekend, we have decided to take advantage of three days off to bite the bullet and try potty training.

I’ve spent the last few months reading The No Cry Potty Training Solution, and asking every single parent I know for advice.

My mother has no advice, since I was potty trained by my aunt. I asked her for advice before she died and she said she had just made a big fuss over me – apparently for weeks afterwards whenever I used the potty I would ask “Auntie Helen happy??”

Not Mary Poppins over at Daycare Daze lays out her Smartie method, which she has been using with great success for decades.

Hannah from Hodgepodge And Strawberries has also blogged about potty training, and vehemently expressed her distaste of pull-ups to me over Twitter.

@IfByYesTweets no worries. i have OPINIONS about potty training. i've trained, lemme see, five kids now. PullUps are bollocks.

— Hannah (@hpstrawberries) November 9, 2012

And we’ve spent the last couple of months getting Owl accustomed to sitting on the potty (both a small potty and a potty seat on our toilet) while reading stories.

Once, while running around with no diaper on, he started to pee so we sent him to the potty where he deliberately finished the pee to great acclaim, and he was so encouraged that he did it again a few minutes later.

Our excuses for not potty training him properly were wearing thin.

Ultimately, I was afraid of failure, and afraid of change. I have anxiety issues. Change scares me. Doing something I’ve never done before scares me.

Then I had an epiphany.

I was called to a man’s house to help him deal with his new puppy. He was red-eyed with sleeplessness, and shack-wacky for spending three consecutive days holding his puppy. Every time he put his puppy down the puppy would pee or poop, and he was so anxious over messing up his dog’s house training that he was driving himself insane.

Even though this is the best kind of owner – 100% dedicated to starting his puppy out right – he was thinking of returning the puppy for the sake of his own sanity.

So I stepped in and made him put the puppy down, and as I talked him through the process of interrupting the behavior, moving the puppy to the correct spot, and then rewarding things when done correctly I realized…

…I have TOO potty trained before.

And Beloved Dog was challenging to potty train.

If I could train Beloved Dog, if I knew the steps well enough to walk someone through it and be paid for doing so (he kept the puppy, who is doing much better, and signed on for six more sessions), then I could potty train a toddler.

So I went out and bought stickers and smarties, bristol board for a (very crude)  reward chart, and training pants.

Let’s DO THIS THING.

Update on Beloved Dog

Tags

dogs, urinary tract infection, veterinary medicine

As some of you might remember, I was panicking a few months ago about the state of Beloved Dog’s health.

I posted a couple of updates afterwards on Twitter:

Bloodwork came back very definitive for pancreatitis. According to the numbers BD should be barfing everywhere and crying. So confused.

— Carol @IfByYes (@IfByYesTweets) May 11, 2012

Instead, he looks like this… pic.twitter.com/QvkTVl31

— Carol @IfByYes (@IfByYesTweets) May 11, 2012

Well, the upshot was that I decided to get him an ultrasound. 

The ultrasound specialist is a super nice guy, and he did a really thorough job on Beloved Dog. He said the liver looked good, no sign of “hepatocellular syndrome” which was what had caused my previous dog to limp. The pancreas looked normal (bafflingly). There were some nodes in his spleen which were “probably benign” but he aspirated them just to be sure. And he thought the bladder wall looked a little thickened.

“Has he ever had a bladder infection?”

“He had blood in his urine after he got into the Thanksgiving ham. I put him on antibiotics and he seemed better. I never got around to rechecking his urine to be sure.”

“Well, let’s take a sample just to see.”

So he took a urine sample.

The urine looked pretty clean. There was some blood, but since he took the urine directly from the bladder with a needle, that’s not unusual. No sign of infection. He also sends all his reports to a specialist in the states for a second opinion, and the U.S. specialist thought the bladder looked fine, so I thought no more about it.

The cytology came back as normal spleen.

So we just kind of dropped the diagnostics.

For some reason my dog’s blood keeps testing positive for pancreatitis, but he doesn’t actually seem to have it, or any kind of cancer that could cause it.

Then, on Saturday, he peed in the house. He was standing right next to Perfect Husband and he just started to go. Since he hasn’t done such a thing for years, I caught a sample and brought it in to work on Monday.

Blood.

LOTS of blood.

The kind that I qualify as “TNTC” because the red blood cells were too numerous to count under the microscope.

At the same time, there was very little bacteria, very few white blood cells, and no crystals. No signs, in other words, of an infection.

Dr. Azaria recommended a urine culture, but I wanted a sterile sample. Beloved Dog has a lot of fur, and I didn’t want to pay the lab a bunch of money to grow the bacteria from his penis hair.

The next day I brought Beloved Dog in with a full bladder, but before we had a chance to try and take it out of him, he peed on the floor.

We collected it just in case, but it looked like this:

Should pee look like tea?

“Maybe the floor was dirty,” I said hopefully. “It didn’t look like that yesterday.”

“I keep that floor clean,” said the kennel attendant indignantly.

Grand. My dog is peeing brown.

Now, I see a lot of urinary tract infections at work; in fact, at my clinic we just sniff urine and say “ugh, smells like UTI”. But my dog’s pee was a weird enough colour that even the receptionist remarked on it.

By coincidence, the ultrasound specialist happened to be coming in that same day, so he did another quick scan and collected a new sample, and he didn’t even charge me for it.

No stones in the bladder, no tumors, just that thickened bladder wall.

I’ve sent it away to culture, and in the meantime I’ve put him on antibiotics.

Hopefully his pee will change back to yellow soon.

One thing’s for sure – this time I am rechecking his darn urine.

Dear History: Please Don’t Repeat Yourself, For The Love Of Beloved Dog

Tags

animals, bloodwork, cancer, cpl, dogs, health, limping, pancreatitis, pets, symptoms, tests, veterinarian

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I love my dog.

I love dogs, period.

When I was little I begged my parents for a dog. First they gave me goldfish, and when I managed to kill them off thoroughly they decided our family was ready for a pet that couldn’t be forgotten about.

His name was Shadow, and I adored him.

I mauled him about constantly and he tolerated my excessive affection with great forebearance. When I was 10 I trained him to walk nicely on a leash, and I worked very hard to teach him to play dead. He eventually would topple over from a “down” position with a big long-suffering sigh.

He adored my father, and when Shadow passed away, it was one of the only times ever saw my father cry.

As a child I spent a lot of time worrying that my parents would euthanize Shadow while I was off at University. Unfortunately, when he was 8 years old he had several large fatty tumors removed.

Shortly after, he began to limp.

The vets couldn’t find a thing wrong with his feet. After a lot of medications on his paws had failed, a biopsy revealed that his liver was excreting toxins through his sweat glands in his paws, causing the discomfort.

Within a few more months he had wasted away.

He died on the same day as Princess Diana.

His loss hit me hard. I loved him deeply, and I grieved his loss in a way that I have never grieved the loss of a human being. 8 years after he died, I woke up from a bad dream about him, and when I realized that it was a dream, I burst into tears – because my dog was dead.

When I graduated university, I got a new dog. I specifically picked a sheltie who was a different colour than Shadow, so I wouldn’t feel like I was “replacing” him.

That dog healed eight years of pain in a few short weeks. I no longer cry for Shadow. I love him in memory, but memories of him no longer cause me pain.

They’re nice memories.

Beloved Dog is now 8 years old, and I don’t know where the time went. It seems like the 8 years between Shadow’s arrival in our family and his painful exit were very, very long. But Beloved Dog was a puppy mere minutes ago.

Beloved Dog has started to limp.

This, combined with a couple of other nebulous symptoms that my friend The Farm Fairy clubs under the heading of “Ain’t Doin’ Right”, led me to take him to work with me and say,

My dog is limping. I need you to tell me that he doesn’t have cancer.

I got a laugh from people, but not when the vet looked at my dog.

My boss found that he looks anemic, but his bloodwork says he’s not anemic. She found that his abdomen seems painful, but he isn’t vomiting or having any diarrhea. His blood chemistries indicate normally functioning organs.

Except for one.

The spec cpl test is specifically designed to test dogs for pancreatitis. Normally panreatitis is an insanely painful condition brought about by fatty diet and not enough exercise, and is indicated by vomiting, diarrhea, and sheer misery.

My boss suggested it because it was all she could think of to explain the discomfort in his tummy, and because if there was inflammation in his organs, it might explain why he looks so pale.

It came back indicating pancreatitis.

So I fasted him for 24 hours, fed him on white rice for three days, and kept Owl and his fistfuls of cheese well away from Beloved Dog. I retested him for pancreatitis and it came back abnormal AGAIN.

So I changed his already low-fat diet to a corn-free diet, feeding him dehydrated fish with fruits and vegetables. I added digestive enzymes to his food.

He doesn’t look old, does he?

His paws began to show sores from his constant licking and chewing.

I took him in again yesterday, and the other vet, who has a very good ear, identified a mild heart murmur. Is that new, or is it so mild than no other vet has ever spotted it before?

The other vet, who reminds me of a Hank Azaria character, also thinks Beloved Dog looks anemic. He insisted on rechecking the red blood cell count.

Normal.

We rechecked him for pancreatitis.

Abnormal.

WHAT IS GOING ON?

I’ve sent his blood to the lab to get a more detailed report. They’ll be able to tell me whether my dog’s pancreas are just a LITTLE funky or a LOT FUNKY.

I’m trying to tell myself that just because Beloved Dog is the same age, and showing some of the same symptoms, does NOT mean the Beloved Dog has cancer.

It doesn’t help that my Aunt is dying of cancer. I’m flying home on an emergency visit to see her again, because apparently she’s wasting away fast.

It doesn’t help that today is Shadow’s birthday, or would have been, if he had lived to be 24 years old.

I just need Beloved Dog to be okay.

He says he just needs me to take off this damn cone.

I Keep Thinking He’s A Dog, But Owl Thinks He’s People

Tags

babies, child development, children, concepts, dog, experiments, generalization, learning, psychology, reading, symbols, toddler, words

Most of my experience with teaching and training beings whose brains are smaller than mine has been with animals. Furthermore, in most scenarios Owl acts and responds very much like a dog and so I treat him very similarly most of the time.

I use redirection, positive reinforcement, a high-pitched, encouraging tone when I deal with him, and it seems to work. He responds well to praise, touch, and food rewards. He likes to fetch.

He’s a puppy!

So I am amused and delighted when Owl displays human-like abilities that are beyond the grasp of the dogs I have worked with.

Like when he was 14 months old and I realized that he understood that he was looking at himself in the mirror.

Hi, me!

I pointed to his reflection and said “who’s that?” and he pointed to himself! To test his understanding, I secretly placed a banana sticker in his hair and showed him his reflection. Sure enough, his hand crept up to his hair while a perplexed look appeared on his face.

Dogs would NOT get that.

Also, I am constantly surprised by not only the extent to which he imitates us, but the extent to which he understands what he is imitating. Like at Hallowe’en, when he had just learned to walk, and he spotted a candy wrapper on the ground. He picked it up and toddled over to the cupboard under the kitchen sink, and proceeded to try and open it to throw away the wrapper.

A dog can learn to put something in the garbage if you teach him, but it would never occur to him to see something like a wrapper, identify it as garbage, and then try to throw it away himself. Hypothetically you could teach a dog to recognize certain things are garbage to be thrown away, but it would be a lot of work.

Your average dog does not watch you do something, intuit the intent behind your action, and then try to do it himself.

Owl does this every day.

I'll just slip these on...

Then there are other things that I almost don’t notice until I think about them.

For example, every morning I ask him to choose his footwear for the day. He can pick his wading boots, or his little doc-martin style boots. No matter which he chooses, he always brings me a matching pair. He has never brought me, say, one wader and one doc martin.

It’s the same thing when he brings me my own footwear (yes, I get my baby to fetch my shoes. I told you he is very like a dog…). He never brings me one sneaker and one boot. He brings me two sneakers, or two boots.

Again, a dog would have difficulty with that. He can fetch your shoes, but you’d have to formally train him to understand “fetch my sneakers” vs “fetch my boots”. It would take WORK.

But Owl does it as a matter of course. Humans are clever.

And the way he generalizes! I made the mistake of teaching my dog to chase my ex-boyfriend’s cat under the command “get the cat”. When I got my own cat, that command didn’t work, because he didn’t understand that “cat” meant any cat other than ex-boyfriend’s cat. We had to teach him our new cat’s name, instead.

But the baby understands categories easily. When he was 12 months old I could say “where’s Beloved Dog?” and he would point to Beloved Dog, meanwhile identifying him as “dog”. Ditto for the cat. He knew that we had A DOG and A CAT but that they each have their own unique identifiers as well.

We taught him what a hippo was, and from then on he could identify all sorts of hippos in all sorts of books, even drawn by different artists. No dog could do that!

"hippo" is one of his favourite signs

Then again, Owl’s capacity for self-control, maturity, patience, obedience, following basic instructions, and potty training are completely eclipsed by our dog, and certainly his capacity for destruction rivals any dog I have ever met.

So I am putting him to the ultimate test.

I am going to try to teach both dog and Owl to read.

Well, not READ.

At least, not as those who use the alphabet would consider to be reading (Owl is trying to teach himself the alphabet, but has difficulty after “D”…).

More… symbol recognition, like in Mandarin. I’m trying to teach Owl to recognize certain letter combinations as holding meaning.

I made Owl flash cards

some of his favourite things

I’m going to do the same with Beloved Dog. I borrowed flash cards from my friend and business partner who swear up and down that she has seen dogs learn to recognize words like “sit” and “down” and differentiate between them.

Just to be clear:

I am NOT pushing, pressuring, or otherwise making this un-fun for Owl. It’s just a game, something I am interested in to test his capacity for generalization and symbolic representation. I don’t believe that it will aid his development or help him school in the future.

I’m just pitting him against the dog.

For science.

(I’m so going to get trolled…)

Which one looks smarter to you?

Dog or Baby? Learn The Truth!

Tags

babies, damaged property, destruction, dogs, photos, Polls

Hi folks!

Thanks for waiting. I know you’ve spent the last week wondering “Was it the dog or the baby??”

The answers you have been longing for are finally here.

Exhibit A - stain on the carpet: Dog, or Baby?

Survey says: BABY!

The Truth: BABY!

Man, I thought I’d get you guys for sure with this one. Surely brown stain on carpet = dog? But you were too clever for me! Yes, Owl did this. He managed to get his hands on a bottle of liquid Claritin and dump it all over the carpet. We THOUGHT we cleaned it up well, but I guess there must be some residual stickiness, because it has become increasingly more brown as time has gone on as it slowly gathers dirt from the detritus of our lives…

Exhibit B - chewed-up Baby Bels - Dog, or Baby?

Survey Says: DOG!

The Truth: BABY!

That’s right. Owl chewed through the plastic mesh, through the wrappers, through the wax, and destroyed half of our Babybels before we even arrived home from the grocery store.

Exhibit C - Decapitated cup - Dog, or Baby?

Survey Says: Baby, but by a nose – the split was pretty close to 50/50.

The Truth: DOG!

Apparently it was left on the floor, with milk still in it… Beloved Dog must have thought this was a new puzzle… It’s a shame, too, because Owl picked this cup out himself at the store. Ah well…

Exhibit D - Damaged sofa - Dog, or Baby?

Survey Says: DOG!

The Truth: BABY!

Owl not only took a small hole in the cushion fibres and picked it into several large and gaping holes, but he now pulls the fluff out of them whenever he gets a chance. THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.

Exhibit E - Shredded L.M. Montgomery - Dog, or Baby?

Survey Says: BABY!

The Truth: DOG!

Beloved Dog wrecked this book in his youth, when he was two years old or so. Before we got the cat, leaving him with enough to do when I went to work every day was a challenge. This was the victim of a day when he did not have enough to do. So I got him a cat. He hasn’t chewed a book since…

Exhibit F - dented cheddar - Dog, or Baby?

Survey Says: BABY!

The Truth: BABY!

The dentition pattern gives this one away, I know, but I had to include it, because it happened in the SAME grocery run as the Babybel fiasco (notice the Babybels in the background). In fact, it happened WHILE I was putting the Babybels out of reach…

Exhibit G - shredded Kleenex - Dog, or Baby?

Survey Says: BABY!

The Truth: BOTH!

This one was a bit of a cheat, because it was really a toss-up. The Kleenex in this particular photograph was shredded by Owl, but actually Beloved Dog is just as frequently guilty of this exact same crime, even with the addition of the cat to the household. There’s just something fun to rip about Kleenex, I guess.

Who Dunnit: Dog Or Baby?

Tags

babies, damage, destruction, dogs, photos, Polls, quizzes

I’m going to present you with a series of photos of things that have been damaged or destroyed. Some were perpetrated by the dog. Others were perpetrated by the baby. Which is which?