Tag Archives: photos

Dog or Baby? Learn The Truth!

28 Wednesday Mar 2012

Posted by in Damn Dogs, From The Owlery, I'm Sure This Happens To Everyone..., My Blag is on the Interwebs, Pointless Posts

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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.

A post that starts with a vacuum and ends with an alien. With Babby-training in between.

26 Tuesday Apr 2011

Posted by in Damn Dogs, How is Babby Formed?, I'm Sure This Happens To Everyone..., Perfect Husband

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We got a new vacuum the other day.

Finally.

Our old vacuum, a Bissel specially designed for picking up pet hair, has been sitting unused for the greater part of a year. I have only dragged it out and switched it on when the cat litter spilled or when the fur levels on the carpet upstairs had reached our knees.

It was a great vacuum once upon a time. In our old apartment, which largely featured open space, it sucked things up great. However,

  1. It was never really the same after PH decided to deal with the Spot Incident by soaking up vegetable oil with cornstarch and then vacuuming up the goopy mess
  2. Our new house has about the same square footage of our old apartment, but split onto two floors, with stairs in between. There are no wide open spaces. Only corners. And crevices.

Suddenly big-and-heavy-and-filled-with-goop was no longer appropriate for our household.  PH knew we needed a new vacuum, but kept putting it off, because, well, we don’t have any money.

Last week we went out and picked up a Bissel EasyVac for 40- bucks, and it runs great. It’s small, lightweight, no-frills, but it gets in the corners and gets the fur off of the floor.

However, it doesn’t run as smoothly as our old massive vac. PH was holding Babby when I flipped it on for its inaugeral run, and Babby startled noticeably and started to fuss while clutching his father’s shirt.

This is really the first significant fear reaction we have ever seen in Babby. Sure, he startles to loud noises – he even did that in the womb – but he had always recovered quickly. The old vacuum never bothered him, on the rare occasions that we lugged it out and dragged it along the floor.

But he’s getting older, and this one clearly freaked him out.

Now, I’ve never had a baby before, but I know what to do when dogs are scared of something:

  1. Acknowledge their feelings with moderate sensitivity. Scolding a fear reaction or totally ignoring it doesn’t help anyone feel validated.  Don’t coddle or get overly mushy, though, because if you’re like “oohh, poor Doggy, it’s scary isn’t it? Yes, let me pat you and take you away from that,” they’ll assume that it means that it really IS scary and their fears are totally justified. So instead you say, “oh, are you scared? It makes a big noise, doesn’t it?” in a sympathetic but cheery voice.
  2. Smile to show them that you aren’t scared of it, and preferably demonstrate its harmlessness by approaching the fear object yourself and interacting with it.
  3. Encourage – but do not force – the dog to approach the object. We often use treats tossed near the vacuum, for example, or just sitting by it and encouraging the dog to approach US.
  4. Never remove the fear object or take the dog further away from it until the dog has managed at least a partial recovery. Otherwise the dog will learn that reacting fearfully makes the object go away, and they will also always remember the object as scary.

Perfect Husband has seen me deal with fear reactions in dogs before, not to mention helping me through my anxiety exposure therapy CBT, so we immediately began to treat Babby’s fear in the same way we treat mine/a dog’s. We didn’t even have to discuss it. We’re a well oiled machine. A well oiled fear-fighting machine.

He hugged Babby and said “Oh, is that big noise scaring you? It’s just a vacuum. Look! Wow!”

I smiled at Babby and moved the vacuum around and said “Oh, it makes a big noise, so you’re scared, but it won’t hurt you. See, it’s a vacuum! I’m using it! Wheee!”

As I went around the room talking to Babby happily, PH slowly approached closer and closer. He stopped if Babby acted too frightened, and then once Babby relaxed a bit, inched yet closer again.  By the time I turned off the vacuum, Babby was right next to the vacuum (still in the loving safety of Daddy’s arms) and starting to relax. You could tell he still wasn’t pleased, but at least he wasn’t trying to climb his father like a tree.

We have noticed several similar fear reactions to loud noises since. So we think it’s time to start socializing him. If we want to avoid his picking up on my anxiety, we need to raise him with the CBT skills that I had to be taught in adulthood:

  • approach your anxieties, instead of running away.

So when we saw that the Midway had set up at the local mall, we decided to take Babby. Sure, he couldn’t go on any of the rides (they wouldn’t even let us get on the sedate choo-choo train that went around an oval track a 5 km an hour which the conductor could stop with his hand and that had a sign saying “everybody welcome!”) but we figured it was good socialization just to be around all the noise and bustle. We always used to take dogs to the fair for the same reason.

So we loaded Babby into my new rebozo and walked around.

"Where are you taking me?"

As we predicted, the noise freaked him out. He was clinging tightly to me. He especially disliked that one that goes up and spins and holds everyone to its sides by centripetal force. I told him I don’t like that ride either.

"Eeewww. It makes NOISE."

But I hugged him and told him that it was cool and pretty, rather than scary, and showed him that I wasn’t actually afraid of it (which is only partially true – I wouldn’t get on that thing if you paid me) and we walked all around and ate corn dogs and he began to relax.

"Not scary, huh? Hmm."

Then PH tried to win stuffed animals for me, as he usually does. He eventually gave up trying to win the GIGANTIC fluffy penguin toy, which would have taken up a quarter of Babby’s room but would have made me inexplicably happy, and eventually just won a stuffed alien that I liked, because it reminded me of my little Babby.

"Whadya mean, it looks like me?"

"Oh"

So, all in all, it was a productive day.

You Get What You Pay For

05 Tuesday Apr 2011

Posted by in How is Babby Formed?, I'm Sure This Happens To Everyone..., Oh The Inanity, Perfect Husband

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I’ve found a Vancouver talent agency that’s interested in Babby, although they warn me that business for babies is a little slow year-round. I’m not looking to turn him into a star or anything, but a substantial amount of my college fund was paid for by appearing in tv commercials and such, so I know it can be helpful. Even if we got Babby into one commercial, that would still likely be $2000 his RESP didn’t have in it before.

The agency wants a professional portrait for their files. I guess they have had too many experiences with parents going “Oh, actually, I dabble in photography myself, so here’s a photo that I took” while handing them a photo with dirty diapers in the background and a booger in the foreground.

The problem is, we have no money.

Zip. Dead broke.

Not only did we recently buy plane tickets home for the late spring/early summer, but our car has suddenly decided that it needs a new air compressor, new shocks, and a new battery, and it took $350 bucks just to find that out. We haven’t dared ask for an estimate for the actual repairs yet, but we need to do it soon.

The upshot of all this was that PH and I did something that we never, ever, in a million years, dreamed we would do.

We went to Walmart.

It is a testament to PH’s love for me and willingness to support me in my whims that he even set foot there. You see, we are intellectual snobs and Walmart stands for pretty much everything that we hate. Yes, there are a lot of other companies out there that are just as big and corporate and evil, but there’s just something about Walmart that feels especially trashtacular.

Walmart is attracts people who are willing to line up like cattle for the slaughter all for the sake of saving a dollar here, fifty cents there. In general, this does not tend to be your highest class of person, and now we had joined their ranks.

The (soul-destroying) reason that we went there anyway is that we got 30 prints, including an “enhanced” 10X13, for nine bucks.

All we had to do was:

  • Show up on time for our appointment.
  • Wait with an increasingly bored and tired baby for over an hour, while being repeatedly told “it’ll just be five more minutes… why don’t you have a stroll around the store?”
  • Listen to people who showed up for an appointment booked later than ours, who then argued to the girl at the desk that they should get to go before us, because they booked an appointment for now, and their baby was younger.
  • Listen to exchanges like “what are you snacking for? Now you’ve got shit all in your teeth,” between a mother and her young daughter.
  • Accept that the picture was going to be unflattering and possibly even scary to look at.

By the time we got in to the studio, Babby was sleepy, red eyed and nose-rubbing, and it took a long time to get a good smile from him. When we did, the red and watery eyes were noticeable in the portrait, and there was a black hair stuck to a booger under his nose, which may or may not show up in the enlargements. I’m not sure the picture will really show him off to his best advantage, but the agency wanted a studio portrait, and by gum, they’ll get one.

Except we have to wait two weeks for the portraits to be developed. Even though there is an 24 hour photo processing centre in the exact same room.

But hey, it cost less than ten bucks.