Week Notes 22#13

Our first full week with little Cookie, who's summed up entirely with 🤗😜👹, and kinda wishing I had done Day Notes instead of Week Notes!

• First and foremost, it's been a very difficult week - she's been a handful, there's been a lot of frustration (with housetraining, finding that she's got separation anxiety mostly from Anna) but it's also been very rewarding with how cuddly and affectionate she is
• Anna's been doing a stellar job with training, and refreshing training with snippets of Zak George where needed. It's amazing how much Cookie has already learned - just hours after learning leave it, I was able to tell Cookie to do it!
• It's been rather loud through the week as we wean her off us always being around with her, and she's been anxious with being in her play pen or on her own, but it's been getting better, and today she's barely noticed when we're out of the room
• Been doing a lot of podcast listening - as they're easier to dip in and out of compared to articles with text-to-speech - while doing a bit more of the chores around the house
• Spent a lot of time with Cookie on the sofa, with her sleeping to my side, and me on my laptop / watching TV. Been very nice to have another pet who's cuddly and sleepy
• Cookie loves giving kisses, so I've been trying to teach her that kisses means give us/people kisses, and have also been using a slobbery sound as an alternative, that's working nicely
• It's been very cute watching Cookie get comfortable in places, moving pillows, growling and doing in-place parkour to shift the blanket into the shape she wants, or being a bit flopsy
• Cooked a couple of chickens - as high currency rewards - and after shredding it for her was a bit slow and sub-par, I found that using the food processor to give us a nice ground chicken works really well for treats
• Managed a couple of days with no accidents inside, which is good, and we've been learning a bit more about what her different anxiety crying means, rewarding her with time out of the play pen, instead of leaving her in there, as well as learning the hard way that if in doubt, take her out for the loo!
• Morph and Cookie have slowly got closer through the week, with a noticeable amount of progress. We've been managing the environment as best as we can to make it better
• Giving Morph the kitchen has meant we've been getting a bit more fit by vaulting over the pet gate, which has been a great lower-body workout!
• Been very cute having such a lovely welcome in the morning when I come downstairs, and this morning she even jumped into bed when Anna got up with her, and slobbery kissed me awake 🥰
• Cookie's been teething, and it's been fun and weird finding a few teeth after play sessions, but also has been a lot of misdirecting her mouth to toys that we want her to nom, instead of us!
• Since Cookie and Morph have been getting on better - but by no means actually friends - we've opened up the conservatory, and then reshuffled Morph's barriers so he can have some space from here, so she can tell us when she needs to go out, rather than us needing to take her out. We've learned through the week that Morph being around, and them not getting on, has really added stress to going out, with them passing by each other, then Morph coming out while Cookie is outside, and even if not adding to her stress levels, definitely to ours - trialed different things like leaving Morph locked inside, which helped give Cookie confidence for a few days
• Updated my architect-backed MF2 pipes to include an HTML view of the data, as content-negotiation is a pain, and it means it's an easier human-readable interaction
• Created tiktok-mf2.tanna.dev, which in the end isn't as useful as I'd hoped due to the media being time-limited, and the videos not being usable
• Earlier in the week, Cookie's done some very annoying voms - unlike Morph, who gives a good minute of warning cause he's retching so much, Cookie doesn't even burp, it just comes up 🤮
• Put the new rug out, and Cookie went absolutely wild, doing parkour all over the living room. Incredibly hyped up, wondering if maybe she got a little high off the fumes, or just overexcited generally?
  • We did talk about the rug - that Hilary recommended we get for the new colour scheme - being ruined, and that it potentially would anyway with Morph, so why not just put it down now, especially as Cookie wasn't really enjoying hardwood floor. Turns out within an hour or so we'd had an accident, and over the next few days we've had lots of food dropped in it, too. S'all good, as it looks nice, she's enjoying it
• To avoid manual work for reauthenticating my micropub command, I set up the micropub auth reauth subcommand, which was a good chance to play with Go's OAuth2 client and HTTP server for a single-use authorization code flow and token exchange
• Got my phone case, which has made a massive difference, and meant I'm much more comfortable using it, holding it and resting it places too
• Cookie met her first people aside from us - Anna's parents - and although she got a bit more excited and distracted than we'd hope, it was nice to know she was OK with people. She did get a bit resource guardy around a new toy - a food-filled bone - but we've worked on it and it appears to have been mostly about her having it around new people
• Hoping to have my contract finalised in the next couple of days 😅
• Been keeping an eye on the Facebook group for other Paws2Rescue folks, seeing that a lot of people went straight to treats, walks, etc, whereas we were a bit more reserved, and eased Cookie into things. Also saw some new parents with more difficult situations than ours, so puts things into perspective!
• Saturday night we gave her freedom out of the crate, and she plopped in the bed between our legs. We thought she'd get up, but when we woke up in the morning she was still there 🥰
  • The next morning, it was very stressful trying to get her down the stairs, as she's really not comfortable with them. She's definitely not enjoyed this week where we've been picking her up to go up and down the stairs, and that morning confirmed the fact that we're not gonna do it again!
• Sunday night was the first night she was out of the bedroom, and started with two hours of her barking while we were trying to sleep - very glad that I bought a detatched house, I feel so sorry for folks who have dogs / live next to dogs, as it's felt bad enough with people able to hear her
• Anna commented on how cute it's been to watch me fall in love 🥰
• Didn't end up finding the time to go to any meetups, unfortunately
• Just like Morph, she's such a cute little sleeper, and has some really fun dreams, from the little yapping and twitching
• Got a case of fraud on my Monzo 😬 First one since 2019
• Been giving Morph affection and time where possible, so he doesn't feel like it's just us in love with Cookie
• Tracking Cookie's loo breaks was getting in the way of our regular chat, so decided to create a "Cookie did a Dookie" chat, which has been good to have a reference + quick scan for when she's last been
• Cut her claws, after a couple of cases of us getting scratches from her, and went really well - she got a lot of nommy chicken, and Anna did great to ease her into it
• Been amazing to see just how quickly the house can turn into chaos when there's very little downtime, and even given me less energy to care about water on the wood in the kitchen/various floors 😬
• Had a very good bill of health from the first vet visit, and was good to have some time to bed in with her before we went to the vets, so we could learn some more about her and what questions we'd want to ask
• Had a bit of interrupted sleep, mostly being aware and cautious of not waking her up, and been out in the night with her for a loo break, but towards the end of the week, she's been holding it well
• Resumed my love for Leibniz-style biscuits, with Lidl's dark chocolate version being very good - and very cheap!
• Been working to remove a number of bad habits Cookie's got from her foster home, like jumping for food
• Been funny with the differences between Cookie and Morph's tongues and tails, as well as the fact that Cookie is a much less flexible body type than Morph, so hasn't been as easy to hold and unlock doors to take her out
• Watching Cookie on the cameras, while hearing her barking in real time, has been like watching a programme with audio out of sync
• Was glad to get some machine-washable play mats for her to be situated on
• Really glad I got my new phone, as I've got some great photos, and not had the worry of it suddenly dying/freezing
• Took her out for her first walks on Saturday and Sunday, and had good success - lots of sniffing, not too nervous (although a couple of points she was) - and she enjoyed being outside
• Trialled boiling pasta in chicken stock - as we've got a few leftover from Gousto - and it worked quite well, giving a chicken-y hint
• Decanted peanut butter into a tub so we can double dip, instead of getting out more spoons

Watched:

• Couples Retreat
• Star Trek: Picard
• Star Trek: Voyager
• Star Trek: Deep Space 9
• Meet The Parents
• Meet The Fockers
• The Ugly Truth
• Starsky & Hutch
• Human Resources
• Moon Knight
• The Lovebirds
• The West Wing