Gimme continues to find the whole confinement thing a big fat negative. On a positive note, we had a good night sleep from 11pm to 6:30am. She might have slept longer, but Meaggi woke her.
My original plan had been to have a short work day today, but I didn't think she was ready for it. She seems genuinely distressed by any separation. So I changed my plans to give her a day to get more used to it. Our day has consisted of doing errands for several hours. Our first stop was an appointment at the vet's for her first check-up and getting-to-know-you cookies. He pronounced her fine and wonderful. His vet tech was practically drooling when I told her Gimme had done a tuck sit a few times and had already carried around a metal scent article.
Gimme then went along for more errands and got in her crate and had to settle down ten times and four chances to wait (alone) while I went in a store for a few minutes. We got it down to 3-4 minutes of wailing and shrieking (from 20 minutes), before she settles.
The funny thing is that when she is done objecting, she first has to "kill" a toy, puppy buddy or blanket that is in her crate. I think, she just feels an overwhelming need to express her frustration before she can give in, with huge theatrics.
I plan to take her along for the day when I go to work tomorrow, since I can come out to check on her every hour or so, just to give her a treat, some reassurance and/or a chance to potty.
I needed to go to Home Depot, so she went in, riding in one of the orange chariots. She is the most incredible people magnet. In the last 16 hours she has increased her fan base by at least 200 people (and we slept for 7 hours of that). Anyway, everyone in HD gave her treats. If someone walks by without making a fuss over her, she looks at them like they are slightly stupid. We were in there so long that she finally curled up and went to sleep in the cart.
We've yet to have an accident in the house. She's pretty quick to squat or do her business when I put her in the outdoor expens, since she's figured out that is the fastest way to get out again. Interestingly during our day's errands, she got out on leash about five times for short walks and if she was going to go, promptly did it when she hit an absorbent surface. So it was nice to see her potty on lead.
One of the things I did at Home Depot was to pick up a selection of paint chips in different colors. So we could play the color game. The funny thing was that I picked one that closely matched her seafoam green collar and she snatched it out of my hand and put teeth marks in it. I got a clean one for the game. However, when I tried to play the color game with her, she didn't seem focused on it. She was pretty wild, though she did come back to almost all of the blues and greens. She also grabbed the yellow once. We'll wait a couple days and try again.
We also had a play session and it was a total riot. She would grab the tug, then do this funny rolling flip and was bounding around like a little maniac. Its a shame I can't capture it on film, its just hysterical. At one point she went over and pestered Meaggi, who snarked her... so she backed up and taunted her from a distance (Meaggi is tethered and somehow Gimme figured it out).
Its gonna be fun living with a canine genius.
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