It's Friday

I worked half a day today as part of the puppy training thing. I went to walmart early this morning and got a super-duper surge protector power strip for my computer. I did not want to have to take it back to the computer fix-it guy again. We are supposed to have bad storms and we are under a Tornado watch until 11 pm so I thought I had better get the power strip. I took Phoebe out to work today so the people at work could see her. Then I stopped by Mom and Dad's for a bit. Uncle Harold is in from Indiana and he has his pomeranian, Penny, with him. I was hoping I would see Penny, but they weren't there. Mom's neighbor liked Phoebe. The neighbor has several dogs. I don't think Phoebe's had an accident today. For some reason she shredded the puppy pad in her crate overnight. I don't know why. Phoebe did do her business outside a few times today, both here and at Mom's. Mom and Dad seem to really like Phoebe. Dad even kissed her as we were leaving. Of course, she isn't there all the time.

I have a headache. I don't know if it's from needing more sleep, or from sinuses, or from the sugar I got from the two doughnuts I ate at work this morning. John brought in some for the office. He also brought in a brownie for his secretary. She hates the smell of doughnuts.

Puppy Training Obstacle

Fritz and Steffi were chasing and herding Phoebe tonight and she couldn't get to a puppy pad when she needed one. I try to keep Fritz and Steffi outside when Phoebe's needing to do her business, but I can't keep them out all the time. I got the water bottle after Fritz tonight because he was just too jealous of and overbearing to Phoebe.

As Promised: A Picture of Phoebe

Phoebe Today

I worked a half a day today so I could come home and look after Phoebe. I let her out of the crate at around 12:15pm. She did her business on the puppy pads (both 1 and 2) and so I let her out into the house. Since it was warm today, I put the leash on Phoebe and took her outside. She wasn't so scared of the outside today and she even peed a couple of times out there. She played a bit with Fritz and Steffi and even smelled one of the cats. Phoebe played a lot in the family room and I found a couple of rubber doggy toys for her to chew on. Maybe that will save my hands. After all that peeing, you'd think she would be peed out. But no. I brought all three dogs into the living room where I have puppy pads on the floor. Phoebe sniffed them all and then peed on one of them! Yay!!! I gave her a treat for that. I know the dog whisperer would get on to me because I'm sending her mixed messages - pee on the pad, pee outside, don't pee on carpet, here's a treat, but no treat for that. Hopefully it won't confuse her too much. I seriously think I'm going to give up my bathroom to her during the days I'm at work so she won't have to spend so much time in the crate. But I will still have to use that bathroom for baths and hair washing. The other bathroom in the house only has a shower.

Phoebe Notes

Here's what I wrote on 4/4/06 in my Phoebe Diary:

Tuesday April 4, 2006

I’ve had Phoebe for three whole days now. It’s 8:19am. I thought she was doing well with the housebreaking, but this morning she was a complete wreck. She had to be corrected three or four times on peeing and she peed and pooped on the couch. So, I have placed her in her crate and will be following the 7 days schedule from now on. Hopefully, that will work. One of the problems with the 7 days schedule is that Phoebe doesn’t pee and poop 30 minutes after eating and drinking and she doesn’t eat all at once. She likes to graze. I have a feeling she will be in her crate a lot. I wish I didn’t have a job and I could be with her for a few weeks to housebreak her. My parents could do it, but they don’t want to.

Phoebe also has a problem with chewing. She chews on my hands. It hurts too. I try to substitute but she likes the hands. She is a cute puppy. She tries to play with Steffi and Fritz and sometimes they actually play with her. But they also growl and snap at her. Phoebe will learn what she can get away with when it comes to Steffi and Fritz. Sunday night, Phoebe slept almost all through the night. She only cried once. But last night she cried a lot all through the night. I think this is just a setback day since not only is the housebreaking regressing but so is the nighttime crate behavior. But she is still going to follow the 7 days schedule. I hope I can get it to work. I have to cover the crate like she’s a bird to keep her from crying a lot. So, I can’t see if she’s doing her business in the crate. She isn’t supposed to be. Overnight she will pee in her crate. The crate is bigger than it should be and I don’t have a divider for it. At least the crate is big enough that she can sleep on one side and pee on the other so she’s not really laying in her pee. As she gets older she should stop peeing in there. Especially since I feed her in one corner of the crate.

Tomorrow night, Phoebe has to get her last round of vaccinations and her rabies shot and get tested for worms. She’s had two doses of worm medicine but the vet wants to check her anyway.

I'm Back!!!

My modem got fried this weekend. The electric went off and then came back on while I was online. My modem paid the price. Today I finally got to take my cpu to some computer tech geek in a neighboring town and got a new modem put in. He also added 256K of ram. He was really upset that my computer was soooo slow. Now it's fast.

As for Phoebe - There have been so many little things that she's done or not done that I could write about. In fact I have written about some of them. I started keeping notes on the computer since I couldn't blog. Yesterday I instituted the 7 days schedule. I gave her a couple of days here to get to know things and the dogs and me. She knows what the puppy pads are for, but she doesn't think she has to use them. So, she's on the 7 days schedule of being locked in her crate for most of the time and only getting out for potty time, feed and water time and play time. I'm only going so far as puppy pad training. I think it's too much to ask her to learn outside too when I will only have about 8 hours a day to train her - I'm sleeping and working the other 16. If I can get her puppy pad trained, I will be really happy.

Since I didn't have the internet to play on, I wrote a little on the novel I started some time back. And I watched some of my I Dream of Jeannie dvds. I like that show. I watched American Idol last night - it was country night.

I have to go to work for half a day tomorrow and Friday. It's Masters Golf Week this week, so I picked a good week to take off for puppy training.

Busy, Busy

Well, Phoebe is keeping me pretty busy now that she's here with me. Phoebe being my new little chihuahua puppy. I will have to post a picture sometime. Fritz and Steffi are tolerating her and sometimes even playing with her a little. Phoebe is very afraid of the outside. I don't think she had ever been outside before I bought her. So, I'm thinking puppy pad training will be the way to go. She did get to meet Lapcat today. No fights there. I've only had Phoebe at my house since last night and she already has some idea of what the puppy pads are for. I think it's now just a matter of making sure she remembers that she has to use them every time. Good thing her collar has a bell on it so I can hear where she is in the house. Mom's getting about three or four phone calls a day from me about Phoebe. She likes to get the updates. Although she does call Phoebe Susie once in a while. That's because Phoebe looks a lot like Susie, Mom's chihuahua who died some years ago. Phoebe doesn't like the crate at night. She cried and howled much of last night. But she will get used to it. I had her in the crate a little bit today and she settled down after a while. But when that girl on Nashville Star was singing, Phoebe started howling. I guess she liked that song and wanted to sing along. I'm taking a lot of this coming week off from work to work on housebreaking Phoebe. Hopefully, I can reinforce the puppy pad idea enough in the next week that the training will work.

What else is going on? Well, Dad got his other tree cut down. Mom's computer still won't work. It's a shame she's paying for internet service and can't use it. Oh well, the pc will make a good planter for mums this spring.

Yesterday was Mom and Dad's 39th wedding anniversary. Today was Dad's birthday. I got them a joint present for both occasions - A Roy Orbison Greatest Hits CD from Walmart. It was on sale. Dad's still on his diet allegedly so I didn't get him a cake or anything. He did make a cheesecake today, but that was because the expiration date was coming up on it and they had to get it used.

What's Happening

What's been going on around here? Well, I'm trying the puppy thing again. I got a chihuahua puppy tonight after work. Mom and Dad are puppysitting for me until Friday evening. Friday after work I'm going to get my puppy, named Phoebe, and bring her home. I hope Fritz and Steffi get along well with her. Fritz is a very jealous dog. Tonight I rubbed a towel all over Phoebe and brought it home. Then I sat on the floor with the towel and rubbed the towel up against Fritz and Steffi and told them that Phoebe loves them. I petted Steffi and Fritz a lot while letting them sniff the towel. I'm hoping they will associate Phoebe's smell with all the attention I'm giving them. That might make them more accepting of Phoebe. I'm also thinking that if Phoebe works out, I might have her have a litter of puppies before I get her fixed. She wasn't cheap (being AKC registered and all) and puppies would be a way to recoup some of my money. I have Mom and Dad puppysitting because I want to do the House Train Your Dog in Seven Days method and I won't be home all day until Saturday. At first I was thinking I would take all next week off from work. But I am really concerned that I will not want to go back to work if I have 9 straight days off, so I think on Thursday and Friday I might go into work and work from 8am to Noon for those two days. It won't interfere with the training as I have already worked out a schedule for Phoebe to follow.

Mom has plenty of time to puppysit since she can't get on the internet. Her computer is still broken and she still doesn't have her recovery disk. I was at Walmart this morning buying a baby gate for the puppy and I checked out the computers they had. The cheapest one was over $450.00. That's a lot of money. One month of Mom's medical insurance is probably that much.

I got to Mom and Dad's house with Phoebe tonight around 6pm. Mom and Dad had the door open waiting for me and they started grinning and cooing over Phoebe. Phoebe looks a lot like Susie, Mom's chihuahua who died a few years ago. Susie is also Steffi's mom. Phoebe looks gray in real life, but in pictures she looks red. I took Phoebe to the vet tonight for a physical since I got her from a pet store and the Vet says she is a healthy and good dog. She weighs 4.1 pounds, which surprised me. My ASPCA Guidebook of Dogs book says a chihuahua would only be between 2 and 6 pounds. I think Phoebe is going to be bigger than that. She's only 14 weeks old.

If Phoebe works out, I'll post a picture or two of her. I really hope Fritz and Steffi make up with her.

Nashville Star

Well, I taped Nashville Star Tuesday night. But, I thought it was only on for an hour so I apparently missed a half an hour of it. Luckily, USA showed the episode this morning so I got to see the whole thing and didn't have to watch the tape. I did tape the Dr. Who episode that aired last night. I was busy watching the Golf channel and didn't get to see most of the episode, just the last few minutes.

Another weekend - Yay!!! I baked a cake tonight. It's a low fat cake. I got in the floor and played with the dogs a bit. Called Mom and talked to her for a bit. She asked me about Dell computers. Since hers won't work, I guess she's thinking of buying one. It's a shame she would have to. I was planning to make the recovery disks for my computer - I have to burn the info onto cds. Well, I didn't know I needed 10 of them to burn a copy of the recovery disks. So, I have to go back to Walmart and get some more - I only have 5.

I watched Martha Stewart's show tonight. I think she really, really likes country singer Josh Turner. She gushed over him the way she does that soap opera guy who's always on her show.

Attack Dog Fritz

Tonight, I took the dogs out when I went to turn the outside light on. I looked out into the yard and saw the black and white stray cat staring at Curly, the gray cat. So, I said, "Go get the cat Fritz. The black one, not the gray one." And Fritz went after the stray cat. In fact, he pinned the cat into a hole in the hay shed. I had a hard time getting him and Steffi away from the cat. I heard the cat screeching and I figured Fritz was going to get scratched. But eventually I got them away and the cat ran off. If I'm lucky, the stray cat will stay gone. She eats my catfood. The gray cat, in the meantime, had caught a mole and was munching away. I really am shocked that Curly hunts. While the dogs were out, I took the digital camera outside and took a few pictures. They didn't turn out too well because it was getting dark outside. Oh well. It's still neat to have the camera.

Snow

We had snow and sleet overnight. I had parked my car at the road again so I wouldn't have to worry about driving it down the hill. Well, I should have left it up here at the house. Once I got down to my car this morning I had to brush off all the snow, then pry the car doors open (they were frozen shut) and then I had to scrape the ice off the windshields. I was frozen good. Luckily I had some of those hand warmer things you put inside gloves. They warmed up my hands some. My feet, however, stayed cold for a long while.

TV

I actually watched some of American Idol last night. I didn't think I was going to watch it this time, but there wasn't anything else on. Barry Manilow was on there last night. I can't believe he had never heard of Patsy Cline and Walkin' After Midnight. Hopefully he will take a closer look at country music now that he's been exposed to it. I still think Nashville Star contestants are better singers than American Idol contestants. I taped Nashville Star last night. I can't stay up until 11pm during the week. I'm thinking of taping the new NBC show Heist tonight. It looks interesting. The only problem is that I never watch what I tape. I'm bad about that.

PC Update

Mom still can't get online. Her computer is still in safe mode. And since we've had snow and it's been cold, Mom can't come up to my house to use my computer. The cold is hard on her as she is on oxygen. Tonight she had me look on ebay to see if we could buy a recovery disk since she no longer has one. I found some boot/recovery disks but I don't know if they are what we need. What we need is what we don't have. I told her she might have to take it to a local computer repair shop but that could cost who knows how much. And with her and dad on a fixed income with a lot of prescriptions to buy every month, she doesn't have a whole lot of money to spend. It's a shame that she is paying for internet access that she can't use.

Monday Recap

I weighed myself this morning and apparently, a pound of peanut butter easter egg, biscuits and butter, and nearly a whole loaf of pepperoni rolls all adds up to 2.4 pounds. That's what I ate extra last week. Not too bad considering the two easter eggs were a big indulgence. I finished up my laundry today, found some recipes on the internet that I may never use because of this diet. I took my car down to the main road tonight to park it in case we get the one to two slushy inches of snow the weatherman is calling for. I worked out today too.

Food Channel Faux Pas

Today, both Giada and Paula Deen had a recipe for fried cheese ravioli. Probably not good tv programming etiquette there.

Dr. Who

Dr. Who is now on the Sci Fi Channel. My sister was always the big Dr. Who fan, but I thought I would check it out today and I got to see the first two episodes. It's prety good. I could really like the ninth doctor, Christopher Eccleston. Unfortunately, he leaves after one season as pretty much all the doctors do. That sucks. I just know I'm going to really, really like him by the end of the season, if I watch the rest of the episodes.

A Good Day Off

Today I made some chicken noodle soup. I also sprinkled some borax into the carpet to start the war against the fleas that I'm going to be fighting this year. People on the internet say that borax kills fleas and flea eggs. It must do something because the dogs won't lay anywhere near it. I worked out and watched some golf on tv. And I bathed the dogs. Fritz caught onto me and took off into the pasture. I couldn't get him. Eventually he did get his bath. And I got one too thanks to him. But mine didn't really get me clean. I am protected for the next 5 to 10 days against fleas though. And I've also had a chance to see some of the movie, 13 Going on 30. It's playing on one of the channels I get. It's a funny movie. I had to turn the channel though when the bad girl tries to ruin the good girl's life. I hate that part in movies.

Shopping

I went shopping today and bought some clothes. I need new clothes now that I'm skinny. I hope to add some things as the year progresses.

I bought some photo albums to store the pictures I'm going to take with my new digital camera. I already have some pictures in there.

I also bought a couple of necklaces that were on clearance.

Before I got to shop I went by mom and dad's. Mom's computer is on the blink. It won't exit out of safe mode and it says something about using the original windows disk that came with the computer. Well, that disk was sent to my sister in Florida. It'd be a shame if my parents, who are on a fixed income now, would have to buy a new computer because theirs can't be fixed. I told mom she can come here and use my internet access anytime she wants.

And I got a surprise today when I went to cash in my winning lottery ticket from Wednesday's drawing. I thought I had only won $1.00 but in fact I won $2.00. That's good. I got two more lottery tickets with the winnings. I have a feeling I won't be winning any more for a while.

Got 'Em

I got the camera, the memory card for the camera and worm medicine for Steffi today. Mom called me at work to tell me that it had all been delivered today and I picked everything up after work. The camera's charging up right now.

I'm making biscuits right now. I'm on a bread kick right now.

I'm glad this week is almost over. I have Monday off. I need a break.