Tag: dogs

Material possessions

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I’ve been playing Hitman. Apparently I got it free on Epic Games at some point, so I thought I’d try it. It’s a fun game in an unexpected way. It almost plays more like a puzzle game and isn’t what I expected at all. It’s very detailed. My one criticism is that there is too much focus on making the targets bad people so that the player isn’t too offended by the idea of murdering them. Hello, the game is about a hitman. It’s very patronising as your boss insists in your ear-piece that the world will be a better place without these people, and, believe it or not, I don’t accept a shady assassination-for-hire business as being a reliable arbiter of morality.

In other news, ROYAL MAIL!

I have ordered a little set of steps for Monty. I’ve been letting him upstairs more recently, now that he’s a bit more well behaved(!) and his new favourite place is my bed. When he jumps off my bed he seems to land very heavily and I think he would benefit from not doing that. So I found a really nice looking collapsible set of steps designed for dogs to get on and off beds.

It was despatched on Wednesday, with Royal Mail Tracked 48. You might think that this means it will be delivered in 48 hours, but, no, it’s just a brand name. It was estimated to be delivered either Friday or Saturday. Was it? No. It’s now Monday and the tracking has not updated past “Sender has despatched item”, which means Royal Mail are not yet admitting to actually having the item. What does this mean? Actually, it means nothing, because their tracking doesn’t work at all. I looked at some past orders and Royal Mail tracking shows no progress on any of them, even though they have each been delivered.

I just want my little set of steps!

I can get a refund on Thursday if they haven’t turned up. Amazon are selling them but with a 10 day delivery time because it’s only on Amazon EU, not Amazon UK (thanks brexit!). I found another shop selling them supposedly with 2-3 days delivery but their product listing is a bit rubbish and doesn’t actually specify the manufacturer so although the marketing image is the same I’m not 100% sure that what will turn up is actually what I expect. I’ve sent them an email…

And then we have my watch. My trusty Garmin Forerunner 245 developed a stuck button (the down button). I tried the standard suggestion of soaking it in soapy water to dislodge any dirt, but it made no difference. I bought it from John Lewis about 18 months ago, and it came with a two year guarantee. Anyway, it’s going back and they’re going to refund me as they no longer stock the 245. I’ll probably get the Forerunner 255 in replacement, which is a little more expensive. Not ideal but I’m only really paying the difference, so it’s not too bad either.

As far as I can tell, the 255 is a very broad incremental upgrade over the 245 in many ways. There is also the 265 which adds a much higher quality touch screen (the 255 and below are not touch). I don’t really want a touch screen on a running watch because I had one on my old Vivoactive 3 and have fond memories of trying to do interval workouts in the rain, with my watch deciding that the rain on the screen meant I was manually advancing the stage of the workout. Plus, some people say the screen is harder to read in bright light, which I can believe. It looks amazing in marketing photos, but I’m not buying a photo. The FR265 is £130 more than the FR255, which seems a bit steep for a screen of dubious usefulness. So I think I’ll go for the 255.

I’m not in an immediate rush though as I have the dreaded tibialis posterior tendon (inner ankle) pain again, so I’m not going to be doing much running for at least a few days.

Physio

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The physio news is that I have tight calves and I’m overpronating, probably because my calves aren’t allowing enough mobility so my ankles collapse inwards at push off to compensate. Same as last time, really. I’m trying supportive insoles and lots of stretching for the next few weeks and then see how it goes. I think the stretching will be enough though.

I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’ve missed three of the last four weeks, or whether it’s still the flu lingering, but my fitness has dropped off a cliff. I treated Parkrun this week as a progression run and did the last and fastest km in 4:16, which felt like pretty much max effort. Normally on a Parkrun I would do all my splits comfortably faster than that…

Yesterday I did intervals. It’s been weeks since I did any tempo speed work, and even longer since I did short intervals. I went with: 3x1min, 2×2, 1×3, 2×2, 3×1. I averaged 3:57/km which wasn’t too bad considering that it’s a loop with a significant elevation change, but I had to ease off after the third 1min rep because I was feeling nauseous and lightheaded.

My ankle feels a little worse for wear after the intervals but it’s not too bad. Overall I feel pretty tired today though.

Bonus Monty pics.

He looks so intelligent sometimes, you wouldn’t believe that a few hours later he was running around a field with a poo bag in his mouth (unused, thankfully), and then a few minutes later found ANOTHER one. Yes, he ate them both. They came through him on Sunday morning.

Eccentric

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I tried a 10 minute/2k test run on Sunday and it didn’t really seem to affect my ankle at all, so I then did 5k on Monday, which I also seemed get away with. Tuesday I did a 5k progression (i.e. gradually speeding up, every KM faster than the previous), and it was fine until I came home and did 20 calf raises. It started to hurt after about 15 and then seemed quite achy for a while, but it was fine on the dog walk two hours later. Wednesday was an easy 30 minutes, which was also fine. Thursday I took a rest day just due to scheduling, so of course on Friday morning it was hurting more than it has done recently. Doing a quick calf stretch took away 90% of the pain but it’s still worse than it has been.

So anyway I’ve got a physio appointment for Tuesday.

I have been focusing on eccentric exerises for it, which per my non medical understanding means loading the tendon while it’s being stretched. Usually to load a tendon you contract the muscle, but apparently going the other way encourages ‘remodelling’. I think really it means you’re damaging the tendon in such a way that the body wants to heal it, (hopefully) without the problems it had built up before. Eccentric exercises seem to be the most effective for tendonitis from what I can tell. But we’ll see what Mr Physio says. He’s the same one I saw a few years ago and seemed to know what he was talking about.

Unrelated to the above, here is Monty in a cafe at the weekend. I know, he’s really cute. Let me know if you want to send him a Valentine’s day card.

Monty!

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We’ve had Monty for just over a year now. How time flies. He’s about 15 months old and, maybe I will jinx it by saying so, he’s calmed down a little bit recently and he’s slowly turning into a lovely and well behaved dog. Well, he was always lovely, but now he’s a bit easier.

I mean, he’s not well behaved, he’s just not as bad as he used to be. People say that cockapoos (via the poodle genes) are easy to train because they’re intelligent. I think they’re wrong. I think they learn quickly, because they’re intelligent, but also, because they’re intelligent, they’ll just decide not to listen to you sometimes when they know the alternative is more interesting.

Bad behaviours we still haven’t managed to stop include: nipping when he gets excited (though he is getting better!), being possessive of his toys (and sometimes other dog’s toys when he steals them in the park 🤦‍♂️) and eating/picking things up off the ground. It’s acorn season at the moment and he LOVES putting them in his mouth despite the fact they are poisonous to dogs (though I don’t think he’s ever eaten one). He does drop quite reliably in exchange for chicken (unless it’s a new and exciting object), but some walks it’s just a continual “leave it… leave it… drop…”. I’m still hoping he’ll grow out of this… There are signs he will, but when he’s tired or excited he just seems obsessed with finding things to put in his mouth.

Because of that we only let him off the lead in a few places where we’re not expecting to come across much litter. Though you’d be surprised how much junk he eats that seems to not affect him the slightest. Sheep poo, for example. I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to eat sheep poo, but he doesn’t care and apparently neither does his digestive system. He also loves tissues, receipts and other bits of paper which his stomach seems to break down just fine.

Anyway, the other point is that having him has been really good for me. It used to be that work was the biggest thing in my life just by virtue of it taking up so much time and attention. Now it’s not the most important thing. Looking after this crazy little guy is the most important thing.

The Cone of Shame

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Monty is in the cone of shame. We’re not quite sure what happened but last weekend he had an irritated scrotum and was licking it a lot. I think it was getting better but then he went to the groomer on Wednesday and that set him off again. Over the weekend he seemed very unhappy and kept lying down on the tiles in the hallway (which he’d never done before) as if the carpet in the other rooms was irritating him. So we went to the vet on Monday and she’s given us a cone and various creams. She thinks he probably originally irritated it on a plant like ivy or brambles and if he’d just stop licking it for a few days it would get better. Unfortunately, licking his genitalia is one of his favourite hobbies, even when it’s not irritated.

I didn’t know this but the cones absolutely traumatise some dogs, including Monty. They just completely shut down and sit there looking sad. Yesterday afternoon he was refusing to eat, drink, toilet, everything. He just sat there. We ended up taking it off for a while to get him to do those things. And then it took him until 5 o clock this morning to work out he could go to sleep while wearing it. He literally sat upright all night until he eventually collapsed in exhaustion. Anyway he seems happier in it today, and in theory we can take it off tomorrow. We’ve had it off twice for about an hour each time today and he hasn’t been trying to lick much at all, so that’s promising.

In other news, at work, apparently our second in command has left. And I know this because LinkedIn told me he’s started another job. If I worked somewhere with hundreds of employees I could understand someone leaving without me knowing, but we actually have.. let’s count… 9 employees! So, great communication there. I assumed that he would be taking over running the company day to day when the MD retires (he’s in his 70s), so this seems like a bad sign.

I like sleeping

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Monty is being quite difficult at night now. It started last Sunday, i.e. when we changed the clocks. Probably changing the clocks upset his routine, which we didn’t really consider at the time. He was settling down in his pen in the living room at night, but now he seems very stressed at being left in the pen. So we tried letting him sleep out of the pen, and it’s a bit hit and miss. Sometimes he settles on the sofa, other times he seems restless and paces around a lot and goes behind the curtains and looks out of the window. I think he doesn’t really feel safe at night on his own, which is strange because he’s always been happy at night up til now and he’s happy to nap in there on his own during the day time.

Apparently adolescent dogs can go through something called a fear period where they just seem to suddenly get scared by things they never used to, so maybe that’s it. Some people say you should just put them in a crate/pen and let them cry it out, but it seems so mean and counter-productive. We tried that for about an hour and when we went down he was genuinely very stressed and took a few hours to calm down. It’s not that he’s being naughty, it’s that the little guy has his own needs and for whatever reason he’s actually upset! So over the past week we’ve had three nights between us of sleeping on the sofa with him. Which isn’t ideal.

So anyway… I think he’s going to be sleeping in my room soon. I just hope he can behave and not start chewing my bed sheets 🙄

This is the expression of a dog who can’t understand why you interrupted his tasty grass meal to try to get him to pose for a photo
Apparently sleeping in this position, on his back with his stomach exposed (kind of), means he’s happy and feels secure

COVID and stuff

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I don’t really get the apparent push that COVID is alright now and we just need to go back to normal and it’ll be fine. My boss’s dad died of COVID this week. It’s strange to see the contrast between people saying that it’s harmless and someone one degree removed from me dying from it. It looks like the push to open up again is coming from Boris Johnson trying to placate backbenchers to distract away from the ongoing disaster that is himself.

And on the topic of Boris, then there’s the National Insurance increase. I’m kind of annoyed about this if I’m honest. I don’t feel that the quality of services we get in the UK for our level of tax burden is a good deal. The NHS in particular worries me a lot since COVID. When I last needed a GP appointment, I had to wait about 30-45 minutes on the phone to speak to a receptionist and then the best they could give me was a telephone appointment a month later. It’s not so much a big thing for me personally, but my parents are getting older and it worries me that they will be deterred from seeking medical services should they need it. But overall it’s just a horrible policy that takes money from people who don’t vote Conservative (i.e. working aged people) while shielding those who do (i.e. pensioners).

Anyway… It prompted me to do some sums. I pay into a personal pension and a workplace pension. The workplace pension is salary sacrifice, but the personal pension is a better fund with lower fees. Obviously I get income tax relief on both, but the workplace pension is salary sacrifice so I also pay less NI as my taxable income is lower. It turns out that if I took all the money I put each month into my personal pension and instead paid it through my workplace pension, I would pay quite a bit less NI after the increase than I do now. And I can transfer it every so often into the private pension where the fees are lower. I hadn’t ever thought about doing this before. So… thanks, Boris?

In other news, it’s been a strange few weeks as Monty hasn’t been very well. Not last week but the week before, he woke up from his nap Tuesday morning and threw up. He looked unwell for a couple of hours and then perked up and seemed fine, until Thursday evening when he started vomiting again and had diarrhoea. I always knew that having a dog would involve it sometimes, but ideally you want this kind of thing in the morning so you don’t end up wandering around the garden multiple times during the night while your dog empties himself at both ends. We took him to the vet Friday morning but by the afternoon he seemed quite happy again… until Monday evening when we pretty much had a repeat of Thursday night. But he’s been OK since then and seems back to his lively self, so hopefully he’s got rid of it! According to my mum there was a post on the local Facebook group about such a bug going around and a few people noted the on and off nature of it, so I think he just picked something up. He’s only six months old so I guess you have to expect this kind of thing until his immune system is a bit more experienced. Plus, this is a dog who enjoys splashing in his water bowl with his muddy paws before deciding he’s thirsty and starts to drink the now brown water. He’s not really big on hygiene.

Hopefully we’ll be OK from now on… I have been quite worried about him at times. We’ve only had him four months but it seems like an eternity now. It feels like you very quickly develop an unconditional love for him. Maybe it helps that he’s so cute 🤫

MONTY!

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Monty went to the groomer again today. He’s had a proper clip! He’s gone from being such a fluffy boy to looking just like his mum, the last time we saw her! I’m kind of sad he’s not as fluffy but it was nice to see him and think “wow, he looks just like his mum!”.

Before and after. He’s all velvety now.

I feel like he has regressed a bit recently though. Over Christmas we took him to the park every day and he was pretty much completely crazy every time we went. But after almost two weeks of that we managed to get him walking quite nicely on the lead (loose lead walking) about half of the time. Obviously, when he sees another dog or someone comes and makes a fuss of him it all goes wrong, but he’s walking a lot better most of the time in general.

But in terms of his behaviour around the house, he seems to have gone backwards a bit. He’s getting the zoomies a lot and nipping more than he used to. Some of it was definitely teething and it was obvious his mouth was hurting, but I think he’s finished with that now and he’s still quite nippy and zoomy. I can always tell when we’re about 3 seconds away from zoomies because he’ll just suddenly stare at your feet and move his head with them as you walk around. This is always a bad sign because it means he’s thinking “wow, those look fun to bite”. I think it’s his working dog instincts that makes him want to chase things that move and when he’s overexcited he can’t resist the urge. So once he’s focused on your feet, it means he’s a few seconds away from lunging at them, possibly biting them, then running away grunting, growling and/or barking as he does laps around the living room at full speed.

I suppose that progress isn’t linear and cockapoos are particularly excitable and energetic dogs, and he is still only 5 and a bit months old.

However, I ❤️ him lots.

Almost Christmas!

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Sadly this year we can’t really have much in the way of Christmas decoration because Monty would eat them, but it is almost Christmas and I’ll be really glad to get some time off work.

I was playing with Monty a few nights ago and he bit my finger. Well, he jumped to get a toy I was holding and caught the bit of skin right next to the nail with his tooth. It wasn’t an intentional bite but it hurt and started bleeding so I went upstairs to put a plaster on it. I was standing in front of the sink putting the plaster on when I started to feel light headed, and the next thing I knew I was waking up on the floor. I can’t believe a tiny little cut made me faint. It wasn’t even still bleeding by the time I’d rinsed it and got the plaster out! Anyway I’m taking a more zero tolerance approach to his jumping now. If I have a toy, he has to sit before he can have it. I started letting him play more roughly with a lot of tug and throwing/chasing his toys in the living room because it seemed like he needed it to burn off his energy but it only works if he doesn’t bite me!

He has discovered how to jump to get onto the furniture. It used to be that he’d go up to a chair and put his front paws on it while trying to push with his back legs and kind of pull himself onto it, which didn’t work at all. He’s now discovered that he can actually just jump straight up in one go, and now there’s no stopping him. We didn’t really want him on the furniture, but when you leave him alone for a minute and come back into the room to find him sitting in your chair looking like he owns the place, what can you do?

(We have to cut the ears off all of his toys eventually to stop him from swallowing them. Mrs Elephant looks a bit sad now but he still seems to like her. When he’s tired he just lays there holding her in his mouth)

Here’s a picture from the puppy meet. Monty is the fluffy boy in the top right with the red harness. His mum is in the bottom left with the red collar. Notice how they are the same size as their mum already! The other three black dogs are his littermates. The white dog is a westiepoo (westie x poodle) who belongs to one of the other owners, and the other dog is a Rottweiler puppy who belongs to the breeder.

He looks like a fully grown little dog now. Or a little bear, the way he pads around the house. His behaviour is still very inconsistent though. He is teething at the moment so that may account for some of the craziness. We had a day last week where he’d seemed a bit unsettled all day, and then in the evening one of his baby teeth fell out while he was chewing on a toy. He’s usually very good at settling down and sleeping through the night, but that night I had to sleep downstairs with him because he started crying every time we would leave him. He’s a funny little guy. I guess that his gums were hurting and he wanted the comfort of knowing his caregiver was near. I kind of liked waking up in the night and being able to see him.

Socialization

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Tomorrow is the puppy meet up so Monty can meet his brothers and his mum again. I didn’t really want to go but it’s good for his socialization (and probably mine too). I guess that’s being a dog parent. There will be his four brothers, his mum, the breeder’s new puppy (apparently she missed them after she gave them away and bought one of her own!) and one of his brothers’ owners has another dog too, which I think is a westie.

I don’t know what Monty will think to it all. Despite being completely crazy he’s actually quite shy with other dogs. He obviously wants to go up to them and play with them but when he gets close he often runs and hides behind my legs and takes a while to actually go up to them. Though we did meet a cavapoo puppy (very similar) around his age a week or two ago and he loved playing with him, so maybe it’s more that he’s shy with adult dogs.

Rare photo of Monty sitting still

Anyway the only negatives are that I have to miss parkrun and also that the park we’re meeting in is literally directly across the road from my old boss’s house. I hope we don’t see him 😕