Originally uploaded by jaimeandjim.

How is it possible that I am the owner of a kid THIS cute??? Prepare for online journal spamming of flickr pics. I’m just uploading a batch now.

We went to Butterfield Acres this weekend for a good old fashioned Pumpkin hunt.  (I don’t know that they are old fashioned at all, but it seems like the kind of thing farm kids would do growing up.)  I had never heard of this thing they call “Pumpkin Hunt,” but when my daily mom-spam email came through a couple of weeks ago, it told me all about the fun me and my family would have if only we went to a pumpkin hunt(!)  So we picked one of the last weekend slots available, as early in the season as possible, so as not to have to hunt for pumpkins in the snow, and we bundled ourselves up in fall garb and drove out to the farm on Saturday.

Before the hunt started, they corralled all the kids in this little playground.  It was better than most playgrounds because there were these wooden frames hanging from ropes all over the place!  There were also old tires to climb on and all sorts of other treasures to be found.  The thing I really liked about the playground was that there was plenty of stuff for the kids to play with, and unlike normal city playgrounds, all the apparatuses (apparati??) stuff to play on was spread out, so you didn’t have a huge concentration of kids in the area where the “cool” toys were.

And because of the non-standard equipment, the kids are left to figure out how they want to play on certain things:

The slides were really cool too:

In the interest of time, I’m going to cut this short. We rode in a trailer that was pulled by a large tractor, which Jonah thought was the coolest thing ever. And then we got off at the pumpkin hunting destination and Jonah found his own pumpkin! Never before have I seen my baby with such a proud look on his face! He really felt like he accomplished something when he picked that pumpkin up off the ground!

After the hunting, we loaded ourselves back into the trailers and rode out to the decoration area. Jonah got to put macaroni and feathers and lentils all over his pumpkin! He had fun despite the fact that he didn’t really understand that the glue was an adhesive, and not paint. After the decorating, we pump little punkinhead on a rack to dry, waved bye-bye, assured jonah that we would come back for mister pumpkin, and went to go look at the animals.

(Those pictures are still waiting for me to finish. I promise – later this week they will be posted in flickr.)

Today’s post is all about the things I love. If I were Oprah, this would be my favorite things episode and I would shower you all with free stuff. But I’m not, so you’ll just have to read about these things I love and remember that when you’re in the market for such things, how great I said they are.

My first plug for today is for Clever Canines, the best dog training company ever. Of course, I haven’t tried any others, and now that I’ve taken my dog to clever canines, there will never be a need for me to try others… But really, Tracie at Clever Canines is the best. It’s not like I had a problem dog, though, so I don’t have any crazy horror stories to share. I can tell you that before we went to Clever Canines, Missy was a very bad leashwalker. She would pull and we would get grouchy with her, and the whole dog walk would be such a chore. And then I had Jonah and there was no way I was going to walk her AND Jonah at the same time – she might pull me over! Jonah was a worn baby so if I fell over, I’d squish him.

Now she will walk with us both on and off a leash. She will sit or lie down and patiently wait until we are ready to go. This is her at the beach, watching kids run around and play. She does all sorts of things that I never expected my dog to do. We are currently working on beating chuck in the balance things on your head contest.

I truly believe that if you live in Calgary and you own a dog, you need Clever Canines.

Motherease diapers.  We tried a few other diapers before these.  First there were the prefolds with the bummi wraps.  Not a fan of the bummis.  Then there were the stacinator fleece wraps.  (The stacinator wool wraps were excellent, but didn’t last long because Jim didn’t realize they are wool and not allowed in the washer.  They totally feel like cotton jersey.)  Really pretty but I never could get them to work the way they are supposed to.  Then there were fuzzi bunz.  We thought they were the perfect diaper for a few months…  There really isn’t anything wrong with them – they just leaked more than I wanted them to.  And then FINALLY when Jonah was 7 months or so, I ordered some motherease after reading several reviews on my crunchy mama list.  Since receiving my order we have asked ourselves over and over again why we didn’t just use the motherease from the start.

Carol’s Hummous from recipeczaar.  Topped with tomatoes, served on whole wheat pita.

There is more but this entry has been sitting in the drafts folder for over a month and it’s time to finish it off already.

Missy went on her first escalator ride last week.  It was confusing and hard and I tried not to get her little toes caught in the hole where the escalator and floor meet.  In the end she did a great job, but this is an exercise worth repeating a few times.  This and the Prince’s Island Park bridge that comes from Memorial.

Millions of pictures need to be posted.  My goal is to put at least one up every night.  Tonight I think I might be at three.

A friend of mine wrote an entry on her blog recently that was spurred by her own love her her child and her belief in the parenting style that she (and I) have chosen. She also included the phrase, “Children aren’t dogs,” which I believe was a reference to a post on a list that we both belong to…  (EDITED:  Steph didn’t make the remark in response to the discussion, like she says in the comments.  And like I said, her entry was more to do with her beliefs wrt parenting our kids – where she *references* the remark.   I, however AM using the term in direct response to the posting.)

I also feel strongly about this, but in a way that she didn’t cover: Dogs are animals.

And do we really think that a conversation on a parenting list about dog training isn’t going to result in differing opinions? Dog training is a personal decision – one that, like our parenting styles, we (those of us who care about training our dogs) have strong, passionate feelings about.

And this is my feeling: In case you missed it the first time – DOGS ARE ANIMALS. They are not humans with fur. They don’t reason the way we do. They don’t need to have ribbons in their hair, and I don’t believe that they think that wearing such ribbons make them pretty. I believe that dogs need to be told who is boss. They need a leader because they are pack animals. If you let the dog be the leader, you end up wih a dog who may listen part of the time or not at all.

I suppose it’s really how you look at it. Positive-only dog trainers might be into positive-only child rearing. Treats. Rewards. I’m not into treat-based training and believe that it doesn’t do anything helpful but get the dog to do things for treats. If the dog isn’t hungry, you won’t get results. For similar reasons, Alfie Kohn, who wrote “Unconditional Parenting,” believes that rewards and praise are counter productive. The difference is that my child has reasoning skills. He knows that I don’t want him to bite me because it hurts me. (Okay, he can’t reason this NOW, but one day he will be able to.) The child will also be able to reason against the right choice: If the punishment for not putting the dishes away is having to do dishes for a week, and the child wants to be lazy NOW, he will reason that dishes later aren’t so bad. My dog, on the other hand knows not to bite simply because that’s the rule. She knows not to pull on the leash when we walk because I am the leader and will forcefully show her so if she were to pull ahead of me and try and challenge my position as leader.

I can’t yank on my child’s chain. I can’t just tell my child “I’m the leader. You follow,” and expect for it to work.

And as I wrote this, a new entry hit dooce. This is exactly why I’m not into treat based child rearing.

I forgot to mention here that we signed up with our dog for dog training class. Missy is 2-1/2 now and we never took her to formal dog training. When we got her, I read everything I could find on the Internet. I read about housebreaking and leash walking, prong collars, choke-chains, clickers, treats… I read all kinds of conflicting advice and came to my own conclusions: Rubbing the dog’s nose in her pee really isn’t productive. Crate training works. I’m not sure if the idea that puppy pads are bad if you are planning on eventually getting the dog to go pee and poop outside is actual proven fact, but we skipped the puppy pads. Being that I was stuck in immigrations purgatory when we got her, I had plenty of time to *carry* her down the stairs of the deck instead of watch her pee on a rectangular diaper.

And so I figured I also had plenty of time to do clicker training with her. And just so you doubters know, it worked totally well. Except for one thing that bothered Jim. And my mother, who thought it was kind of lame – I used “positive” training. So she displays a behavior that I’m trying to get her to do, I click to mark my pleasure with the behavior, and then I treat her. She bites me and I just don’t click or treat. Not that she ever bit me. I’m exaggerating so you understand that there was *only* praise in this particular school of training. No correction. Eventually I became inconsistent, and really how do you expect to get your husband to use only positive feedback when he’s making a valid point that she needs to be corrected when she does something we don’t want her to do?

So it’s not that she’s a bad dog – for the most part she’s good. But she could be better. I don’t really feel comfortable taking her to the off leash park when it’s just her and Jonah and I. If I have to chase after her, or restrain her, it’s too hard with the baby. She likes to put on her vicious face and the mohawk on her back sticks up, and I’m so scared she’s going to eat one of those poor rat dogs that she lives to go after. She also doesn’t walk nicely on a leash. She walks *okay* – where she won’t pull your entire arm off… And by the time you’ve walked a mile or so, she’s walking really nicely. But those first few steps out the door are such a nightmare for me that again, when it’s just Jonah and I, I refuse to do it. Or I will do it, but only around the block. I’ll walk her around the block, come back to drop her at the house, and finish a real walk with Jonah. So much easier!

So anyhow, when we were in Hawaii over Christmas, Missy was a guest at a friend’s house. A friend who had a polite and well-behaved dog. So I asked this friend about dog training and she told me about this great class they took. So I signed us up.

Tonight was our first class and already we’re doing better. We’ve been able to clearly communicate to her that we are the leader on a leash walk. We’re working to get her to pay attention to our cues – instead of letting her decide everything. She’s been walking on a loose leash all night. She even jogged through the slalom of posts that went around the parking lot at the park, only getting hung up a couple of times. We all had so much fun – even Missy. Even Connor and Jonah. In fact, Jonah was asleep by the time we got home. He was so worn out, he was asleep through the diaper change. Jim didn’t even get to read him a bedtime story.

We can’t wait for our next session on Thursday. Homework this week: No sounds aimed at the dog. In other words – no talking to the dog. We’re already having trouble. I have to ask myself if it’s okay to talk to Jonah before I say anything to him. It’s so normal for us to talk to her all day. I’m sure this is good for us, but what a challenge!

It’s now after 9. I am going to watch the last ever Gilmore Girls. Boy do I hope it’s one of those flash forward finales, where we get to see where Lorelai and Rory are in five years. I am so not going to talk about the disappointment that was the last Seventh Heaven.

After a few minutes of roaming around the parking lot, finding no people, and then walking over to the grass near the parking lot, it became apparent that the dog was not where he was supposed to be. We put Missy in the car and borrowed her leash and I went out to the street (by this time he had left the park and stumbled onto the street) to retrieve him. Luckily he was friendly and responded, after a few tries, to “come here little doggy.”

We fed him some water and talked in the parking lot with another lady who was concerned for the dog. We waited around and hoped that someone would notice that they were a dog short and come back to look at the parking lot area. No one came. We called animal control, but since it was a holiday, they said that they didn’t have anyone that could help us. After waiting around a little while more, we decided to take the dog home and figure things out from there.

We tried to guess its name. We looked up common dog names on the internet and yelled them all out at the dog, but he laid there, unimpressed. So since he was long and flowy, and since Jim didn’t really like “pacey” or “dawson,” we settled on “gandalf.” After a few more calls to animal control, we learned that the license on the dog was not current. We decided that it might be easier to hunt down the dog’s parents ourselves and took some pictures of our new gassy friend. (He farted nonstop while he was here.) The last time we talked to animal control they said that they would call in the morning and have someone pick him up. There was no call today.

So we gave the dog kibble and a bath and planned to make up flyers and post them today. This morning when I woke up I remembered that Jim found a tattoo on the dog, so I spent some time looking up tattoo registries and attempting to find parents that way. No one had a listing for the number in his ear. What good is a tattoo if you can’t figure out where it’s registered? And why are there so many registries? There’s no reason to register your dog ten times, but if you only register it once, which one do you choose? In the end the tattoo didn’t help at all.

But the rabies tag did. Although it was almost worn off, I was able to make out the name of the vet that issued the rabies tag. I called that office and read them the number on the tag. They called their client (it’s a good thing the phone number they had worked!) and left him a message to call me about their dog. In the end Kahlua (no wonder he didn’t respond to all those generic dog names we tossed at it!) was thrilled to go home with his daddy. And I was thrilled to get rid of the spoiled fartbag who totally hogged the bed last night. He was such a great dog – I think even missy kind of liked him, even though she had to share her parents with him.

We had a nice weekend here with the out of towner’s. They were only here for a couple of days, which is good. It didn’t turn into one of those “when are they going to leave” situations. In fact, since they showed up late Saturday night, it really didn’t seem like they were here very long at all.

We picked up a new tomato on Sunday. I’ll explain that in a couple of weeks I think.

After picking up the new tomato, Jim took the guests on a bike ride around the city. I stayed home because we initially didn’t have enough tomatoes to go around – we had enough for the guests, but mine would be loaned out. In the end we had enough if I wanted to go, but I decided to stay back and have some time to myself.

They were gone for a long long time. Sounds like they had lots of fun.

We cooked dinner, I made brownies, and we went to sleep. This morning our travelling friends packed up their stuff and drove off into the sunset. Except the sun wasn’t setting at 10:30 in the morning.

In other news, the dog is producing milk. She’s been “nesting” for a couple of weeks now, which, for whatever reason, we didn’t think was odd. But the milk production got us thinking… See, she recently decided that her new favorite spot was under the side table in the living room. It used to be under the dining room table, but I think that is too open for her. So she decides that the side table is where she wants to be and she starts to do the digging in the carpet thing there. Then we notice her digging all over the house. She digs before she lays down on her bed spot on the side of the bed. She digs when she lays down in front of the sliding door. We thought she just didn’t want to lay down on the floor mat. But now we see that it’s more than that.

She hasn’t been out of our sight. When she was in heat, we didn’t let her go anywhere unattended. We didn’t take her to the dog park until we knew she was finished being fertile.

But when we saw that there was actual milk involved, we became alarmed. Then jim remembered that growing up the farm, cows and horses have this thing they call a false pregnancy. And then I remembered my childhood dog, who wasn’t fixed for 1 or 2 heats, and her false pregnancies. Except we didn’t have a technical term for it, because I think I was like five. Tiffany would carry around a rubber squeaky toy. We called it her baby. Come to think of it, I think at one point she may have adopted my little farm fair teddy bear, baby boo. I so rock with the naming, no? New reports from mom say that she’d try to nurse the inanimate objects, just like the internet says. (I didn’t really believe that part until mom confirmed).

So my dog, missy. Jim and I are absolutely positive that she is still virginal and that no puppy miracles are taking place in this house. I think the udder (breast?) swelling may even be going down now.

Poor little girl.

Today we took her to Southland. I heard about it from some other dog people at edworthy. They raved about the place and said that there are LOTS of dogs there, even in the winter when it’s dark and snowy. They said that it was good for dog swimming too, because you can walk right up to the river, instead of hiking down and crossing the train tracks. Not to mention the fact that I don’t think you’re really supposed to let your dog run around off leash through the edworthy trails. Of course, everyone else does it, and Missy might grow to resent me if she realizes that she’s the only dog being forced to walk on a leash.

Anyhow. We went to southland and walked along the river. Last time we were there, I showed her how the big dogs were playing fetch, running down the hill, and jumping into the water, chasing after whatever their owners were throwing. She thought it was neat, but could only muster up the courage to dip her toes in at the water’s edge.

This time was different. Jim got her to slowly get deeper into the water. I think the current here was less intimidating, so she was willing to go farther in. When he got her to the point where she was swimming a little, he kept throwing the stick in that area, just to get her used to the swimming. She picked it up very quickly, and soon was running up and down the hill and jumping into the water, even swimming for long chunks of time, just like the big dogs! I think I even saw some of the other less swimmerly dogs looking enviously at her.

My dog is better than your dog.

Now that I’m writing this WEEKS after it actually happened, I’m having trouble remembering exactly how it went down. That and I’m baking chocolate chip cookies for this volunteer thing that I do and they really smell good. So good that the dog park isn’t at the top of my brain right now.

But we do have photos to share, so I’ll just get to that.

In this photo you can see part of why this dog park is so great. One of the ways through the park is along the edge, which overlooks this street/driveway that ends up at the bottom of the park, in the people section. See there’s a dog section and a people section. Dogs on top, people down below. In the people section there are pathways that go back into downtown, on both sides of the river. You can also take the pathway out of downtown, but I don’t know where that gets you, since I’ve never tried it. So anyhow, photo:

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I am a big dog, overlooking the Edworthy Park driveway

She started out on the leash, because we weren’t sure if she’d go crazy and run away from us, entranced with the other dog friends that were around, only to forget that she has parents of her own and then wonder where the heck we went off to.

She met some other dogs.

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hmmm smells like a dog.

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She was a little scared of this one.

Then we took some trails down to the river so she could cool off with a puppy swim.

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mmm water

And then we discovered something. She doesn’t really like the water. We picked up a stick and tried to con her into running in, but if we threw it too far, she’d just let it drift down the river.

Since she did so well on the leash, and off it down at the water, we decided to try leaving her off for the rest of the excursion. Apparently we were worried for nothing – she was an expert off-leash dog.

Here’s an action shot of her running towards me.
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I am a racing dog

She wasn’t used to this kind of exercise. There’s only so much running a puppy can do when she’s on a leash. So on the way home she made herself comfortable and was nearly asleep by the time we got back.
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Phew.