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Guest post by Wuffielover
The Frog Factory, or, Even Rabbits Don’t Breed Like This!
Keeping tiny, adorable frogs in nicely planted and landscaped vivariums is all very well, but one day, you’ll feel the urge to do something more. To make MORE tiny, adorable frogs. Or you might not, and what happened to me might happen to you, namely, you get some dart frogs and they start making babies no matter what YOU might have to say about it. Although, I confess, what I had to say was, “Oooo, EGGS! YAY!”
The best thing about breeding these guys (or the worst, depending on if you WANT them to breed or not) is that if you keep them in optimal conditions, they will start to breed more or less without any involvement from you. A lot of frog species need an artificial ‘rain chamber’ to simulate a rainy season and induce them to breed in captivity, but dart frogs just need humidity, temperatures in the mid-seventies Fahrenheit, adequate food, and enough cover to hide in. Since you have to give them these things ANYWAY, dart frogs are pretty easy to breed. Well…mostly. These:
are my D. imitator. I’ve had them for more than a year, and there are two girls and one boy (I can tell because the male is skinny and calls, and the females are fatter and quiet; this is true for most frogs, actually). They were bred and given to me by a friend of mine. He is overflowing with imitators. They breed constantly in his tanks; he started with a trio and now has more than twenty. And since the parents raise the babies in the tanks(more on that later), there’s not much he can do to stop them. The ones he gave to me, on the other hand, have yet to raise a single successful clutch, although I hear the male call and they have laid a few eggs, all of which went moldy and bad. Hrmph. Darn persnickety frogs…
However, back in August I acquired a pair of these:
Green and Black Dart Frogs, D. auratus. I’d barely had them a month before they started laying eggs, and they haven’t stopped since. Every two weeks or so I’ll peek in and find the male and the female together in one of the little white plastic bathroom cups (just disposable ones from the grocery store) tucked into the corner of their vivarium (they seem to prefer these, although they have laid clutches on the leaf litter as well). A couple of hours later the cup will contain three or four (once they had five!) little round objects that look like bubbles with black centers. These are the eggs. After a few days the black center will start to grow a tail, and after about a week they look like this:
Some people pull the eggs out right after they’re laid, but I leave them in the tank until they actually hatch, it’s easier that way. The first clutch my auratus laid, though, I was clueless about how to tell when the eggs HAD actually hatched. I kept asking my friend how to tell, and all he would say was “You’ll know.” I agonized about it, spending a lot of time examining the eggs, wondering, have they hatched? Can I pull the tadpoles now? Now?? Now??? It turns out, though, it’s easier than I thought. When the eggs hatch, the little ‘bubble’ that the tadpole has been in collapses. I really wish someone had told me that. Grr.
Anyway, after the tadpoles have come out of the eggs, you have about a day to grab them before the daddy frog takes over. Dart frogs, you see, have some of the best parental instincts of any frog. Instead of laying their eggs and abandoning them to nature’s whims, the male parent hangs around after the eggs are laid, guarding them.
After they hatch, he actually scoops the tadpoles up onto his back, carries them to the nearest body of water that suits them (the tadpoles will actually refuse to dismount if they don’t like the water), and drops them in. For some types of dart frogs, like my auratus, their job ends there and the tadpoles are left to fend for themselves. For others, like my imitators, the parents still have work to do. The tadpoles of these types of frogs are raised in very small bodies of water, as small as a thimble in some cases (usually the axils of bromeliads). In order to feed them the father calls the mother frog over and induces her to lay some unfertilized eggs, which are the tadpoles’ main food source. The latter type of dart frog, known as ‘egg-feeders,’ are nearly impossible to raise artificially and must be left in the tank. The former type, the non-egg feeders, have the opposite problem- unless the tank is carefully laid out, the tadpoles will usually not survive in the tank and have to be removed and raised by people. My male auratus transported one of the tadpoles from their first clutch before I pulled it; unfortunately, there’s no body of water in their tank. I never did figure out where he put it, but it wasn’t on his back the next day, and since I haven’t seen any little frogs in there (it’s more than 2 months since the other tads in that clutch morphed), well… the tadpole probably didn’t make it. I put a little cup of water in there after that, to prevent future accidents. But provided you can get there ahead of the parents, raising the tadpoles isn’t that hard.
Each tad has to be decanted (I used to be REALLY scared of hurting the tadpoles while doing this, fiddling with straws, turkey basters, etc…now I just pull them out with my fingers. Slimy.) from the remains of their egg (it turns into clear jelly after they hatch) into their own individual cup; if you keep two tads in the same cup, one will stunt the growth of the other. No, really! I kept two from the first clutch together and one became a frog more than a month after the first one. Here’s my tadpole shelf:
I buy a gallon of spring water and keep each cup about half full. Every couple of days I drop a tadpole bite (little brown food pellet) in. I used to put a bit of hair algae in each cup, but I ran out, so I’ve put oak leaves in the last couple of batches (they keep the water tannic, which the tads like, and give them something to munch on between tadpole bites). The tadpoles go from this
then climb out of the cups after becoming this absolutely tiiiny thing
in about two and a half months. Seriously. The baby froglets are sooooo small. I was certain I was going to kill the first batch. They can’t even eat fruit flies for the first week or so, they need springtails (a tiny, near-microscopic bug that eats decaying plant matter) instead. But, somehow, they did NOT die, and indeed, grew! Now, 2 months after my first group morphed, they look like this (sorry, that’s the best I could do with a rapidly fleeing, uncooperative frog that just had a penny dropped near it; it’s a near-miracle that I snagged the first one with the dime):
I keep the babies in latching plastic storage containers, with sphagnum moss and oak leaves in the bottom, and a chunk of bark for them to hide under. It stays nice and damp and works well, although at first I was paranoid that they would find some gap in the lids and escape.
And that’s the story of how I went from two auratus to more than a dozen, with another dozen tadpoles, six eggs in the tank, and more coming all the time, in only 6 months. I’m not yet at the point where I want them to just STOP already, mainly because I work at an exotic pet store where I can take the froglets once they’re big enough. And it’s a good thing, since I can’t work out how to make them stop anyway!
Guest blog by Ajlr
Learning to play the piano when one is over 50 (2 of 2)
As the weeks and months of our music lessons went on and Ben took us patiently through the early stages of learning to read music, translating the notes from the brain to the hands, remembering what keys were what on the piano, understanding just how to use the keys and move the fingers around on the keyboard, I began to wonder if this would ever be something I could do to my own satisfaction. I’ve always found learning comes reasonably easily, usually through books/text and observation, but I found it particularly hard to make the three-way connection between notes on the page, understanding them in the head, then moving the fingers appropriately. I was – and am – so slow in getting anywhere with it. After 25 years with computers I’m a fluent keyboard user so I knew that I could make that eyes/brain/fingers connection with other types of information but this wasn’t just a simple case of ‘hit-the-right-key-and-then-the-next-one’ – there was timing, touch, understanding the dynamics of even the mini-exercises Ben was using with us, heaven knows how many different elements. I felt – still do feel – like a total idiot much of the time. But I hate giving up on things. I had decided I would learn this to a level where I could avoid wincing at the sounds I made, so that was the way it was going to be. And I liked the sounds I could make when my brain and hands decided to co-operate for a few bars. Ray, meanwhile, was having great fun making up and playing tunes, or following by ear a tune that Ben would hum, and not so much fun with the theory side of it. (Our shared hour, at that time, was divided into two periods of 30 minutes, with Ben ably dividing his attention between the one practising and the one working on theory exercises, with us changing places at the half hour.) We both enjoyed most of our lessons, although sometimes for different reasons. Both of us like learning for its own sake, and for both of us this was also something very different to the rest of our respective daily activities.
When it came to learning and playing scales, I began slowly to understand a little more and could begin to work out the answers to our homework exercises by using the piano keyboard. Being told to play scales double-handed (both of my own hands, not one from each of us…) suddenly made playing them with one hand seem easy, whereas before I kept going wrong with the fingering. I like patterns – my brain recognises them and I find many things easier to comprehend once I’ve understood how they fit together in a discernable pattern, even if it’s a difficult one in itself. Playing scales and understanding them is a satisfying pattern.. Mind you, listening to me learning and playing scales must be fairly excruciating. Tabbs, our cat, tends to sit with her back to me, ears almost folded flat, after the first few minutes when I’m practising. And my hands aren’t as supple these days as they should be – all those years of using a computer mouse and keyboard for too long at a stretch have taken their toll in terms of tightened tendons across the backs of my hands. I have to do loosening-up exercises before I can get a good free movement some evenings and if Ben and I compare hands (and he’s 20 years older than I am) it’s obvious how our different working lives have affected our respective limbs. Having had carpal tunnel syndrome in both wrists back in my 20s probably just added to the stiffness. The music teacher at school was also right in that I wouldn’t be able to stretch far – I can just about span an octave but that’s all. But so what? I can still do it and that’s what matters.
Ben has recently been introducing the different sorts of timing that are possible, from simple to compound time (and for all I know, three- and four-dimensional timing will be in next term’s lessons…). The practise itself, for one who has a very full-time job, gets done in the evening and at weekends and after first trying the type of time allocation model that works for me with other types of learning and doing it in solid chunks of a couple of hours or more, I’ve now gone over to the ‘little and often’ model for much of it. Something that Blondviolinist said in one of her guest posts a couple of months ago, about learning to play an instrument being more of the athletics model than the academic as one needed to physically train the body, really clicked with me. I’d automatically been using the processes that have always worked for me before in other spheres – despite Ben saying gently to me that when he was learning a new piece he often went through a stage of doing bits of it for 10 minutes at a time, and repeating that regularly throughout the day to get his fingers used to particular sections. I’d obviously not properly taken that on board but when Blondviolinist said something so similar – two professional musicians with the same idea to put over – my middle-aged brain picked up on it at long last. Not that it’s always easy to make myself practise anyway (I gather I’m not alone in this…). When one is tired after a series of long days the tendency to whinge and make excuses, or find temptingly attractive tasks that need doing (ironing, for example, or cleaning the oven…) can easily overcome the move towards the piano. But then I think ‘do you really want to do this? Yes? Then bloody well get on with it, woman’. And when I do sit down at the piano and get started, things get happier even while they also get frustrating. At least it’s constructively frustrating, if that makes sense.
My brick-like tendencies become more obvious as I go on, in many ways. And I find questions continually pop up as I go on; Ben deals with the continuing questions by sometimes saying ‘do you want to cover this now or do you want continue with what we’re doing?’ and will go with whatever I say…and to my shame, sometimes I distract him if I don’t like the bit I’m trying to learn… :) Other times, I can see him trying to condense decades of knowledge into an answer I will understand. I know that in the near (3 – 4 years) future I am unlikely, short of suddenly being able to leave work and spend hours on this every day, to ever be at the stage of being skilled or confident enough to play much music as it should be played. I get annoyed with myself when a short (very short) piece that I’m learning sounds like a series of plinks and plunks rather than a musical whole, such is my stumbling lack of proper timing and expression. But I want to learn more. I enjoy it – the music, the knowledge of how it works, and using different areas of the brain to those that get marshalled into use most days. My husband has taken time out from the lessons this last term but he still encourages me to go on and is able to listen constructively. He enjoys doing his own thing on the piano and I’m regularly amazed by how much he can pick up and reproduce by ear.
I know that I will get somewhere soon where I can at least see the far wall of the first cavern, even though I haven’t a clue if I’ll ever reach it. I want to be able to play Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’ in a way that doesn’t totally insult the composer – I’m not sure if I’m going to reach that, either, but I’m going to enjoy the journey towards it. And if I’m unlikely ever to be able to cope with Rachmaninov, well, there are plenty who can and I’ll enjoy listening to them.
Guest post by ajlr
Learning to play the piano when one is over 50 (Part 1 of 2)
How – and why – do people learn new things? I started learning music theory, as a total beginner, about three years ago. Ben, our next-door neighbour and a music teacher, agreed that he would take my husband and me on as pupils and so in April 2007 we started our first music lessons – for me, the first since the year I’d had at school when I was 13, for my husband, the first formal classes in the subject ever.
I think I was – still am, in many ways – the musical equivalent of a brick. I like many forms of music but I’m not pretending that it has ever been a pivotal element in my life. I think in some ways I distrust, even while enjoying, the emotions it can evoke and it has been a world I have never had much involvement with. Coming from a family with no background of playing or performing music probably has something to do with it too. I wouldn’t have thought to start having music lessons if it hadn’t been for our wanting to do something new we could share and remembering afresh at that opportune moment that we’d been living next door to a music teacher (and a very nice man) for 12 years…
We started with theory because…well, just because; it seemed simpler. My husband has a guitar that he occasionally picks up and tinkers with (and which his elder son, Glenn, makes wonderful music on when he comes down on a visit), and he also has a poor un-used violin, lying in a forgotten corner somewhere, that he picked up in a junk shop many years ago. But the only instrument Ben tutors in is piano (oh – and organ: we didn’t, though, want to have the house sound something like the Adams family mansion from the outside, quite apart from the practicalities) and we didn’t (then) have a piano…so it was theory for both of us to start with. I rather liked the idea of understanding first, practice second (little did I know!) and my husband went amiably along with this.
The first few lessons – an hour shared between the two of us, one evening a week – were enjoyable even while they also reminded us that my husband and I have very different learning styles. I’m comfortable with text and theory, Ray prefers the practical application of theory and is good when it comes to the hands-on stuff. Ray is also more innately musical than I am, I think. He has a good voice (if untaught) – he can sing, on key, for example, and follow things easily by ear, whereas I…can’t. Ben coped with us both in saintly fashion, although I suspect he was slightly boggled by the naive questions that a musical ignoramus such as myself could keep coming up with. Why do we (in Western music) have things based on octaves, for example – who decided that they should be such an integral part of the system and why is it eight notes and not some other number? And just why are key signatures necessary? And how (apart from the fact that he’s been learning and teaching music for 50 years) could Ben tell from two bars of music what key it was in…? What makes one note dominant and another sub-dominant (nothing to do with black leather, I learnt). How could one recognise a composer’s style? And a lot more like that. It’s a good job that we’ve been friends with Ben, and Pat, his wife, for so many years – he must wave goodbye to us on some evenings and then go back in to say ‘You’ll never believe what I was asked this evening…!’. Anyway, Ben was very encouraging, reassuring us and encouraging exploration of ideas even while trying (with some difficulty, sometimes) to keep the two of us focussed on learning the basics we’d asked for. Learning things in a sphere which is so completely new to me, I often feel something like a caver breaking through into a previously-undiscovered underground cavern and being amazed at the sheer size of it and the fact that it is obviously just the first in a series of such spaces. There’s so much to know and try to understand. (Mind you, it’s a very useful reminder for working with the learners I have in other areas, being such a newbie in this one.)
After a term of (total beginner level) music theory, it became obvious that we needed at least a piano. Using Ben’s piano once a week, and the little keyboard he lent us, was fine for working on elementary theory but wasn’t really going to get us anywhere beyond that. Besides which, we both felt more optimistic by this stage that we would eventually be able to play a little, even at our respective advanced ages… So, with Ben’s help, we acquired a (second-hand) piano in November 2007. On the evening that it arrived at our house I felt rather as though we’d brought a unicorn home with us. There the piano sat, beaming goodwill and readiness to be made use of. There we sat, staring back at it in bemused wonderment. Having been told by my music teacher at school, back when I was 13, that there was no point in my trying to learn to play a piano as my hands would be too small to reach a reasonable span of notes, I also felt rather defiant. Shall so! See!!
Making our first, tentative contact with our own piano (Our! Own! Piano!) it was strange to feel how different ours was to Ben’s, the only one we’d known till then. His feels looser, somehow, and there’s a minute fraction of ‘give’ in the key when one first touches it that ours doesn’t have – something to do with his having been used every day for years, I’m sure. His also has a slightly clearer tone, I think, than ours, which sounds very slightly smokey to me. (I’m sure ‘smokey’ isn’t a correct musical term but it’s the only one I can come up with.) However, the piano tuner we’d booked as soon as our piano had got its wheels over the doorstep and taken its coat off assures us that ours is a nice little thing (it has a compact keyboard, just six and a half octaves) and will do us well. We love it dearly – I have given it a name, which I use when the two of us are alone together. My husband says this is appalling anthropomorphism – and furthermore, how do I know I’m not offending it by using the wrong name… I can only say, in my defence, that the piano doesn’t appear to be sulking about the matter at the moment. And with all the interesting research news coming through about the value of music, and singing in supporting both physical and mental health over the years of one’s life, I’m hoping that our partnership will prove productive in many ways.
To be continued…
Guest Blog by Black Bear
Frogblog Part Deux: The Return of the Terrarium
Who wants to see some pictures of tiny cute frogs? YOU do? Well, then I won’t stand in your way!
You might remember I bought the Amazon triplets back in November at the annual reptile/amphibian show. These are my second foray into the dart frog hobby, the first being my bumblebee frogs, Norman and Saxon.
Norm and Sax were ready to move to a larger terrarium right around the time of the show, so I cunningly planned to shift them over to a 10 gallon tank I just happened to have lying around, and put the new guys into the 5 gallon that the leuks were vacating. It’ll be like pie. Like really, really difficult pie….
Frogs aren’t cuddly. It’s not just because they’re small and sticky; in their natural environment, all sorts of things can squash or eat them, so they’ve evolved to be very skittish and easily startled. So handling them is pretty much a no-no, as it stresses them out big time. I try not to even put my hands into the tank very often—since it’s a terrarium it doesn’t really need cleaning in the way a hamster cage or a catbox does. But to get the frogs from tank A to tank B without risking escape or injury, I needed some sort of failsafe to ensure that if the frogs flipped out and managed to exit the terrarium, they wouldn’t get hurt or go missing. To this end, I formulated a plan which involved the bathtub.
So we’ll just put the frog tank in the—hey, wait a minute!
Nice try, you! Out of the tub. No frog-flavored snacks today.
So I put tank #1 in the tub, and got a small Tupperware container to put the frogs in for transport. (Tank #2 is a LOT heavier than tank #1, and since the bathtub is downstairs and the frog shelf is upstairs I didn’t want to risk carrying the 10-gallon tank full of dirt and rocks and live frogs over the distance—it just seemed like borrowing trouble, especially if you know my reputation for clumsiness.) I was worried that I might have to actually grab the frogs in some way to get them in the transporter, which was a little terrifying; they’re so delicate, and I was petrified I’d injure them somehow. But as it turned out, one of them hopped directly into my hand and was easily dumped into the Tupperware. (For the curious—Robin—they weigh about as much as a couple pennies in the palm of your hand, and they feel just ever so faintly sticky—tacky, really.) The second one followed, with only slightly more hassle, and I thought hey, this is easy! I’m like some kind of Frog Professional! I had visions of myself in a whole new career: “‘Scuse me, ma’am—you got a frog there what needs handlin’? I can put him in a Gladware box faster’n you can say lickety split.” “Oh, thank you, Frog Handling Professional, thank you!” So I was feeling pretty good about myself when I got things set up to introduce the Amazonian triplets into the now frog-free Tank #1.
Overconfidence has been the downfall of many far greater folk than I. But I have to say that after a year’s familiarity with D. leucomelas, I was completely not prepared for the experience of D. amazonicus. These little guys are, you recall, smaller than a dime; they came sealed in little plastic cups with a bit of moss for moisture, and I figured I’d just pop each cup open, shake the frog+moss out of it and into the tank, then move on to the next one. That’s how I did it with the leucs last year, and it worked just fine. So, popped open the first cup, shook the frog gently into the tank, started to open cup 2, and–*holy crap he’s making a break for it!!!* Turns out that while Norman and Saxon react to a strange situation by hopping around on the floor of the tank and hiding under leaves as fast as possible, this new species apparently is a bit more strongly arboreal, and the first thing they do upon being released from plastic prison is to leap onto one of the walls of the tank and begin a mad climb to freedom. So I dropped the as-yet unopened cup with the second frog in it, and cupped a hand over the spot where the frog was about to hit the rim of the tank while my other hand scrabbled frantically for the tank lid. I expected that when my hand approached him, the frog would retreat—but no! Fearlessly he cut sideways and was nearly over Cemetery Ridge before I got the lid closed (which was also frightening, as I didn’t want to accidentally smash him with the lid.) I swear I heard a tiny voice mutter “Curses! Foiled!” as I knelt next to the tub and waited for my heart rate to return to normal. While it probably wouldn’t have been a tragedy for him to escape into the tub, my fear of accidentally hurting these critters is tripled with the thumbnail frogs, because they are so ridiculously tiny I can’t even conceive of how I’d pick one up safely.
The rest of the operation was fraught with tension on my part and wild energy on the part of the frogs. Pry cup almost open, lift lid slightly, hold lid up while shaking barely open plastic cup frantically over the rim of the tank. It was hellish, and somewhere in there I became convinced that there was no chance all three of these frogs would survive my ineptitude to reach adulthood…
Now I’ve had them nearly 4 months, and I’m pleased to say that they are not only alive, but gorgeous frogs, enthusiastic hunters and eaters, and have staged down the escape attempts to only-once-in-a-great-while. They still don’t really have names, which is at this point less because I don’t want to get attached (too late) and more that I can’t tell the little boogers apart. Two of them are perfect duplicates of one another; the third is slightly different in his/her markings. So I’ve been weighing possible names, to be used interchangeably for the foreseeable future. Suggestions are welcome…
Guest post by Southdowner and AJLR
Training Tails, or, An evening out with two mods
(Narrative by AJLR, Footnotes and Photos by Southdowner)
Back last autumn, in one of the journeys round parts of England that are required by my work, I knew in advance that I would have an overnight stop in Southdowner’s home city. During a conversation with her about this the week before, I was delighted to be invited to go with her to a puppy class she would be running that evening at a local vet’s premises. The idea was that we would then go on after the class to have a snack in one of the city’s noted Indian restaurants. Southdowner, puppies and curry – a much better way of spending an evening than sitting in a hotel, I’m sure you’ll agree. Mind you, the last time we’d met for an evening, in similar circumstances, I’d been forced – whimpering with fear – up some vertiginous and body-misaligning* stairways into a bell-ringing chamber for a half-hour.* Could I trust my friend not to take advantage of my diffident and yielding personality** on this new occasion..?
The evening arrived and Southdowner also duly arrived, to collect me from the hotel. It was off to the puppy class. On the way there, as I was being briefed on the situation and make-up of this class, I noticed that the warm and charming person I know Southdowner to be was becoming overlaid with an extra steely glint of determination and will***. The iron glove was being donned over the velvet hand. Obviously, I thought, this particular puppy class required something like method acting preparation in order for it to run smoothly^. Southdowner was transforming into She Who Must Be Obeyed and the impact was palpable!
We arrived at the vet’s place to find what I was assured was the usual class at this venue. There were five puppies, ranging in age from 8 to 20 weeks old, and in size from very small to rather large. Four of the puppies each had two owners with them, the remaining one (a nice little Yorkshire Terrier^^) had just the one (rather nervous) lady^^^. I sympathised with the nervous lady^^^^ and sat myself down on a chair as far out of the action zone as seemed practicable. I found that I was sitting in an alert posture, and everything seemed new and distracting. For some strange reason, I found myself looking to Southdowner for reassurance that I was doing the right thing and could feel myself relax slightly when she made eye-contact and smiled.+
Waiting for the class to start
The first exercise++, after Southdowner had recapped on what the group had been doing the previous week and asked for feedback on how the homework with the puppies had been going, was to encourage the puppies to really focus+++ on their owners#, using tiny treats of food to reinforce success in each case.
A really intense focus in action
I’m sure I could feel my own focus on Southdowner sharpening with each repetition, for some reason…. Then it was on to a variety of activities, from staying put when the owner(s) moved a small distance away, to being at ease around the other members of the class, to searching## when the owner hid and then called their puppy’s name. It finished up with a few generous handfuls of treats being scattered around one part of the floor and the puppies – by now much more comfortable and relaxed around each other – being let loose to each hoover up as many treats as they could manage###.
Mmmm, treats for relaxed puppies
I was, by now, thoroughly relaxed and those treats started to look really good. I was sure Southdowner didn’t mean to leave me out of the party…maybe if I’d crouched down a little further and sidled along the wall I could have snaffled a few####. I wouldn’t do anything to upset Southdowner though, not for the world…
After the class had finished, with lots of smiles, applause, and a certificate for each family (this was the final class of six, for that group) Southdowner and I walked over to her van. When the doors were unlocked I could feel myself tensing slightly. Would I be allowed up on the front seat? Yes! I had obviously been A Good Girl during the class~. Curry, here we come!
The rest of the evening was also delightful, with lots of chat and different dishes to try. We had a jug of mango lassi and I could feel my ability to think for myself slowly resurfacing, although it was a near thing when the waiter asked if we’d like a doggy bag to take home – I could feel my upper lip lifting slightly at the thought of him picking up Our food. Once back at my hotel, in my room, I discovered also that the bath and washing facilities looked, strangely, far less attractive than when I’d first checked in…~~
Thank you, Southdowner, it was a lovely evening. :)
************************
*wimp! A broad flight of stairs which the congregation use for balcony access, followed by a teeny tiny spiral of ten steps! AND no one dropped the trap door on your head – it has happened. :P
* Only half an hour?! What kind of cheap cheezy ringing goes on where you are? –ed
**don’t believe a word of this, gentle readers!
*** Mwahahaha!
^ you’d be surprised how much a class of 6 lively puppies not to mention 6-12 (often livelier) owners can take out of you. This reminds me – I must get smarties to click train the owners tonight :)
^^ This yorkie’s owner had been recommended to come by the vet who gave her puppy (Bruiser) his first jab, since it took most of the consult to remove Bruiser from her neck where he was clinging like a cat.
^^^ good dog trainers can tell whether a dog is nervous; excellent dog trainers notice whether the owner is nervous as well. AJLR is perspicacious enough to be my assistant any time…
^^^^ …but please don’t reinforce the negative behaviour!
+ see, knew those smarties would come in handy *g*
++ sneakily, the very first exercise is settling on a short lead while we talk, so that the pups have a skill to use when meeting visitors at home or strangers on the street.
+++ attention span of a gnat at this stage :D
# so useful to do this in a class where there are another 4 huge distractions (not in physical size you understand). Giving up on distractions is the basis of loose lead walking, recall, in fact your whole relationship together. The most common comment I get from owners of teenage dogs is “I only want to teach them to come when called & walk on a loose lead” – (thinks “so that’s the WHOLE relationship that needs adjusting then”?!) I am very tactful to clients – mostly – *g*
## hopefully for the owner, but often for the exit, other people’s treats (that would be the labradors) or other puppies
### Naughty AJLR (though we may have had a labrador puppy, in which case she is excused)! The food (I use toys if I have a food defensive puppy and give the owners a programme to desensitise them) allows the pups to interact with sufficient distraction that they aren’t full on, which causes tears. The first time all the puppies of a course play loose together I have oxygen masks ready for owners :)
#### poor AJLR – we have a late meal each time she visits – it’s either bells (Thursday) or puppies (Wednesday). At least bells can’t make you hungry…^
^ Who says bells can’t make you hungry? –ed.
~ Not just smarties, sultanas, access to all areas…
~~ O.O (covers ears – don’t tell me any more *g*)
