The Labraventures of Carbón, Spanish (ex-) foster dog extraordinaire

Granca

Granca

It sounds really good, Emily. Can you book it again in advance if there are any spare slots that fit into your schedule?

I hope Carbon stops being sick, but it’s great that he’s enjoying himself and not feeling poorly.
 
Emily_Babbelhund

Emily_Babbelhund

Mama Red HOT Pepper
Location
Regensburg, Germany
Granca said:
Can you book it again in advance if there are any spare slots that fit into your schedule?
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I'm now booked until 20 February (here and in one other place for the last 13 days) and this place is currently free after the 20th. However, I won't know for a few weeks whether I'll need it or not, by which time it may already be booked. It's a funny juggling game at the moment. But this place definitely goes into the 'good future resources' file. Never hurts to have a little stash of dog-friendly backups. :)
 
snowbunny

snowbunny

Location
Andorra and Spain
snowbunny said:
If I remember, I'll take some real world video of me walking with Squidge tomorrow. She is almost constantly looking up at me, waiting for her next treat. She gets them, and a lot. Walking by me is really, really tough for her, so I've made sure to pay in to that. I choose not to look at her staring as a demand or begging for food, but as her understanding she's getting the behaviour I'm after right, and that she is due her reinforcer.
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It took a couple of days, but here it is, warts and all. This was at the start of our walk, in the snow, and Squidge is VERY excited. She's also not had a poo yet. She can't quite control herself fully in this situation yet.

You can see she is excited because she is looking at me all the time with her "Look, Mum, I'm doing really really well!" face. In general, she doesn't stare at me quite as much as this! I lose her a couple of times, but she's able to come back in, so we're pushing the limits, but only just.

I think it would be easy to think she's begging for treats, but knowing that her environment is SO difficult for her, it really is her way of saying, "Look, I'm doing this thing that you want, despite what reinforcement is available out there! That's gotta be worth something, right?!". Her little smiling face shows how clever she knows she's being :)

Oh, and she ran off when I unclipped her lead without waiting for her release - this is incredibly unusual, and shows how much she really wanted a poo... so I think she did really well, all things considered!

 
Emily_Babbelhund

Emily_Babbelhund

Mama Red HOT Pepper
Location
Regensburg, Germany
snowbunny said:
Her little smiling face shows how clever she knows she's being :)
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I love her happy face and all the checking in. :)

Carbon doesn't look at me quite as much, but the face he makes is completely different. He is SERIOUS. We're doing serious stuff, I'm being seriously good and you should seriously give me a seriously big cookie for my trouble....NOW. One might even call it a very intense GLARE. However, I think the intention is the same, and I DO want him to look at me while we're walking instead of sniffing every street corner, so I suppose I can't complain!

The Ginny cameo in her snowsuit made me smile. :giggle:
 
Emily_Babbelhund

Emily_Babbelhund

Mama Red HOT Pepper
Location
Regensburg, Germany
Hola todos!!! It is I, your Spanish gentleman dog, Carbón! Foster lady has not been letting me near the keyboard lately and I felt it was time to fix that, no? Also I feared that the muy bonita Squidge might be taking over MY thread with her video and adorable photo. I did not want you to forget about ME.

Just in case you DID forget - and que lastima, what a shame that would be - here I am in a throwback photo from Ireland. Ah...sand on my nose, a ball in front of my eyes. What a life!

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To share some news from more recent days, did you know that foster lady and I are again traveling? But only in circles and circles around my adopted German hometown. Si, si...it is true. We have new places to live...some better than others to be honest...but then we come back to our German hometown.

Sometimes we even walk past our REAL German home's door and I stop and look at foster lady and say, "Why can't we go inside? I am cold and would like a cookie!"

And she says, "Come on Carbon, keep walking - we don't live there anymore."

Que? What? Why don't we live there? What is this nonsense? De verdad, really, it makes no sense!

Anyway, here are the places we've lived in the last three weeks...

Our real home in Germany, here with our bags packed and ready to go into the car:
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Then we went to this village...
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...which had a castle that I found very aburrido, very boring. Plus I still do not like modelling so I am giving my Señor Grumpypantalones face here.
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But the house did have free running chickens outside the front door. That was fun! Foster lady says, "Chickens are your friends, Carbon, not dinner. Remember FRIENDS."
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And here I am in the living room of our house. It smelled kind of funny, but I had my very own bed on the floor which I liked even better than the sofa. Bunny, Owen, Monkey and I hung out there for some serious siestas. They are not in this photo because this is when we were already packed to leave. Foster lady makes sure that my fur babies are always the first to be safely packed away for a move so that we never leave them behind. Then when we get to our new place, I unpack them myself and hop around showing them our new casa!
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Finally it was off to the next place, which was in our town but near the train station. There were some scary people sometimes outside, but I protected foster lady by barking at them and looking ferocious. That's what a Spanish caballero - that's gentleman - does. I am very good at it!
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To be continued...
 
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