Gingers In Repose

Learn from yesterday, live for today, look to tomorrow, rest this afternoon. 

~

Charles M. Schulz

Eyeball Update and Outings with Boca

March 19th marked the one-year anniversary of Boca's conjunctival graft surgery on her right eye, an experience I'm very glad to have behind us. Poor Boca had to wear the Cone of Woe for a total of ten weeks, and it was an extremely stressful time as she stumped a number of professionals with her non-conventional response to treatment and to this day we still have no clear diagnosis. We were also navigating our first major pet insurance claim, a story which thankfully had a happy ending. It was difficult to know what the right thing to do was at the time, with advice from every angle, but we absolutely made the best choice for Boca in order for her to retain her eye and vision.

Dog In the Doorway of Spring

 She turned to the sunlight
    And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbor:
    "Winter is dead."

~

A. A. Milne

Ruby Reviews: The Honest Kitchen Wonders

I am always excited to try a new offering from The Honest Kitchen. The Ginger Sisters eat their dehydrated food every day for breakfast as part of their rotation diet and I trust in their human-grade ingredients and natural philosophy. I even belong to their auto-ship program so we never run out of Keen, Revel or Beams. Since Ruby and Boca regularly enjoy the dried catfish skins known as Beams, I thought that the new single ingredient pollock skin treats, Wonders, would be a hit for us. It turned out...not so much. While The Ginger Sisters were anxious to sink their teeth into these stinky, scaly snacks, I was skeptical as soon as I saw them.

Springing Forward Into Optimism

Trying to fall asleep last night at an earlier hour than usual because I knew the time change would be taking its toll on Monday morning, thoughts and conversations from the weekend coalesced into something thematic:  

 

Take the leap, spring ahead, trust in what you don’t know. 

Before turning off my light, I had just read the first few chapters of Relaxed and Forward, a collection of horse training essays written my friend Anna Blake. We share the idea that training is about relationship, and that's why her training book is less how-to and more meditation. We had dinner together Friday night and discussed the life-changing magic of the long-line and flying disc for Ruby. Earlier in the month I wrote about using the long-line for recall training but we’ve been doing much more goofing off than training. The interesting thing is…goofing off is working wonders.

#WeruvaDog Gives Us More Reasons to Love Kibble

There is a lot of information to keep up with when it comes to deciding what to feed your dog. Trends change and new brands pop up every day. Rotation feeding has been the right choice for me and my dogs, and I am always excited to find a new food to add to our rotation. While we feed a little bit of everything, I keep kibble in The Ginger Sisters' rotation for many reasons, not the least of which are high quality options like WeRuVa^® Caloric Melody. 

Recall Preschool

A reliable recall is probably the most important thing you can teach your dog. It is also, in my opinion, one of the hardest. Ruby has gotten away from me a couple of times due to equipment failure and human error, and they've been some of the scariest moments of my life. With a reactive dog and no yard, it sometimes seems in the outer realm of unattainable. Even if I never plan for my dogs to be off-leash and our real-life training scenarios are limited, there are still steps I can take to lessen the chances of a runaway and to strengthen the recall cue.