Small steps towards success

We are taking small steps towards success. She actually slept from 10.30pm to 4am. We have started getting to bed really early so if she does bark her head off the neighbours can’t complain.

She barked/rattled/howled and whined for 25 minutes but she barely touched her Kong. The sad cow that I am I am actually timing just how long she barks for and whether it is continuous or broken up. One of our neighbours is very nasty and complained about Bluebell barking even when he wasn’t in the house. I’m documenting everything just in case they complain.

Tinkerbell woke up at 4am. It was possibly the nasty neighbours moving around that disturbed her. They clam to be retired yet they go to work to a cleaning job at 4.30am! As it is cleaning at the golf club they consider it to be a posh job. The really weird thing is they are not unskilled, he was a builder and she was a seamstress! Not the retirement I have planned I can tell you.

Anyway I got up and let her out and then encouraged her back into her crate. She happily went into her crate then came out again with her Kong and promptly jumped on the bed with it. I let her finish the Kong on her bed on the floor outside the crate.

K and Bluebell joined us at about 6am. Did I mention we were in separate bedrooms? It’s really tough but there is no point both of us being disturbed.

All four of us snuggled on the bed together and I fell asleep again. This was a big mistake, huge in fact as I slept through my alarm! I’ve never slept through the alarm! I really must catch up with my work…next week.

This evening I decided to try some lead training in our courtyard only to be disturbed by a nosey neighbour. I was walking Tinkebell very closely to me with a tasty treat in my hand pressed against her nose. She ‘was’ doing really well.

J – ‘What you doing there then?’

Me – ‘I am trying to teach Tinkerbell to walk nicely on the lead, to do this I need her to not be distracted and concentrate only on me’

J – ‘What you doing that for then?’

Me – ‘Because she pulls like a train which makes walking her really hard but I have to have her complete attention for it to work’

J – ‘And what you doing to get her attention’

For goodness sake are some people really that stupid? By this point Tinkerbell had completely lost her focus and was busily trying to munch on her lead.

Later in the evening we had our first casualty. This is the start of a very long list called ‘so far today I have eaten’ I left her unattended for a matter of minutes and in that time she broke into my make up box and stole an eyeliner. She ‘ate’ the eyeliner on the bed. You can imagine the mess.