Throwback to that time when summer starts to turn into autumn…
The heat of the summer quickly turned to rain and thunder, further preventing us from proper walks. I would have huffed and puffed, except lightnings scare me so I just hid in the bathroom. I closed my eyes to escape from the inexplicable fear: I knew Missy was here, but so were the loud booms, so really couldn’t tell if I was safe or not.
View original post 569 more words
Let me share one of my favourite posts from April’s A to Z challenge.
I just love when dogs get lost in their zoomies. It’s total freedom, no care in the world, just enjoying the moment. It’s something we all need.
Let me share one of my favourite posts from April’s A to Z challenge.
I had the most fun with this post I think (although recording the exercises was also great). It just shows how open my dog is to any shenanigans I think of, she’s always game.
Let me share one of my favourite posts from April’s A to Z challenge.
Mia comes with me everywhere. I find it easier to be in the company of people when she’s around. It puts me at ease.
So when we had our first team barbecue in the nearby park, it was no question that Mia would join. Thankfully my team didn’t mind, she can easily steal the heart of anyone if she wants to.
Let me share one of my favourite posts from April’s A to Z challenge.
I celebrate every victory with Mia, because this journey we’re on is not straightforward. Sometimes it’s 1 step forward, 2 steps back.
One of the milestones I marked happily was when Mia started to play. It took about 3 months after we moved in together, so you can imagine how impatient i was by that time!
Let me share one of my favourite posts from April’s A to Z challenge.
One of the things I have experienced through having a dog is that there will always be setbacks. And with a rescue, they’re tenfold.
When teaching something to a dog, we patiently build it up. She can’t do the long jump? Let’s take it back, make it shorter, make it lower, make it less scarier. And every new exercise we start from scratch.
We know this, we’re prepared for this, and we don’t mind. But there are days when things she’s supposed to know, go wrong. When she doesn’t know what “sit” means. The task that was easy yesterday seems impossible today.
And just when I would start getting frustrated, the trainers would calm me down.
“It’s ok,” they’d say. “It always happens. They need time to integrate this new knowledge with the old. We’ll just take a setback, and start again.”
And we do. We’re patient with them, we understand what they’re going through. We accept that this is part of life with a dog.
Which made me accept (starting to accept) that this is part of life for me, too. That the same patience and loving understanding I give to Mia, I should give to myself as well.
This post was written from Mia’s perspective but the same applies to me, too. Her journey isn’t that much different from mine.
Let me share one of my favourite posts from April’s A to Z challenge.
It was great to put together the videos for this post because it showed how much Mia already knows, how many times she’s already overcame her fear. Because that’s still her first reaction when we meet something new: how will it hurt her. (And it breaks my heart every time that life broke her this much.) But seeing her happily, trustingly, perform all these tasks is a sure sign that we’re on the right track: we’re (both) healing.
Let me share one of my favourite posts from April’s A to Z challenge.
As one of the first courses we did with Mia, agility had a great effect on our relationship. We learned to work together, we challenged ourselves, and we started to believe in ourselves. There were so many breakthroughs there, from Mia’s playing, to our first dog-friend, I’ll always think back to it fondly. Even if we had a very rocky start.
Let me share one of my favourite posts from April’s A to Z challenge.
Irka came unexpectedly when I noticed that while Mia is definitely interested in birds, she’s not attacking them but it seems she’d just like to play with them.
It got me imagining that maybe she had a bird-friend before, someone who came to her at the right moment. And that’s what Irka did.
Life with Mia 