Finlay update

[juliet]

Finlay-the-dog appears to be settling in reasonably well (he is currently snoozing over the other side of the room). He is still obsessively following us around the house, but I've left him alone a couple of times for an hour or so with no obvious ill effects, and marnameow successfully dog-sat last night while Pete and I were both out. (Apparently he whined at the door for a while after I left, and experimented with Getting On The Beanbag to see what Marna would do, but settled down after that.)

I'm a bit concerned about the constant up/down of the stairs as he follows me -- just from looking at his gait it's clear that he's a hip dysplasia risk. For now I'm shutting the door upstairs if I'll only be downstairs for a moment, and I'll talk to the vet on Monday.

He's pretty bright, already had the hang of house-training, and now comes when called reliably, mostly knows 'leave' in various contexts, also 'back', sits if you insist (or faster if he's already clocked the bag of treats...), and we're working on 'down'. (Next: stay, which is going to be tougher because of the clinginess, but very useful.) The coming-when-called, & his clinginess, meant that I decided yesterday to experiment with letting him off the lead in the park, and it went v well indeed. He is now enjoying his walks significantly more, which is nice.

Ball-chasing is not really in his repertoire, although he fetched his rope-toy a whole twice this morning before getting the 'bored now' look. Anatolian Shepherds (assuming that's what he mostly is) tend to be fairly serious dogs & not necessarily much on the retrieving line, so this may be personality rather than stressed-ness.

His major skill is however "lying down and snoozing", which is nice, as "sitting down and typing" is what I spend most of the day doing. Canine snoring is surprisingly companionable!

I have been reading a lot about dog behaviour, dog psychology, and how to create a pack structure whereby you, and not the dog, are alpha. He's a big dog and I really don't want to end up with power struggles!

ION, last week I went to see the Orbital band (seriously awesome! Here is doop being glowy and me being less glowy.), & Aphex at Matter (bit rubbish, although he picked up in the second half of it. Nowhere near on-form, though.).

Yesterday evening Pete & I went to the opera. Specifically, La Grande Macabre at the Coliseum. Fantastic cast, musicians, and staging; shame about the godawful crap that they were saddled with singing. Ligeti, musically, is Not My Thing. The staging was genuinely brilliant, though, and probably worth staying just for that. Also there was a splendid disco background in the penultimate scene which I found entertaining enough that I have no idea what the people who were supposed to be in the foreground were doing at the time (on reading the Times review (not of the ENO version, but the same staging etc), I think they were getting Death drunk). I was also somewhat disenchanted with the casual misogyny, although P didn't see it as being as bad as I did.

(Reading the Times review, I see that the ENO changed the androgynous lovers from Clitoria and Spermando to Amanda and Amando. How ridiculous.)

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[uon.livejournal.com]

I blame The Klaxons.