Operation Anxiety, Day 11 (I think)

I am very pleased to be making the report that I have for this, (I think) Day 11 of Operation Anxiety.

It's like there's a different dog here, sort of like a Dog Pod Person. Pod Maya.

Pod Maya hasn't peed in her crate in about a week. Today she even earned back one of her blankies, and did not tinkle on it.

Pod Maya is much less, um, frantic. She is still a bit jumpy and shy, but if a person walks by us then she looks at them, tries to figure out what they are up to and what their intentions might be, and then goes back to whatever she was smelling. Old Maya would have seen a person, tried to bolt the other way, and then settled for crawling on her belly toward home.

I used to dread our walks. I don't dread them anymore. It's actually the best part of the morning for me now. It's so nice and quiet by the pond, and she's very happy to walk around it for as long as I will let her. There's no scrambling for a hiding place or sitting down and trembling anymore.

The change in this dog is more than I could hope for on Day 11. It's like all the wonderful qualities in her, all the traits you could barely see that made me want to give her a home, all those great things about her are no longer covered up by fear and apprehension and the sweet and gentle little dog I know is out there for everyone to see. I can't wait to get her in another social situation to see what she does. It always sort of made me sad to see her sitting in the corner, because you could tell she just couldn't bring herself to join in even though she very much would like to.

I should also clarify something. I was very excited about the Use Me Up Challenge, and so I may have not said what I meant to say in the right way. I will not be using tin cans as birth control, or putting my birth control in the recycle bin. Oh god no! What I should have said was that I am looking at all the every day stuff that you just sort of Have Around, and thinking of how I can embellish it, re-purpose it, or make it a cute little cover or case out of my fabric scraps. It's pretty cool, having your brain woken up in that way. Especially when you have been Sewing Machine-a-Phobic for a while. I was always afraid to do something for fear of messing it up, or use fabric I really like because what I use it for may turn out to not be The Perfect Thing. Silly, I know. Once I decided to play this little game I just finally woke up and said, "Oh wait, it's just fabric, not the Hope Diamond." So I am already thinking more adventurously and that is fun.