Separation Anxiety, Morning Glory, and brownies make life so much better.

Well, it appears that our dog suffers from separation anxiety.  According to the vet, dogs have no sense of time lapsed and when we leave, Arnie can't understand that we won't be gone forever, ultimately, that we will always come back.  Apparently, we have to wean him in into associating us leaving with something positive.  So now the plan is to pretend like we' re leaving: prepare with a coat (on a wintery day like today), keys, shoes etc. and then take it all off and stay for a while.  In steps, Arnie will begin to understand that leaving isn't always a bad thing, and that we will come back.  Geez, it's like having a kid.  We have to trick him into letting us leave, and then reward him for not chewing up our shoes.

Yes, all of the separation anxiety diagnosis comes from 2 days of casualties in our household.  The first being Nick's "Pauls Big Game Room" hat.  Some of you may fondly remember it by the picture of me at a Reds game in Cincinnati.  Arnies blanket was the second to go to shreds, and last night he chewed up Nick's jump drive, one of my pens, and he tore up paper in the garbage.  Then today, the kicker.  We were gone for about 30 minutes; Nick drove me to school because it was raining, and this year, I am a wimp, and I don't ride in the rain.   He came home to my sneakers missing a heel.

I never wanted that heel anyway. 

No really, it's a fashion statement. 

Needless to say, post vet, Nick decided to go all out on chew toys, a new, real, dog bed, and duck jerky chewies.   We still love him, but are utterly surprised by this recent turn of events.  He gets over 4 walks a day for goodness sakes!  Not sure how to exercise him more, so it must be separation anxiety.  We are hoping it's rapidly treatable because we have some trips to take coming up and cannot have our dog eating my families shoes!


In other news, we have MORNING GLORY!

Nick fashioned this amazing situation by pouring plaster into a milk jug, and then sticking a sturdy, non buggy filled branch.  The glories started to quickly wind their way up to the top and suddenly, we have morning glories!  I know how short their season is, enjoy them while you can! 

 And to finish off the week, brownies have been on my mind for a while now, and it came to be necessary that I bake some.  These turned out amazingly.  Chewy, moist, creamy frosting.  SO delicious. This was the recipe I used,  Best Brownies .  Of course, we didn't have any Vanilla extract, so I used some of the pear/ mango syrup I created with my pear tart (a while ago) to add flavor if needed. They were amazing.

I can't keep my eyes open, bed is calling me.

Love, Carleen