Frustrating Day (Saturday)


That's the best way to describe most of my day with Brea today.  This morning, she wouldn't eat.  She would come into the kitchen and race back out again.  Sometimes she would turn around before coming into the room and run upstairs.  I'm trying to get her into the routine of eating when I feed her; I'm not going to leave a dish of food out for her to snack on at her leisure.  I don't want her avoiding me, eating only when I'm not looking or not in the room.  So I removed her food bowl after about thirty minut es.

This evening was almost a repeat of the morning, except that she finally got close enough to the food to smell the meat drippings I had put on it, from the steak I grilled for myself.  That, and I guess she was getting pretty hungry.

During the day I gave her a couple of Kongs filled with treats.  All of my other dogs have loved them and would spend hours working to get the treats out of them.  Sometimes I would tell Molly to wait in the kitchen while I hid several Kongs around the house.  When I said okay she would race around the house, searching for them, and she would take them all to her favorite place at the top of the stairs before settling down to get the treats out.  When she was finished, she would bring me an empty one and stare at me until I refilled them or she got tired of the game (or had her fill of treats).  Brea pushed them around with her nose a little, then ignored them.  She seemed not to know what to do with them.

On the plus side, we did have a pretty good walk this evening.  We walked down the hill to the bottom of Pleasant Road - her choice - and she spent a lot of time sniffing around in the weeds, acting less fearful and more like a normal dog for a change.  Back at the house, though, she ran back up to her corner in the bedroom, the place where she's farthest away from me.  Occasionally, she'll come around to where I'm sitting at the computer and sniff at my hands or my feet, but if I look at her she takes off.  I don't want her to be afraid of me.

The other frustration of the day was not related to Brea, but I'm going to mention it anyway.  I went downtown to the auction at Pro Art on Summers Street.  There wasn't as much stuff there as I'd expected - it already looked kind of picked over - and I saw only one drawing/drafting table, which was a flimsy looking thing.  There were lots of William Goebel prints, which I don't care for, but none of the painting of the whale eating the P.A. Denny. Wish I could remember who painted it. When I tried to register for the auction, they told me that they only accepted checks, no plastic.  Of course, I didn't have a checkbook with me.  Who carries checks around anymore?

Anyway, it was sad to see the end of a business that had been there for twenty-five years.  The people there were always friendly and helpful.