I seldom set up anything for the photos on this blog. Alot of it was: it is happening, quick get the camera/phone. So a lot of the photos were really candid, although some became an exercise in stay, stay, stay… because I am too slow and need her to hold on doing whatever she was doing. :P
Sometimes it works, most times it doesn’t because looking at the human to see if she will get a treat for staying became more important, or she looks away and stops doing whatever cute thing she did.
But I did have to jump some hoops for this shot. And so did Donna.
Note: Thundershirt kindly arranged with their local partner, Hound Habitat, to send to me a sample of the Thundershirt for trial after I wrote to them about Donna’s thunderstorm phobia.
Strange as it may sound, there is a need to introduce anything new to the dog slowly. Our dog is not adventurous. New things are often viewed with an unhealthy dose of suspicion . So here’s Donna inspecting the Thundershirt.
Our flat is tiny and one side of the long living room is lined with floor-to-ceiling glass doors, which gives the room a very open feeling. On good days, it’s light and airy and maybe a tad too bright. On rainy days, our dog gets insecure and prefers the cosier galley kitchen where perhaps she feels more protected from the thunder.
However, the kitchen is usually secured by a child gate and Donna is not allowed in. Given all these considerations, we decided it may be best to crate-train our dog so that when there’s nobody at home and she needs a safe space from the thunderstorm, she may nestle into the safe den that is her crate. At least, that is how I would like her to perceive it as, ideally.
Trip to get the crate and other supplies
Saturday morning it stormed, but Donna weathered it well. In the afternoon, our plans were to visit the shelter for her supply of Heartgaurd and then the pet shop to get her crate. Due to my “awesome” planning, that meant that we would have to travel from somewhat north of the island to the east and then turn to go to the west before we head home. The entire car ride is going to take more than an hour, perhaps two depending on traffic. (Thank you car-driving Mr P!)
Since the car ride was going to be long, I decided to try giving Donna some ginger, because apparently it can help. (Reference links at end of the post.) She seemed quite interested in it, licked it quite a bit but also kept flicking her tongue so that the ginger ended up all over the floor, and then licked at the ginger in the bowl some more. Should have just given her a whole slice rather than cut into little bits! I’m not sure if any of it went into her actually :P
See the mouth? She’s more relaxed on the right than on the left. In fact, I wasn’t so used to her with her mouth clammed shut like it is on the left and as recent as two nights ago, I worried if it’s swollen because she was allergic to something!!! Oops…
It had been quite some time since the last occasion where we took her out in the car so she may have been quite nervous. But her clammed up mouth loosened after a while, so good. (Although there was less drooling when she clammed her mouth shut :P).
Note, as we seldom drive her out, we have not gotten a car travel harness for her. But that is really advisable because the silly dog decided to stand up on a whim, just as Mr P had to brake suddenly and the silly dog was swept off her feet to the bottom of the car seat!!!! Luckily, it was a gentle bump for her and she was not hurt or shaken up. I think I was more shaken up than her. So yes, we are not always good friendbeasts to our dog. D: Hah! Looking into car dog harness in our next purchase… my goodness, the dog shopping list just keeps getting longer!
The return of a gentler dog
So anyway, we made our way to the shelter – Gentle Paws – without any other mishap. We haven’t brought her back for a long time and Mr P was worried that she would revert back to her crazy pup behaviour that she was so used to before we adopted her. Instead, she remained calm and was able to walk with me slowly (without pulling) along the narrow corridor bordered by cages with barking dogs until we reach the shelter entrance. I’m so glad Florence (who introduced Donna to us) could see Donna now in her calm and friendly state. Her old cage is now shared by Buddy and a larger black dog that kept barking non-stop, kind of reminiscent of when Donna was in there with Buddy.
The crate we bought for the dog and crate training
Then it was off to the pet shop for her new crate, or dog cage, as the pet shop owner called it. I wasn’t too sure about it when I saw it because everyone else online seemed to have crates that open at the end of it. The one the shop sold had the door in the middle along its length rather than along the breadth of it. But it came as one-piece of equipment that was collapsible, with a handle. So it looked easy to travel with and also to set up, and we’ve already traveled there, so we bought it.
The crate had a door on top as well. At first I thought it rather useless, but when it came to trying to get Donna to go into the crate initially for treats, it proved extremely useful for dropping the treats in. When I dropped it in from the door at the side, Donna who was next to me got distracted by the treats and would rather sit by the crate and try to get rewarded by offering to shake-a-paw or play-dead. So I had to move the treats away from her to the top instead.
Then because she really didn’t want to step on the floor of the crate, she would try very hard to stretch and crane her neck, while standing outside, to try to reach the treats further in the crate. It was pretty funny to watch. :P
After a while, we were able to progress to a point where I need not drop the treats in from the top anymore, so the door on top stayed closed and she got used to it that way. What I didn’t realise was that meant that when I wanted to take the pictures above, with the door on top opened, she would refuse to go in when I ask her to! Once I closed it, she got in readily but got out again when I lifted up the door. We had to practice a few times before I could take the picture. :P
Perhaps because of her “give me food I beg you” face, all the pictures of her in the crate looked miserable. D: So here’s a video.
I neglected to tell her to stay, so she went back in after she had enough of sitting I guess. :P
And then yesterday morning, as I was just getting her breakfast ready and not paying much attention to her, she disappeared quietly. Coming out of the kitchen I found her in her crate! Obviously waiting for breakfast to be served. I was so pleasantly surprised I had to take a picture, no matter how ugly a crate looks :P and anyway, I zhng*-ed (*singlish; to modify/beautify/upgrade) it. Hah!!
I’m going to have breakfast in crate, thank you.
The behaviour is transferable!
Previously, she had learnt to go to her bed when I was busy sweeping the floor. Since one of her beds is now in her crate, she has managed to transfer that learning to mean that she should go to her crate when I sweep the floor without me asking her to do that. :D She is one smart girl!
Note, while she would happily go into the crate for food or to keep out of the way, I have not caught her going in there to sleep or do anything else besides sniffing for food. But that’s OK, my main aim was to just ensure there will be a safe den available for her to use should she feel a need to, rather than for the crate to become her bed or a temporary enclosure. Although, we should probably slowly get her used to being inside while the door is closed, just in case she ever needs to be crated for medical reasons.
My closest (canine) friend is Donna. I have not sent her to the Basic Obedience Course for companion dogs and their humans.
Checking out a new Basic Obedience Course
Quite some time back, we were invited to participate in a Basic Obedience Course (henceforth BOC, because I am too lazy to keep typing that! :D) which would cost us a few hundred dollars.
We’ve had Donna for about 7 months now and although she’s 4 years old, hardly a puppy, we did discuss between ourselves whether we should go to a BOC. There’s lots of good reasons why anyone in our shoes should go to one.
we are first time dog adopters, and therefore dog dummies who haven’t the faintest clue
we are first time dog owners, and therefore dog idiots who haven’t the faintest clue
we are first time dog humans, and therefore dog morons who haven’t the faintest clue
we really didn’t have anyone in our immediate social circle who could give us the advice or help that we need when it comes to helping our dog adapt to her new home and to us
the Project Adore guidelines in our country require mongrel adopters to complete the Basic Obedience Course (BOC)
a dog can only be tested and given the Good Canine Citizen certificate after attending the BOC
and I guess, it will pave the path to other courses like agility, etc
Perhaps you are wondering why we have not even completed a Basic Obedience Course at this stage. The reasons are simple:
We haven’t a clue how to go about selecting a good trainer or a basic obedience course
We haven’t a clue which trainer or basic obedience course is held by a certified trainer and government-accredited
We haven’t a clue if all BOC tests and gives out a Good Canine Citizen certification at the end of the course, or we should really just go to the SKC (Singapore Kennel Club)
It seems a little silly to shell out hundreds of dollars to enrol in a course that teaches our dog to sit, stay, come and walk by my side when we already practise that with our dog daily.
We are awesome at procrastinating! Sorry to disappoint you :P
So back to that specific BOC course we were invited to. It was rescheduled because of the haze, but there was a preliminary discussion held in Whatsapp between the trainer and the potential attendees, who listed the reasons why they were considering getting educated on dog obedience training – jumping on people, dog-dog aggression, destruction of furniture, running out of the bathroom all wet after taking a shower, pulling on walks, barking non-stop at humans at the door, etc. You get the drift.
Why we decided this Basic Obedience Course is not the right fit for us
We decided this particular dog training course was just not for us. Aside from the fact that Donna has none of these problems (although she does like to poison herself on occasion 1 and 2 when she was not supervised – -! ), the deal breakers were: –
there would be at least 2-3 dog-dog aggressive dogs obviously with handlers who need help handling them and we were not comfortable with the idea of bringing our some times fearful dog into that sort of situation.
and it appeared the trainer intended to manage this situation by putting all the dogs in choke collars. Not ideal for us.
Dogs tilt their head when they are puzzled :D
Speaking for ourselves, Donna has been doing fine on the martingale collar, which from what I read was designed for dogs like her with their necks larger than their heads. Should we put an obviously obedient dog in a choke collar, just so that we can bring her into a situation where she can proceed to pull and choke herself should she get too excited or fearful in reaction to the many dogs attending the training? There must be other courses out there better suited to what we would like to do with our dog. So we opted out of that course.
Donna in her martingale collar, staying on the park stool patiently while I take her picture.
But for the other humans in the chat group at least, they really thought they needed help. Some of them have been to other trainers and it didn’t work out. This trainer did come highly recommended by the source that invited us in the first place, so I would understand if they continued with the training despite any doubt that they may have.
Is it possible to positively train a dog-aggressive dog to behave calmly?
And honestly speaking, how do first time dog adopters like us even know how to positively reinforce a dog-aggressive dog to not be aggressive when it’s already busy lunging at and making “tiger-faces” at the other dog? We don’t know! We are NOT trainers. If I have a dog-aggressive dog, and I haven’t yet found a trainer that I am comfortable with to help me, what can I do?
Then I remembered this video I watched quite some time back from Kikopop, where she talked about counter-conditioning her dog to stop reacting to humans and dogs when they were out walking. And what she did was to treat her dog Splash every time she sees a human/dog approaching and passing by them. After a while Splash took the appearance of human/dog as a predictor of treats and started to look at Kikopup for a treat instead of reacting to the other human/dog. (This video has more detail than my brief summary here. It really helped me to understand the importance of timing and the way the treat is delivered when it comes to counter conditioning a dog because of the detail she went into. )
Disrupt the bad behaviour you want the dog to stop even before it starts
Quoting from Linda’s recent post – “Dogs do not know what they should be doing unless we teach them. Teach your dog to sit for greeting and there will be no jumping on people. Teach your dog loose-leash walking and there will be no pulling on the leash.”
So rather than letting the dog go into its typical aggressive behaviour, the key seemed to be to start training it to understand that walking calmly by the human’s side is the behaviour expected of it. Once the dog is good at walking by the human’s side, it may then be exposed in small increments to whatever it gets reactive to on walks. The human needs to manage its reaction by rewarding it when it is calmly walking while the human/dog is going to or is passing by e.g. in the opposite street, before the dog has the opportunity to go into the behaviour it is used to, i.e. lunging at/barking at the other dog.
At least, theoretically that is how I understand it to work. :P Am I right?
Just reading what I type above, I get the feeling that it may be a process that takes a long time, especially if the human is busy at work and only has scant hours to spend with the dog before bedtime. It will take the human patience and consistency to get it to work.
Perhaps that is why some humans find it more efficient to resort to choke chains as the short term solution?
But for us, we do prefer finding ways to teach and encourage the dog to do what the human prefers him to do in a fun manner, as much as we are able to. Even humans will give up doing something after a while if it’s not fun! :P
Friendship – gives us a supportive base to work from. Donna agrees with me :P (Nah, she was just sitting and waiting for her toy to be thrown so she could scramble after it.)
Next, what looks like another good resource to refer to – 7 things that helped my dog aggressive dog – is a forum thread that has people discussing this same topic. My dog is not dog aggressive, so I can’t really say if it works, but the advice is pretty interesting. (If you click and check it out, tell me what you think about it! :P)
Home-schooling while looking out for a good Basic Obedience Course
So like I said, it has been about 7 months and we are still playing around with the idea of attending a Basic Obedience Course sooner or later. We probably are harder to please since we want to find a positive reinforcement trainer that we are comfortable with. (Trainers here don’t really identify their training methods when they advertise Basic Obedience Courses :( )
Still this blog journals our progress with Donna, and largely I do feel that we are not doing too badly. Of course, that may just be my ego talking! :P Heh~ Feel free to take me down a peg or two. Good advice always appreciated!
But Thank You Internet for all the amazing dog trainers and enthusiasts who publish information freely for dog idiots like us to reference! :P Just so we can home-school our dog in the meantime while trainer hunting! :D
P/S: It’s not a bad idea to try to home-school a dog. At the minimal, it is still bonding time with the dog. Do read and discern because not all advice on the Internet is good. And if you find that you are getting nowhere with the dog training, it would still be a good idea to get in touch with a responsible/experienced trainer rather than to do it all by yourself.
Is two weeks enough for a dog to get comfortable with a plastic tray that it will pee on it of its own accord? I decided to test it out overnight Friday some weeks back since the part time domestic help will be here Saturday. If there’s accidents, she’ll be there to help at least.
Saturday came and went. Dog did not eliminate Saturday morning at home. She usually does because that is the one day a week I get to sleep in! (Much needed!!)
That should have been the CLUE, blinking red hot at me that the dog would rather wait to go out!
Did we heed it? Never even considered that!
Saturday night, I wondered if I should remove the tray and continue the test next week. Unwisely I left it. What’s the worse the dog would do? Pee on the floor? That’s easy to clean up.
She peed on her new bed -_________________________- << see my long face.
Yes, yes I know there are worse things a dog can do, but still… :S Don’t you just hate unnecessary chores that you could have avoided by being smarter :(
So there my friend is a lesson learnt. Don’t just think of the worse thing the dog could do, but the ultimate WORST she could do. Because, my human friends, I am not the dog and I cannot predict its thoughts!
So then I learnt to leave the tray there with fresh newspaper and peepad, but also another set of newspaper and peepad on the floor. I starting giving her her mealtime kibble in the toilet to get her comfortable with both the tray and the shower cubicle.
It continued to storm, and so there was an episode in the kitchen because we did not shut the baby gate tightly enough.
Kibble in the toilet continued. And she did get more comfortable. So comfortable that she decided she needed to chew her pressed bone on it, since she is missing the bed she peed on.
It stormed, did she do it on the tray? Nope, she did it on the newspaper on the floor next to the tray. I shifted the newspaper on the tray to the floor to replace the soiled ones, and put fresh newspaper and pee pad on the tray.
It stormed this morning while we were out. Lots of loud thunder.
We came home to find the tray half out of the toilet, newspapers scratched and falling out over the corridor, including some stinky poo.
She did it on the tray :)… Now how do I stop her from scratching the newspaper after she does it??????? :D Bright ideas welcome!
Been some time since the last post on doggy parkour. Here’s Donna perched on a wall. She wants to get down already.
What else has she been up on lately? Artificial tree trunk stone stools, now these are pretty good for canine urban agility challenge.
These come in rows of three to five stools, so she has been slowly hopping from one stool to the next. The most she achieved was three consecutive stools so far :P
It really does test her agility to stand and sit on these stones, given the size of their surfaces and their distance apart. So I don’t really push her to do it when she doesn’t want to.
One day, in the same park, I saw this tiny kitten jumping up and down that tiny ledge along the wall fencing the police station. It’s definitely more agile than Donna! :P
And in the last couple of days, inspired by zeke’s adventures, we went to another nearby fitness corner in an attempt to train Donna to “jump” over these bars. As you can see, she much prefers to put her paws on the bars to help herself over rather than jump over. – –
We went leash-free for a few minutes and she cleared the bar without touching it.
I’m starting to get more comfortable with her being off the leash for few minutes at a time because we have been practising with her to “walk with me” at home and also in the small little secluded park downstairs (usually free of people and dogs). And when she gets into training mode, she can sometimes be quite focused. That is when I am more comfortable letting her off-leash for a few minutes at a time, never more because one never knows when something may suddenly spook her or draw her excitement.
She doesn’t have a strong recall or heel yet, so I’m always paranoid about her running away because she has been spooked or running to scare small children or dogs that happen on us before I can stop her. And when she is restless/distracted, then we just go for a nice, relaxing leashed walk instead.
Note: It is illegal for the dog to be off leash in public areas in our country. I will not be responsible if local readers let your dog(s) off leash at your own risk/discretion. I generally don’t so why am I incriminating myself by blogging about this? :P
It was one day some months before, I told Mr P that we have to get a Kong.
“A what?”
“A Kong.”
“And what is that?”
“It is a rubber food dispensing toy.”
“Then say so.”
That evening, he returned from work and said he spoke with all his friends who had dogs. And nobody, nobody knew what a Kong was.
Wow.
I’ve been reading all those blogs and webpages about how to prevent separation anxiety in dogs, and how to keep dogs busy and mentally active, yada, yada. And basically everybody praised the Kong to the skies when it comes to a good tool to use when dealing with separation anxiety or just for leaving the dog at home alone . It almost seemed to me that every dog should be born with one. :P Yes, a little overly dramatic there.
But anyway, if you are visiting even a dog blog as new and unknown as ours, then you must be very knowledgeable about dogs and stuff people talk online about dogs already. So please be patient while I splatter my blog with some pictures of the regular Kong. :P
Basically, food goes in and comes out through this end:
Yup, Donna knows how to work it. Sniff, sniff and then a huge disgusted snort. Because it’s empty. :P She only bothers with it when there’s food.
The Kong only appears when we are going out of the house. We fill it with her regular canned food and kibble mix and freeze it over night.
You can see the scratches from her teeth. We got the black Extreme Kong for power chewers in the first weeks of Donna joining our little family. But she is less destructive than when she first came, so I do think a regular red one will work fine for her as well.
We started using it as a means to lift her mood when she sees us stepping out of the house. The logic, as I have learnt from others, is thus: If she were to equate us leaving the house with food in the Kong, that would make us leaving the house a good thing, rather than something to be scared or worried about. We mainly wanted to deter and prevent her developing separation anxiety, especially since we do see a future where both of us will be out of the house for long hours at work.
At first, it worked pretty well.
However, after a couple of months we observed that she had started to ignore the frozen Kong. And she only paid attention to it when we came back again and after she has given us her welcome home dance at that. And then pretty soon, we noticed that her tail would be tucked between her legs when she noticed that we were going out without her. (Note: We always try to leave and come back with minimal fuss so that Donna does not get overly excited.)
So nowadays, when we leave the house we serve her food in her food bowl following her mealtime ritual instead. We make her sit on her bed, maybe do some high-fives, shake-a-paw, and then wait so that she anticipates the food. And then we let her go get it just before we step out of the house. Usually she is so busy with her food, she doesn’t even come to the door with her “where are you going without me” stare. Dentastix worked fine for this too as it takes her quite a bit of time to chew through half a stick, just in case I need to return to pick up something I forgot! :P
I did try serving high value food like canned tuna and hard boiled egg in her food bowl before but those food gets her overly-excited and I still am not sure if that is a good state to leave her alone at home in. Although I may have to resort to these again since recently Donna has become less distracted by her food bowl and stops to stare as I depart the house anyway.
Perhaps I just need to rotate and ensure a good variety so that she keeps interested?
Anyway that’s our experience with leaving Donna at home by herself for now. The longest we have left her I think was for 8-9 hours with food, a lot of toys and no mishap. However, there are cases where we have left her for less and she managed to poison herself or she has “considerately” dragged out my running shoes onto the floor, rearranged some furniture.
Besides food, there are other tactics like crate-training, etc that help to keep a dog calm. But this post focuses specifically on food.
The Kong and Kong Genius Leo remain toys I use when I want to distract her, or just get her to spend some effort getting her food and exhaust some of that mental energy, while freeing me up to do other things.
If you have not tried the Kong before, but are keen to do so, there are lots of Kong recipes floating around online. The only thing I thought would be useful to touch on will be on the topic of peanut butter.
I recently tried peanut butter with some kibble in the Kong. All you need to do is spread a thin layer of it on the inside of the Kong to make it sticky then throw in some kibble or treats (whatever rocks your dog’s socks) so that it is slightly more difficult and takes more time for the dog to lick it out again. This is a good way to get the dog to learn to use the Kong before you move him on to tougher stuff like frozen Kong ;D That keeps Donna occupied even longer.
Peanut butter seems to be a popular filling for the Kong, but our supermarket shelves are laden with all sorts of peanut butter brands with added sugar and salt. Since Donna is overweight, I am not eager to use peanut butter on her either. But I did happen on a forum of *ahem* body builders (I am not a body builder :P) who recommended Adam’s Peanut Butter (Unsalted) because it does not contain added salt or sugar.
Skippy on the left; Adam’s on the right – check out the ingredients list.
I do like peanut butter so I bought these for myself and sometimes I share it with the dog muahahahahahaha!
If you are in Singapore, Adam’s Peanut Butter is very rare and are sold out really fast (omg those kiasu* body builders!!) but you can find it in selected NTUC supermarket(s). I only manage to get this jar after months of skulking around the peanut butter shelf myself. LOL.
So there’s hard boiled egg in the dish. And I’m ‘waiting’, see I am ‘waiting’.
What’s going to make this waiting go faster? Hmm….
… …
There I’m desperate! D: Are you happy now? Are you?
I could never see a point for the ‘wait’ command. ‘Stay’ works well enough for us and we use it when we want her to wait or to keep to one spot. And to be frank, I couldn’t for the life of me understand how people got their dog to wait anyway when there is food right in front of their nose.
But then along the way, I sort of figured out if I get her to ‘sit-stay’ at one end of our tiny galley kitchen, and place the food at the other end of the kitchen, that could help teach her to ‘wait’. So we did that every mealtime, and the word “wait” started to creep in after she got the concept that she was supposed to sit-stay and wait for me to tell her when it is OK to go eat her food. While she waits, I usually step around her to get the fish oil from the cabinet to squirt into the food. Not sure if it starts to make sense for the dog that she is waiting for fish oil to be squirted so that her food gets a fishy taste. Haha. But she waits.
And then it finally dawned on me why people like to make their dog wait for their food! Seeing drool drip from her “puss-in-boots” face is highly amusing. It made me laugh out loud. It did.
Donna has learnt to “parallel park” herself by the side of the wall and stay quietly in her little corner while travelling up and down on the lift. She would still pop her head out to stare at neighbours. Please don’t mind her. She’s just being a dog, a curious one.
Our flat is more than 20 storeys high so taking the lift is an everyday experience for Donna. With approximately 138 households sharing two lifts that take us down and up to and from home and the outside world, there are plenty of opportunities to bump into any one of our neighbours (which logically would number at least 300 people).
We sometimes take the stairs going down, but I don’t think any of the three of us can make it going up. We are obliged to wait for the next lift, should a neighbour be afraid of dogs or be averse to ride in the same lift with a dog for religious reasons. But with at least 300 people sharing two small lifts, which if I may add are particularly prone to breakdowns and lift faults, it sometimes feels like it takes forever just to get on a lift to get home.
So we thought, hey let’s make our scary-looking dog (to some people) look less scary so people are not so averse to sharing the lift with Donna. Obviously, Donna is too heavy for us to carry around like owners with small dogs do when they take the lift. So we practiced with her standing quietly behind us while waiting for the lift, regardless of whether there are people waiting with us for the lift or not. We agree with all the dog-training advice out there that consistency is really the key to making it work.
There were times I tied a piece of frilly fabric around her so she looks more silly than scary. That worked well. I’ve met neighbourhood aunties who went “Oh, is it a girl dog?”
That’s Donna taking up 1/4 of the available floor space in the tiny lift. Doesn’t the frilly thing around her back look silly :P
Lately, I realised that Donna particularly likes to sit right in the middle of the lift. Or when she’s tired, she’ll just spread out like the lift belongs to her grandfather. And she always stares at neighbours with her open mouth grin. I imagine it may be unnerving for some neighbours to have an unfamiliar dog staring unblinkingly at you and grinning at the same time. God knows, sometimes even I think my dog looks like a maniac the way she stares at me (probably thinking about food).
So we started to consistently guide her to “parallel park” by the wall and “stay”. She has started to do that pretty well, though she does need reminders now and then. And we still plant our two legs right in front of her after she has parked herself, not because she is dangerous but just to reassure any neighbours, particularly ladies and families with kids and babies, that they are super safe with our dog.
It’s early days, but most people are kind and do not mind her.
But you know what, if the lift is half-packed with people, sometimes it is just more relaxing to wait for an empty lift. :P
weliveinaflat health articles get the added insight from our vet partner, the lovely Dr Jo from Creature Clinic, so you may be sure what we say is credible. ;)
See the mouth? She’s more relaxed on the right than on the left. In fact, I wasn’t so used to her with her mouth clammed shut like it is on the left and as recent as two nights ago, I worried if it’s swollen because she was allergic to something!!! Oops…
Donna in her martingale collar, staying on the park stool patiently while I take her picture. 
