Home Alone!

He made it! Orion stayed home alone for 25 minutes this morning! This is the first time he's ever stayed home alone successfully since we adopted him in March of 2009. He wasn't happy about it, but I haven't found any damages to either the house or him, and he seemed to relax quite soon after we returned home. He's been on Clomicalm for 3 weeks so far, so that may be helping. I left him free reign of the house, and left the TV on. I put him to bed in the living room and gave him a few treats on the way out, then calmly left. I sent my daughter out to the car first, since she's too little for "calm" anything, and I didn't want their energies to feed off one another. We raced to the store and back in 25 minutes flat, from the moment I shut the door to the moment I opened it again. When we returned, I calmly petted him for just a moment, praised him softly, and gave him another treat. I tried to avoid anything that could be perceived as excitement rather than calm praise. The I unloaded the groceries, did a few chores, and generally went about my usual business. By the time I put my daughter down for her nap, he had passed out in his bed next to us, where he remains, sound asleep.

On Thursday I'll be out of the house for several hours, and I'm still not prepared to leave him alone that long. Back to daycare he goes. But this little success today was momentous, and encouraging. My youngest child, in particular, has sacrificed a lot of chances to explore the world while we waited for Orion to trust us to come home. Hopefully those days are behind us. Hopefully, this is the start of more playdates and outings, more spontaneity and less worry. I'm so proud of my big lug for taking this first step today, and I'm glad to finally see that our love and patience is starting to heal the wrongs of his past. Good boy, RiRi, good boy!

FURminator Feedback

Well, we did it. We broke down and bought a FURminator - from a site we saw advertised on the blog after I posted my W.T.FURminator? article last summer. Instead of $60, we spent about $13. It took a couple of weeks to get here, but I can be patient for almost $50 in savings. We've been using it for several months, but this is really the first time I've been able to give it a test on the ol' winter undercoat. Orion's is so dense, he's actually a different color in the summer than the winter. When we adopted him about a year ago, he was almost white. As his winter coat fell out (all over my house, kids, clothes, etc...), we turned white and he turned sort of wheat-colored. Of course, since then his winter undercoat has come back and is now on it's way out again. Orion's an indoor dog. I can't imagine how thick it would be if he was kept outside! In any case, we gave him a good combing a couple of days ago, and I'm happy to report that my $13 was well spent. He loves being FURminated, and it really does get that dense, downy undercoat out. I even have one of those pictures everyone posts of their dog in a pile of fur that the FURminator has dislodged. (Note: Orion is not being throttled in the picture - his collar is high on his neck so my DH can comb his ruff, and Orion is basking in the sunlight. Really. Does it look like a dog that size would just be sitting there if he weren't happy?)
Now, Orion is back in his summer coat of khaki, just in time to hide his passion for mud puddles and dusty dog parks. Sigh. Perhaps my next review will be for dog shampoos!