Day 25 (10/05/17): growing, food, new guests

For the past few days, I have been thinking that Terra is getting slightly bigger every time I wake up or get back home. She's been more sleepy than usual, which make sense for a growth spurt.

I put a full daily portion of chicken liver and pork kidney into a food processor until it turned into goop, then mixed half into each of her ground meat meals. She didn't want to eat it for breakfast, so I tried giving her the same thing for lunch. This time she ate half, but reluctantly. I had made myself a BLT for breakfast and mixed a little fried bacon fat (YUM) into the rest of her breakfast, and then she finally finished it. For dinner I went ahead and mixed in a small spoonful of bacon grease and she ate without hesitation. I'll pick up some tripe as soon as I can and try that as a topper instead, since it will be healthier than bacon fat. She also had duck wings for her RMBs and she ate those eagerly as usual.

The rude-greeting dog with separation anxiety came back for another four hour stay. Terra tucked her tail and moved away as he did his charge up, but as soon as he was done she then relaxed and they ignored each other for the rest of his stay.

She was deep asleep on the kitchen floor after he left. I needed a nap, too, so I let her stay there. I had a fright when I woke up and forgot that she was in the kitchen, and peeked in her crate.

I had a client couple come over in the evening for her socialization. She had met the wife before but not the husband. She immediately went up to the wife and leaned against her and licked her face. She approached the husband as well, but slowly, and then moved away to get petting from the wife instead. She slowly warmed up to him but kept going back to me or the wife. We stood up and let the husband stay on the floor, and that helped. After a few minutes I handed him treats to give her. Later she was willing to play tug with him, though she'd prance away with her toy after every time she won. (I would get the toy and hand it back to him for another round.) She gave him kisses and tail wags here and there, and let him pet her neck and back, but it wasn't until the very end that she felt comfortable standing sideways right in front of him. She never leaned against him or lied down in his lap like she does with nearly all the women she meets. He had awesome dog skills, so I was a little disappointed that she didn't feel fully comfortable with him.

Since I only moved to this area five months ago and haven't met a lot of people yet, I've already exhausted my small pool of male clients. Not sure how to find more local men who are dog savvy...