Silas' new skills

 The first week of classes is done.  The first week of remote classes isn't nearly as fun as the first week of face-to-face classes.  I miss the interactions with and connections to students. There's no way to make it the same online.  I'm doing my best to replicate it, but while I think the education can be equivalent, I don't think the connections can.

Silas had diarrhea again last week.  That is miserable for everyone with a dog in diapers.  He's been eating only rice and quinoa for a few days, and it's finally cleared up.  I've been brainstorming since it started to try to figure it out.  He eats the exact same food as the other dogs (and I make it, so I know it's fine), he's not on any meds right now, he hasn't been stressed, and he's always with me, so I know he didn't get into anything he wasn't supposed to.  I'm pretty sure I figured it out this morning.  He was sunning himself on the deck, as he does every sunny day, and I happened to notice him grabbing and trying to eat morning glory leaf.  He usually spends an hour on the deck, and I'm not out there the whole time he is, so I think he ate a few morning glory leaves and that's the cause of his diarrhea.  We're pulling all of the morning glories off the deck railings, and hopefully we won't have to endure the misery again!

His new hobby is trash tipping.  We have only one uncovered trash bin in the house, and that's in our laundry room.  It typically contains dryer lint and paper towels that we've used to clean up cat pee/vomit/etc.  Now and then, we throw in an empty bag of chips or an empty bag of cat food, and that's what he's there for.  He's so cute and proud of himself that I can't even be mad at the mess.  Last week he proudly came into the family room with the big empty bag of outdoor cat food in his mouth.  He really enjoys shredding paper and cardboard, so he had a blast shredding that big bag into hundreds of tiny pieces.  Yesterday he brought me an empty chip bag.

He also managed to take the lid off of the metal container in which I had stored extra rice and dry beans.  It's not easy for me to get the lid off, so I'm still not sure how he managed it, but he did.  I left him in the family room on an ottoman, chewing one of his toys, and ran upstairs for less than two minutes.  When I came back down, he was in the middle of the family room, with a two-pound bag of brown rice in his mouth.  He had put several holes in the bag, so the rice was all over the family room.  He again, looked quite proud of himself.

He's made really good progress with stairs, too.  We carry him up and down stairs, but he gets very impatient and sometimes goes down by himself.  When he started doing that, we'd always tell him NO firmly, because we didn't want his legs beat up by being dragged down stairs.  As the stubborn boy has continued to try to launch himself down stairs at will, he's gotten much better at it.  He is able to hold up his back legs, so they don't get banged around as he goes.  It's pretty impressive.  He can make it up the one step in our front-entry way, but I don't see how he would ever be able to safely get up stairs on his own.  

Last night was family game night, and for the second week in a row, we worked on playing/figuring out our new game, Asmodee Ghost Stories.  It's a collaborative game, so instead of playing against and trying to beat each other, we work together to beat the game.  It's extremely complicated.  The first time we tried to play, we couldn't begin to figure out the directions, so we ended up watching some YouTube videos that helped a lot.  We are starting to get the hang of it and managed to figure out some effective strategies last night.  I LOVE this kind of game.  While I enjoy playing games with the family, I don't like competing against each other. I wish all games were collaborative. I think it's much better for families and a lot more fun!