Olive's First Halloween: Progress Report I

My hometown's fair kicks off the funnel-cake season for the area (yes, it's a season). We discovered when I was still young enough that they had a children's pet show that had a best dressed class in each division that qualified for BIS, additionally, the 4H region (could have been district) fair also had a pet show that was not limited to 4H projects (thankfully, since I was horseless member of the year for the county the year before and nothing changed since then sadly, but DH has promised me a pony within the next decade. I'm holding him to that). A couple years before my parents took in a Sheltie when his owner moved out of the area. He became my guinea pig for drafting costumes. He was Harry Potter, a pony, and a sheep before I aged out of the division and he got too old to put up with that nonsense.

Until a sewing table is constructed, I use the dining table for all my sewing needs. Yippee...

Avocado Salmon Buttered Toast Salad

Let's kick things off with a recipe- for most cases I will post the link for the recipe for the time being .
This came from: Joy the Baker's Buttered Crouton Salad

DH and I loved this salad. I blame my family’s Norwegian-ness for my love of smoked fish and this salad is perfect. I bet you could use broiled or grilled fish instead but we weren’t allowed to have a grill at the old apartment and I'm holding out until we can have fit a full sized grill soo… smoked it is! I wouldn’t try herring on here though, a little too oily. We used a bag or two of mixed spring greens since I thought they worked well, I suppose you could use regular lettuce (DH wanted butter lettuce, he loves it).

Thoughts:
      -     Watch the toasting, without fail, I burn one side of one batch (or myself)*. Good luck.

Things I changed:

-          Nothing**

I miss the balcony, yes, the railing was wide enough that Olive could slip through if she saw a squirrel, and the neighbors smoked which wafted  over, and I could hear sirens from a busy street and there was terrible traffic outside... but there was a good deal of privacy and a great relatively-quiet walking trail was 30 steps away. Goodness this is longer than a caption should be and I haven't even covered the interior...

* First, I should preface by saying I come from a very accident-prone family. Best way to get DH to cringe is to start trying to figure out "whose turn" it was to go to the ER on my side. Anyway, I have a scar on my  hand thanks to this recipe. Wasn't watching what I was doing and was holding a very hot pan in my non-dominant hand and oops, there's a blister. So pay attention, don't wave hot pans around, and you should be fine.

 

**Not a complete lie but sometimes we buy a longer length of smoked salmon and then have lox and bagels for a week, too. I think that's 10 oz. Pretty sure you're not supposed to have that much fish in a week, but meh. Olive has a fish formula dry food (switching her to a buffalo formula after this bag is finished since we now live near a store that carries higher quality food and her current food changed formulas and I don't like it) and she's fine. Yes, I'm using my dog's nutritional needs as a justification of my own.

Meet Olive

I meant to publish this earlier but we went to the beach and I had homework (I didn't miss that at all this summer, or last semester...) so things got away from me.

Anyway, this is Olive. We adopted her at the end of June and since then she has gotten a number of nicknames: Stinkerface, Stinker, Fluffy One, Fluffy Puppy, etc. Every single one she deserves.

As far as anyone can tell, she's a little over a year old (for listing purposes her birthday will be a year before we took her home). She was picked up as a scruffy, flea-infested stray a little over a month before we got her. The rescue got her from the shelter where she was fostered for about a month while the fleas were killed off and she recovered from her spaying (not only is it state law for rescue dogs to be spayed, she is so far from breed standard that it would be irresponsible to allow her to be bred, even if we had her history.) Once her adult coat comes in, we're going to try to list with AKC's PAL (purebred alternative listing) since she still doesn't look entirely Sheltie, or least a "proper" one. But her coat has come a long way since we adopted her. Our goal next year is to pass the Canine Good Citizen test. CGC's test is a good benchmark of what we need to work on since she was a bit of a pain on a leash (still pulls a little but now doesn't sit down at random points, she needs to walk on a loose leash for the test) and cowered at moving vehicles (a passing bike is a possible movement test).

Provided we can get all that settled, we'll take a stab at a pre-agility class or the herding instinct test (assuming we get her listed with PAL). I'm not sure which I prefer, since they have different relationships between the dog and the handler. While she likes being close and wants to please, I think the independent thinking of herding may be good for her. We'll see how this next year goes.

In the mean time, we'll stick to silly tricks. Keeps everyone happy and keeps her from destroying too many toys- one a week is her limit (yes, really... we blew the toy budget in the first month).