The puppy is growing!

Rewley's now about 24 pounds, which means he's gained 9 pounds since we got him. To give you an idea of how that means his size has changed, take a look at these pictures from 8 weeks and 12 weeks of age.



Yes, that's what 9 pounds on a golden retriever puppy looks like! I'm so glad I'm taking lots of pictures because he's growing up so quickly!

We went to another park in Bloomington, Olcott Park. Here's a video of him trying to catch some falling water after his walk.

Fine French Cuisine chez Simacek

Tonight I had a fantastic French dinner courtesy of Chef Paul. It all started this morning when we went to the farmer's market in downtown Bloomington and bought some oyster mushrooms and some garlic and herb fromage blanc. The guy selling the cheese said he liked to add it to cream sauces for pasta. Then the mushroom guy said he liked to cook the mushrooms in a cream sauce. So, we put two and two together and Paul made a mushroom cream sauce with fettuccine.

What makes this story more interesting is that one, Paul was able to use a "twirl whisk" that my grandmother gave us. She had it just sitting in her basement unused, so we were happy to take it off her hands. In case you haven't seen one, they look like this one sold at Sur La Table:


And second, we recently bought Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", and this is what Paul used to make dinner. He made a béchamel sauce (white sauce), added the oyster mushrooms that had been sauteed in butter, and it made a fantastic sauce to serve over pasta. We love the book because it gives you basic recipes (like béchamel sauce) then tells you what to add to the basic recipe to get different dishes. It sounds so fancy to have a oyster mushroom béchamel pasta dish for dinner, and the mushrooms were kind of expensive, but we figure the whole thing cost $9.00 to make (it was $4.50 for the half pound of mushrooms), and it'll last for another meal for both of us, so it's really quite reasonable per serving.

I'm so blessed to have a husband who can cook such awesome meals, and I can't wait to try the new things he cooks up using the new book!

And of course, not to be outdone, I made a peach cobbler for dessert, though Paul did cut the peaches.

Oh, and that said, let me know if you have any good peach recipes. Peaches were on sale $4 for 5lbs, so we have a lot to work with!

Liver Brownies & Obedience Training

We're trying really hard to get Rewley to go on walks with us. He was great at first, but now since he's developed a fear of trucks and other large vehicles, we have to lure him along with a treat, and the crunchy puppy treats aren't exciting enough to distract him from his fears. So, we found a recipe for "Liver Brownies", which contain liver, corn meal, wheat germ, eggs and a little garlic. They do look like brownies, but thankfully once cooked they smell like popcorn (from the corn meal) and not stinky meat. We tested them out tonight with some obedience commands.

Grad School E-mails

It looks like I've been officially added to the IU Sociology grad student e-mail list, since I've started receiving e-mails from people I don't know with "SOCGRAD" as the TO e-mail address. To some extent, that makes me feel pretty important, but on the other hand, I wish I could start using my IU e-mail rather than g-mail (I probably won't have access to my IU e-mail until I start classes in August). I think a lot of us feel that way about "work" e-mail and "personal" e-mail - keep them separate! I guess I should be happy that my g-mail address is just my name and not something like "HotBabeXOXO".

It will be interesting over the next couple of months before I start my program to see what kinds of things people think are appropriate to send to all of the grad students. So far there's been a YouTube video and a couple of guest lecturer announcements. The Social Sciences tend to attract a colorful crowd, so I expect to get a lot of things in my inbox that I might not find as funny as the sender intended. But that's why there's a delete button!

Now I just need to get back on track reading Sociology related books rather than puppy training books!

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

This morning we rented a boat on Lake Griffy. It's just $6/hour, so we figured that with the dog, an hour would be plenty long enough! We took Rewley for a short walk in the woods first, then we all got on the boat.

Here's Paul using the rowing skills he learned at Oxford (ok, so it's not at all the same kind of rowing, but it involves a boat and water)

From Boat Trip June 9th

Here I am bringing up the rear, or acting as coxswain:


And here's that handsome puppy smile. I'm amazed that we managed to keep him from jumping overboard, considering there were also ducks and geese on the water!


We're going to the vet today for the next round of shots. Training lesson #2 is tonight. Rewley's been doing great except for the "heel" command. I hope she had us learn that in the first lesson because it's really hard and will take all 6 lessons! We've had some setbacks with the neighborhood. With being just off a main road, there's trucks and busses going by, and lately Rewley's been really scared of them and trying to dash away home any time he hears an engine. So, we're using things like cheese to lure him along. Still, we're nowhere near where we want to be, but then again, he's just 11 weeks old.

Rethinking Treat Training

Well, we've been working on our training exercises with Rewley this week. So far he knows "Sit", "come", "watch me", "let's go" and somewhat, "heel". Oh, and of course he knows "dinner time" very well. Now, I had been a big fan of the Monks of New Skete approach of praise-only training. I still think it's a better way to go, but I also realize you probably need to be an experienced dog trainer or have someone instruct you in the techniques. For us, we're not as in-tune to how to get a puppy's attention, and we're working on it. But the treats help.

I can actually relate the treat training to what I learned getting my Psychology degree. Based on the theory of operant conditioning (think Pavlov's dogs), motivation can be thought of as of as being of two kinds: intrinsic and extrinsic. With intrinsic motivation, you want to do something because you enjoy it. Like eating, for a puppy. With extrinsic motivation, you want to do something for another reason, like a prize or reward (positive reinforcement). For a puppy, this could be sitting so as to get a treat. The treat then reinforces the desired behavior (eg, sit), so the puppy will want to do the behavior in the anticipation that he may get a treat. A puppy doesn't find much intrinsic motivation in doing tricks or being obedient, so you need to use some kind of reward. But then shouldn't praise be sufficient? Sure, but for Rewley, we've noticed that he's VERY obedient when he's about to get dinner, and very excited about food, even if he's just eaten.

So the treats win for now, but they won't be used forever.

Griffy Lake & Puppy Kindergarten

Today we checked out the Griffy Lake Nature Preserve, which is about a 5 minute drive away from us. They've got a series of hiking trails around the lake, and you can rent boats or kayaks for $6 per hour. We took Rewley on a woodsy walk there, and he loved it! He didn't pull on his leash too much either, which made the walk a lot more pleasant! We'll definitely be doing more trail walking with the pup in the future.

Tonight we went to puppy kindergarten at Petco. The trainer has 30 years of experience with dog training and has shown dogs competitively. And strangely enough, Rewley was the only student! So we basically will be having private lessons for all 6 weeks. What's even better is that she brought her 12-year old former agility dog along to help with the training. The part we're reluctantly accepting is that it's treat training, but Rewley responded really well to all of it, and so quickly that we're encouraged by it. He's still not quite sure how to take a treat from our hands, sometimes missing it altogether, but he'll pick that part up quickly.

Our trainer confirmed what we'd seen in Rewley - he's very sound sensitive. Trucks and busses seem to startle him the most. We'll have to give him some more "noisy" toys to get him used to loud sounds. Paul recently gave him a guitar concert, and he wasn't sure what to make of it.

From Rewley

We're getting more and more excited about our life with the pup!