A coworker who is really capable and smart has just gotten a puppy... and is a complete disaster as a dog-mom. She's completely freaked out (not sleeping, panic attacks, etc.) why her 8-week old puppy is scared and timid and unsure of herself, and why she knocks over her water bowl, and why she cries when she's left alone, etc.

We are in a "pod" of 3 people. Me and the other woman have had dogs all our life, and know dogs and puppies VERY well.

So when coworker brought her puppy into work, we took over. Played with the puppy until the adorable little fuzzball was so tired she fell asleep on the desk next to the keyboard. Took her out for walks. Talked dog-mom down and helped her understand that she's fucking this up from Day 1.

"The puppy STARTS with believing you are all-powerful and all-knowing. You need to BE THAT for her. Be confident, and authoritative, and let the puppy know you are the boss... but ALSO that the puppy is SAFE with you. If you freak out, if you stress out, the puppy KNOWS, and then realized THEY have to be the boss... and you've lost her. MAN UP and be a GOOD DOG-MOM."

That worked for a day.

Last night her uncle passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. She's a wreck. I do not have high hopes for the dog.

(I have given her the contact info for a very good friend of mine who is an EXCELLENT human-trainer for dogs. She works with the humans, trains them on how to be good dog owners, and makes happy, healthy dogs. Hopefully my coworker will call my friend. But...)

In other news, I am fighting again with InDesign, which keeps losing track of the more than 60 images I have in my file, and I have to relink them every single time I open the file. Grr. The issue is the way shared drives on servers are set up on our corporate network... but it's only Adobe products that can't figure out how to find file paths on the network. Everything else is fine.

Oh. And I bought a new bass guitar:

I was going to get a 5-string, with active electronics, in a more reasonable body design, with a less-silly paint job... but when I went into the shop and tried them out next to each other, I fell in love with this silly thing. And it was $800 cheaper.

I've got some recording to do this week for a couple of musical projects, and am looking forward to the tones I can get from this beast! It's good to be a Dingwall owner again...