Manipulation tactics

Shaun and I were talking about manipulation last night.  It’s interesting how we all do it unconsciously and even children learn it very early – like in the first few months of life.  We have three children, three large dogs, two cats, and two diamond doves and all but one regularly manipulate us to get what they want. All but one step up their tactics or try aggression when manipulation doesn’t work.

That makes the one abnormal.  It’s really strange to see such blatant honesty lived out and she really doesn’t realize she’s atypical.  The one is our Great Dane, Nola.  All the other babies, human and fur, have manipulation tactics that range from playing coy, buttering you up, trying to get on your good side, using the sandwich effect*, and all the way up to blatant con-man tricks.  Ernie uses the whore tactic – make you think you’re the most wonderful thing in the world until he’s successfully stolen what’s on your plate and sampled your drink too.  Abbie stares and begs.  Cali pretends she’s dumb (she’s got the dumb act down PERFECT) then when you least expect it, she goes for what she wants.  Spooks has us all convinced that HE’S the master of the house and we should bring him gifts and attention.  Even the birds manipulate you – they repeat your coos and fluff up and act happy.  They know happy people give good things.  However, forget to pay attention or give them a millet spray, your ass is getting pelted with birdseed until you do it.

Nola just really is that happy.  I’ve read that about other Great Dane’s too – that they’re abnormally goofy and happy.  They want their people to be goofy and happy too… apparently so they can pretend to be lapdogs  and get hugs.  Nola LOVES hugs more than anything else.  She’ll come up, stand up on her hind legs so she can wrap her front legs around you and lay her head on your chest.  When she sees me or Shaun be grumpy, she looks so confused.  Like “what the hell?  You must need a hug.”

I’ve met other dogs who were just as happy but they were “touched in the head” as my Granny would say.  They aren’t all that bright and that’s ok too – there are plenty of dog lovers who love those big lugs.  We like dogs who solve problems and think for themselves.  This is a mixed blessing though – we end up with dogs who think up ways to get out of the fenced in yard.

But normally thinking dogs are more serious and sober.  Nola is neither serious nor sober.  Last night, Abbie was laying at my feet while I crocheted.  Actually, she layed UNDER my feet so that the soles of my feet were resting on her back.  Nola wanted me to play and I kept telling her no – the kids were in bed and to go lay down.  She laid down and then army crawled over right next to Abbie and set her head right ON TOP of my feet.  She rolled her eyes  up at me like “haha.”  Then she pounced me and wiggled her big but into my lap and tried to curl up.  Shaun tried to explain relative size to her but she just grinned at him.

* The sandwich effect is a business tactic.  If you have bad news or a message that will be responded to negatively, find two positive messages to sandwich the bad message in.

Big dog

I just put up a new flickr set, showing step by step how to play with a big dog.  Featuring Nola, the giant twit, our youngest puppy.  She’s a Great Dane/German Shepherd mix and is the most wonderful dog.

She’s got a propensity for escape, hence the Orvis collar.  It’s got Shaun’s cell number on it in REALLY BIG NUMBERS so that which ever neighbor finally catches her can call us.  This isn’t hard because Nola loves people.  Her trademark stunt is to run at you full speed so that you shit your pants, then perform a dive-roll over onto your feet with her legs stuck straight up in the air.  She then makes big dog smiles to get you to rub her tummy.

Our neighbors call saying they “found” our dog but never seem to feel put out that they are now restraining a 70 lb dog.  Nola really is that much of a pleasure and she really is that adorable.  People are like “oh, it’s no problem! She’s such a sweet dog!”   The guy who caught her on Saturday said “you can tell she’s a runner with all those muscles.”  Yeah – there’s seriously no fat on that dog unlike our other two barrel butts.  I worry that people think we don’t feed her because she’s so lean, but the vet is happy with her weight and size, so we’re happy too.  If we fed her any more, we’d be going through a 50 lb bag of dog food every week.

Nola is a pound puppy – she was turned in to the shelter because she was too big.   That makes me wonder what people really expected when they adopt a Great Dane mix… she’s even on the small side for a Dane.  Did they not expect a puppy with paws the size of a dinner plate to, I don’t know, grow?

When Abbie was lost for that awful week and we were scouring the shelters every day, I was walking through the large dog room and saw Nola.  She jumped up on the bars, even though she’d been in the pound for a while, and licked me through the chain-link.  How can you resist that?  I just couldn’t leave her there even though it felt like a betrayal to Abbie.  God works wonders though – it was Nola’s scent in the back yard that brought Abbie back.  I looked out the window over the yard and saw them sitting nose to nose across the fence.   Abbie was covered in tar and ticks and was so dehydrated she could hardly move – but she had to know who was in her back yard.  That’s another story for another day, but I’d really like for you to enjoy the pictures above.

A common phrase in our house is “if you weren’t so damn cute…”

Once you go black (cat), you never go back

A picture of my 10 year old boy, Spooks.  He loves my black rock’n'roll fleece blanket – I can’t even use it when he’s claimed it!  After this picture, he lazily opened one eye at me as if to say “are you seriously going to use a flash while I’m sleeping?”

He’s so cute even though he’s a pushy little shit!

Tuesday Goodness

I haven’t done a picture post lately, so here’s the things that are making me happy this Tuesday morning in happy photo form!

I got 5 packs of lace up on our etsy shop last night:

Ernie got hammered:

My Grandmother laughing:

My sister and my baby girl:

Steampunk art (not mine):

Happy Tuesday everyone!

Busy Bird Day

Pete and Cami, my two diamond doves, woke me up this morning chattering like crazy.  Diamond doves are normally very calm, chilled out little birds.  They don’t really play with toys and they don’t really chatter the way finches do.  They just relax.

Diamond doves are TINY.  I have the world’s smallest hands, and one barely fills up my palm.  When my husband has to catch one after it escapes (normally Cami – Pete is a wuss) his two cupped hands give the bird more than enough room to move around.

They were excited this morning.  I went over to open the curtain to the window their cage is in front of, and they started spinning in circles on their perches, cooing at the top of their teeny tiny lungs.  I looked out the window and the full sized mourning dove who lives in the tree out front was sitting there waiting.  Apparently, this is a very special appearance and my two little innocent doves turned into squawking teenagers going nuts over a heart throb.

He stayed for a bit and they talked.  Well, he would coo like a big dove and they would flip shit.  Then the two chipping sparrows came to visit.  They pranced and pecked for a bit before they were joined by a grosbeak, a couple of red finches, and a grackle.  The grackle and the dove are the largest birds the two little ones will tolerate.  They attack the window whenever a robin or cardinal shows up so we see mostly finches and the little sparrows.

Here are some of our regulars.  Shaun gets the good pictures because I’d need a stool to shoot pics out of the window without a screen.

I have a pet, and I got it myself.

I don’t know whose great idea it was to give out “bug aquariums” with kids meals, but now each of my little sociopaths in training have one.  It’s not one of those ecologically friendly toys that look like colorful cricket cages that come with tongs and a tiny vaccuum powered thingy.   It’s a fully plastic “garden” with a clear dome that covers the little flat bottom.  It clicks closed like a makeup compact.

Not only does it look like the only bug it is capable of catching is the dead bug, it looks like any bug that did get caught would soon end up dead from suffocation.  It’s one of those toys you give your kids expecting them to catch a rock or at least promptly lose.  You never expect them to follow the directions and actually catch a live insect.

It’s only slightly less creepy than this.

My daughter, Alyssa, is particularly bad with pets.  I don’t know if it’s because she’s a tomboy or if she’s just that self-centered but she considers pets to be toys that don’t need foolish stuff like batteries.  She doesn’t realize they are ALIVE.  Our family is full of pets so we’ve been trying to teach her some compassion to the four-leggers and non-mamallian animals that live with us.

First, there was a fish named George.  George’s original name (from Alyssa) was Fish Piss.  After I got over that little bit of brain shock, we decided to name him after Curious George.   He had to move out of her room when she poured so much food in his bowl that the poor little guy couldn’t swim once the freeze-dried flakes puffed up.  The second time he had to move out (after much begging and pleading) was when she used the water from his bowl to supply her tea party. Repeat this scenario a couple more times before George bailed ship on his fishbowl and his corpse has never been located.

Teaching her compassion finally got laid by the roadside and now we’re just preaching “leave the animals alone.  Don’t interfere in their ecological setting.”  People ask the kids all the time “do you have pets?”  I don’t know why people talk to my kids, and I also don’t know why “do you have pets?” is such a common question.  It just is.

Ethan will start to talk about the cats and dogs.  Alyssa will yell over him “Mommy said I can’t have a pet because I’m mean to them.  She says maybe when I’m 6 we can try again.”  She’s really upset that I won’t provide her with an endless supply of living entertainment.

Back to the bug catcher.  I allowed her to keep it really because I was sick and Shaun took the kids out to eat and that’s what they came home with.  The next reason was that I didn’t consider the fact she’d catch something.

Cue Alyssa, proudly marching up to me like she’s just beat me at the world’s hardest game and she’s clutching the prize with a death grip.  “What you got?”  I asked.

“A pet.”

“What kind of pet?”

“It’s a fly.  I know you said you wouldn’t get me any more pets, so I went and got my OWN.”

“Is the fly alive?”

“I got my own pet and you have nothing to do with it.”

“Is the fly ALIVE?”  I’m trying to ignore the fact that she’s rubbing my face in the fact that mom’s have nothing to do with the raising of five year olds.

At this point Shaun, who has been examining it with a boy’s curiosity for all things trapped in tiny plastic cases declared that it was alive.

“Honey, do you know that bugs can’t live in there for long, right?”

No answer.

“The fly won’t live for long, baby.  Maybe we should take it outside and let it go.”

At this point, the soon to be insect coffin in clutched to her chest.  “No, he’s going to be my pet.”

She marched past me and set him on her shelf in a place of honor.  Shaun is so helpful at this point.  “If he dies, it’s ok.  We’ll just feed him to Ernie.  Ernie likes dead flies.”  Cue the chorus of EWWWWWs.

I have a feeling that I should be disturbed my daughter has a (possibly) dead fly in a plastic box in her room, but really I just want to teach her about Schrödinger’s cat. That would lead to nasty explanations of quantum mechanics and philosophy. I’m sure that her first words on the topic would be “this cannot be a quantum test because there’s a WINDOW into the box.  You can’t have an illustration of quantum potential when you can tell whether the fly is alive or dead.”

She, of course, would be right and have more ammo to feel superior to my old-school education.  The school year will be quite interesting with Singapore math and dual-immersion language studies.  She may very quickly surpass my skills.  I’ll just have to go old school and hack her computer terminal to play random Schoolhouse Rock videos.

I wonder if finding evidence of things that one can do with a dead fly will persuade her to flush it down the toilet and use the little aquarium the way it should be used – as a mold for the sand box.