10.9 margot asking me to go out back nearly every hour because the tree in the backyard is dropping its leaves .... she's like get up we're missing the leaves!!! earlier she was just sitting in a pile barking at me i was like i do not control When They Fall. something falling on margot's head is one of her highest joys

10.7 margot has a new backyard routine. when i tell her it's time to come in she does a little bad girl circuit where she runs around and pretends she's going to do all the illegal backyard behaviors (jump in the bathtub full of dirt, visit the forbidden corner where creatures dwell, pick up cardboard from the recycling and start tearing it up, etc). she waits for me to come out in the backyard to watch this and go noooo margooottt very gently. she won't do it without an audience. then when she's done she runs inside like i'm chasing her and looks back at me smiling 

10.1 if presented with the choice do you think margot would choose to:

a) become human

b) have me become dog

c) maintain our current arrangement (separated by species)

9.11 if your dog lunges at another dog crossing the street and then goes to where it peed and tries to start licking the pee what does that mean

8.19 so hard for me to not buy the very hungry caterpillar dog toys....embarrassingly hard.... there will be no $25 insta-destroyed caterpillar in this house..... maybe for margot's birthday ... she loves eric carle

7.26 the last time I ordered balls for Margot online they were way too small, they were the size of golf balls so we couldn’t play fetch with them. Today her new ball came with packaging that said “suitable for average sized horses”

5.18 it's crazy how many dogs appear in the neighborhood when the weather is nice. it feels like, conservatively, double the amount of dogs that were out in winter. margot's reactivity is more manageable than it once was but it still flairs in a way that scares me. the other day i could tell she was nervous from noise on the road, but she was fine, but then two dogs across the street started barking at her and she lunged from across the way (unusual for her). i can see when she's stressed and she's much better at recovering from stress (teaching her to do a stress shake on command has been sooooo awesome), but i need to get better at working with her energy when it's stressy rather than relying on being able to get out of the situation. something good is that she has a reaction and then immediately looks to me for direction, like she wants help. something bad is that i'm often also freaking out lol. summer reactive dog owning just requires basically a totally different strategy. today i asked a woman if she would let me get ahead of her before she passed with her dog (don't worry she didn't and then also cursed me out). in her cursing she told me to muzzle my dog (i really don't think margot would bite, but she would lunge, which is not cured by muzzling....) but actually i think that's a good idea so at least she looks scary. hide her baby angel face.

5.8 the last two times we've gone away and come back, margot has used the return to launch a random new behavior. last time: not peeing in the backyard unless we play fetch first (girl...). this time: drinking exclusively out of the small cat water bowl, emptying it like 5x a day rather than drinking out of hers.

when we were in the woods and i was sitting on the swing playing fetch with her again and again and again i thought: if i die before margot, she'll have them put "stick thrower" on my grave.

5.1 margot spits out her chewable flea & tick even though i wrap it in cheese. but she will pick it up and eat it if i chant: go margot go! go margot go! 

4.2 waiting with margot at a stop light and some woman in a car rolls down her window and goes: SHE'S BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!

3.27 "margot come here" = she'll look at me but it's very much "we're taking your request under consideration"

"baby come here" = jaunting over excitedly. margot is the "he's got me feeling like my name is baby" tweet. it is embarrassing to give this advice to other people who attempt to call her. oh she'll come if you call her baby. she'll come if you call her sweet pea. call her honey bee. propose marriage to her.

3.14 something horrible occurred with margot yesterday / today. i let her out in the backyard at like 10pm last night and she bolts away from me. i hear scurrying. not good. my landlord parked his stupid gigantic car in the backyard and margot is running around it and trying to get under it so i know a creature is hiding under there. i come outside and i'm trying to call her off but i'm not super worried ... sometimes she chases something in the dark backyard but she never gets it because there are many escape areas for small creatures. okay but under the car is not one of them.

all of the sudden i see a rat and i'm like holy fuck it's big and now i'm really trying to get margot and then all of the sudden it's IN HER MOUTH i want to release her (margot) into the wild. it's in her mouth for all of two seconds, then it's on the ground and not moving, she's not moving, now i'm coming closer but i'm so so so afraid that the rat is going to start running again. i'm afraid of kicking it because once on a very hot summer day i was watching a rat climb a pole ahead of me and didn't see the rat scurrying around near my foot and i kicked it and screamed. anyway. 

rat. margot. me. i'm like omg margot, come here NOW. she has her head down and isn't looking at me. i have nothing to lure her over with and my vibes are angry mom (not helping). the rat is definitely alive, it's moving a little but we're all sort of locked into our places. there's no blood involved in this scene which i'm grateful for. eventually margot comes over to me and i'm like ohmygodmargot this is why we can NEVERDOANYTHING you don't LISTEN and i drag her inside and throw her into the shower because this creature that sleeps in my bed just had a rat in its mouth. i give her a bath and wash her face with a washcloth with antibacterial soap on it and i brush her teeth and think about how she will never feel clean to me. i do this all too roughly which i feel guilty about because margot hates the bath. the whole time i'm talking to her like why would you go after that rat you know you're a creature too this is your fellow animal and you injured it. she is not looking at me.

what are my responsibilities to this rat, that's what i have to wonder next. a few weeks ago margot and i went out back and a mouse was just sitting and not moving in the backyard. margot did not touch it thank god, but i was like. do i have to care for this mouse? i decided no?? but i felt unsure, luckily in the morning it was gone. 

i love animals but i extremely prefer mammals. i honestly don't even fuck with birds so a rat is really pushing it. upon further investigation a rodent is a mammal. i'm sorry i just don't have the rat/mouse loving soft spot in my heart. i think it's good that other people do. i think my rodent negativity has been worse in the past few years, one from kicking the rat and two because i've developed a random huge aversion to beavers because one summer i spent a ton of time watching this wilderness survival show called alone where a guy killed and ate a beaver and then got giardia and then i had a dream where i was swimming in a lake and a huge beaver swam over me and it was big and gross and slick. 

after the bath i looked out into the backyard and it seemed the rat was gone, i was as relieved as i could feel while also feeling really bad. i hoped that it was not suffering a horrible death if it was dying. i was like what am i supposed to do, take it to a vet? wouldn't me tracking it down stress it out? maybe i was supposed to let it die in a box in my bathroom. i guess i should have done that but i cannot express how much i did not want to interact with this rat. 

well, it came back to my backyard to die. i woke up this morning and it was splatted outside my window. the horrors persist. 

what are my responsibilities to this rat (dead). i am responsible for its death due to my responsibility for margot. 10 hail marys but what about the body. can i have my landlord come throw it out? that seems kind of ridiculous, he's not like, my father. the trash people usually come today, maybe they could throw out this rat? that seems unfair, i would be pissed if my job of take-trash-to-curb had become dead rat disposal. where is the rest of the ridgewood backyard ecosystem?? i've seen cats and raccoons climb the fence. i heard a crow this morning. i give the rat until 10am to be eaten by something but there are no takers. 

i put a bag in a bag in a bag and walk into the backyard. i approach the rat. i'm trying to identify what is making me feel so squeamish - spiritually i feel guilty. germalogically this is definitely something to be grossed out about but i have gloves on and looking at the rat from inside my apartment is just a different sort of torture. there's no blood or anything and i just need this to be over. i pick up the rat with a shovel and the whole time i'm like thisisthemosthorriblethinganyonehaseverhadtodo. the tail is long and ugly. i have to flip it over to get it on the shovel and in the process i see its teeth which are long and yellow and sticking out of its mouth. rat in bag. okay now i just have to pick up the bag. JUST DO IT. i'm thinking about people who work in funeral homes and have to interact with cold dead bodies regularly. in the bag i can see just a little of its fur and i'm sorry that i didn't go Compassionate Buddha on this rat and let it die in my apartment but honestly i don't know if i would have had the fortitude to do all that. 

i've only had one situation similar to this, it was when margot was just a puppy, she picked up a decaying cat in the woods and ran around with it for a second. it was horrible and i felt weird at her for a few days. i don't know if it's the germs or if it shatters my illusion of margot as some sort of more advanced animal that has a sense of life around her and has no canine blood lust. I DON'T KNOW. i hope that this event was due to the fullness of the moon hashtag eclipse. RIP rat 20xx - 2025 :( sorry you died :( i'm not kidding

2.18 took margot to a new vet this morning (just for her shots and stuff) and it went really well. i'm soooo relieved. our old vet was nice but not great, this guy i really liked. they took her in the back to examine her which is always sort of mysterious and i gave a bunch of warnings and he came back and said she didn't growl, was compliant and tolerant, did really well. i was very surprised. he did this whole rundown about her coat/body/teeth and kept saying she looked "phenomenal." before he left he was like: usually i'm really nitpicky. but i'm having trouble finding anything for you guys, you're doing great. feels sooo good. yay! 

2.12 I am extremely grateful for the amount of snow we’ve gotten this year hashtag blessed. It is so fun to play with Margot in the snow. Truly hits every time.

2.3 guys margot is fine and it was crazy of you to freak out like that....... (jk). my grandmother sent margot a new toy that we both really like. it's a blue squid with six crinkly tentacles. last week i had a vision of putting it on her head like a hat and today she finally let me do it. i'm glad we're in the era of the blue squid because before her favorite toy was a yellow square. i liked it because it was crinkly but it was less cute than the squid.... like go get your square....... .

1.26 a dog is kind of like a sister you choose

1.20 last night margot and i played in the snow before bed (it was still falling). this morning she woke up at around 7 and hopped out of bed. rare behavior--usually i wake up first, give her kisses, go make coffee, and she gets up a while later.  i'm assuming she went to look out the window this morning, because she quickly came back into my room and woke me up. she basically never does this. i was annoyed so i said go back to bed!!!! and slept until 9 (rare). we played in the morning and then on our walk in the afternoon she dragged me to the park even though recently she's been anxious about a road on our way there so she hasn't wanted to go. last week i tried to get her to go to the park and i lured her with treats about halfway down the road until it seemed like it was stressing her too much. hard to describe how much of a departure this was from her regular behavior, she usually doesn't drag me anywhere. is this normal dog cognition? usually she feels park-neutral, but during the snow she feels park-positive? anyway we went, people were sledding, she dug through piles of snow and then shoved her face in them and of course i threw lots of snow on my beloved snow queen. 

1.6 during our first snow a few weeks ago i was letting margot run in the backyard unsupervised and i saw her through the window running around with the lid of one of the trash cans. i was like wtf she knows not to play with those?? then i remembered last year i dumped the snow that collected on them onto her head. she loves this. in montana she loved to shake fir trees so all the snow would fall on her. then i went outside and she jumped into a sit by the trash cans so i could dump snow on her head. anyway we're both very happy with the amount of snow we've gotten so far this year. she gets sooo excited when she sees it in the window. now i have to go put snow on her head.

11.25 sometimes margot gets scared and freezes on our walks. i was really mean and impatient with her this morning and i feel really bad. being mean to margot is like the worst feeling, it makes me feel like an angry dad, it's never warranted, she's so sensitive to it, she stops looking at me.... it does nothing material to improve her behavior, it only hurts our relationship. ugh. it feels so bad!

11.22 i love sharing a banana with margot. how does she have such defined banana preferences? they exactly mirror mine. we prefer an underripe banana. earlier this week i had some sweet mushy bananas and she had no interest. today i peeled a banana and i was like wow this is such a good banana, and then a few seconds later she gently boops my butt in my chair to give her some. 

11.19 an old woman stopped margot and i on our walk to tell me that she thought margot took treats from me so gently. she does! even when i'm trying to give her something hard to take like a bunch of shreds of chicken, she is really aware that i don't want to feel her teeth on me ever. no formal lesson required, sometimes margot used to take from me too roughly but now she is very gentle. margot is so aware of things i don't like, which is why i feel like she's not a very barky dog and mostly communicates with me through sighs. she is the queen of the exasperated huff.

anyway this woman was talking to me about how she had dogs all her life and now she can't have one anymore because she's too old. this is helpful perspective, it is not something to be taken for granted that i'm well enough in body & mind to care for my dear mutt. i will probably have animals all my life because i love them so much, but dog-owning years are limited. it's sweet!

11.9 Walking Margot this morning and she was offering me a ton of engagement, I was like go smell the grass but she really wanted to talk and hangout. I wasn’t sure what to do but then I thought of how my parents keep talking about bringing her to an outdoor brewery, a situation I do not think she could handle. Leaving the question of other dog bump-ins aside, it’s a great goal maybe actually. I would love if Margot was the type of dog that could sit happily beside me and be chill, and she would also love that because it would expand her little world.

I’ve had phases of focus on getting Margot comfortable with sitting and calmly observing her environment / paying attention to me. I used to practice feeding her one of her meals on a towel in the backyard. Today I had her do a down on the sidewalk, which she held for about five minutes. A few issues with our communication:

Down is obviously the cue to get her in position, and I’ve tried to use “relax” as the cue that we’re going to stay in the position for a while. It’s hard to figure out how to effectively space out the rewarding. Over time she’ll give small signals she’s chilling out - shifting onto one of her hips, looking away from me calmly (instead of staring straight at me waiting for a treat) and then looking at me. Her best moment was about 4 minutes in, she shifted her hips to essentially prop herself up on my leg. This is huge, especially because we were near a noisy road.

Sometimes she gets frustrated in the space between being rewarded, and I want to keep the experience as emotionally level as possible. I also can’t tell if she’s genuinely confused or trying to trick me. About three times when I wasn’t rewarding her, she got up into a close sit (this is sort of her default position when she's waiting for a command), and then I directed her back into a down and then rewarded her. Concerned about her essentially purposefully changing positions as a way to get rewarded for, like, resetting the down. Also towards the end of our five minutes she started fidgeting, and then eventually she started whipping out other tricks until she got to my favorite, which I basically always reward her for, play dead. It was cute to see it on the sidewalk but then I ended it lol. Also giving her the treat very close to the ground was super helpful in this set up, she basically needs to not have an excuse to get up in any capacity.

I do wonder if a noticeably calmer dog, on command, is possible for Margot (and me). Today we did this before playing fetch, so tomorrow I'll try the down after exercise, and maybe we try to work up to 10 minutes in the next week or so. This sort of work on focus tends to exhaust her as much as physical exercise. She's snoring now.

9.25 it is my dog, margot’s, fourth birthday. this is according to her adoption paperwork, and i assume her birthday is just a rough guess. margot only had 8 weeks of her life before i came into it. all i know from the before times is that she was born on a native american reservation in rural north dakota.

my ex caught word of a litter of black lab puppies at a shelter 12 hours from where we lived at the time. he had a black lab growing up. we looked at the puppies and most of them were reserved, but a few remained, so we made an appointment to see margot, who at the time was named gravy (it was near thanksgiving). we didn’t know if she’d be a boy or a girl. we woke up at 2am to get to the shelter around 2pm. as we crossed over from montana to north dakota, we started tossing out names. i don’t remember the boy name and i really didn’t want a boy. if she was a girl, jack wanted margaret. i thought it would be weird to name a puppy margaret because that was my coworker’s name. so i said she could be margaret but mostly margot.

we got to the shelter and discovered we had reserved the only remaining girl puppy. thank god. they put us in a room and delivered margot. she dove into my crotch.

what were we supposed to be assessing her for? what could she have done in our ten minute meeting that would have had us drive back, puppyless? she played with the pink elephant toy we brought her. jack and i looked at each other. the shelter people snapped a picture of us and out we went, not even a leash or collar was required (of course we had one in the car), and i thought wow it really is so crazy here in north dakota.

margot slept on my lap the whole drive back, heavy and limp, never stirring or making a sound. as if he was cursing us, jack said: ashley, maybe she’s perfect.

i felt awkward around her for the first few months. it was strange to use her name, which she obviously had no attachment to. when we plopped her down in our backyard, i remember jack and i saying: how do we tell her to pee? go potty? go potty, margot, we said to her a thousand times as she walked around the backyard. jack, taking her from her crate for the mid-night bathroom: go potty, i could hear from our window, gopottygopottygopotty, and then a big celebration would ensue before the door swung back open.

in every picture of her from the first few months, she’s on a leash. she’s on a leash tethered to my desk at home. she’s on a leash in the car picking up jack from work. she’s on a leash laying in bed. it seemed insane to me when jack suggested she might walk off leash with us at our nearby park. yes we fed and sheltered her, but she didn’t seem particularly compelled by either of us as individuals. why would she stay nearby? i agreed to let her off leash after we discovered she loved boiled chicken. she would amble behind whoever was holding the chicken. i was nervous the entire time and i still am.

she would go to bed around 7 every night when she was a baby. she cried in her crate. the internet says to use sound. we tried to play white noise but it didn’t work. edm worked. at night, margot went to her edm lounge. often around 10 or 11, we’d start to miss her. we would wake her up and bring her to sit in bed with us (we always thought this must be so bad, certainly inadvisable, but we loved to do it and she usually went back to bed peacefully). she was always so docile. sleepy puppy time was the one time i never felt compelled to clip her leash on. she would roll on the comforter and show us her soft pink belly and we would blow raspberries into it and give it kisses. worship the pink belly, pay respects to the pink belly, how i love your little soft pink belly that smells like baby, you are the sleepiest puppy, puppy of the world, margotmargotmargot.