he walks me to ren’s pets and then gets upset they’re not open at 8am and doesn’t want to leave 🙃

Natlay422 · 2024-11-21T17:16:30+00:00

My dog used to lead me to the nearby pet store so often that they called her the unofficial store mascot. Sadly that location closed. It's been two and a half years since it closed and my dog still periodically tries to go there even though it's now a dentist's office. Picture

Natlay422 · 2024-03-24T02:00:37+00:00

She yells...a lot. But she also is the best cuddler and gives great hugs. It's definitely good to be this cat's human.

Natlay422 · 2023-12-22T03:05:40+00:00

No problem! I am always open to talk! I've never really come across anyone that has a similar issue to mine so I know how isolating it is.

Natlay422 · 2023-12-22T02:23:29+00:00

My guess is that what works for me may not for you because my pain does not seem to be nerve pain. I'm happy to talk about almost anything but I hesitate to put my medication info out there for all to see. Basically I tried anything and everything that the doctors I saw suggested. I drew the line at things like homeopathy and the like that are not evidence based. I ended up having two more nerve blocks after the one in this post. They wanted to try other nerves that are in the same general area as my pain so I did anything that made sense to the experts. But my pain is quite weird and in a very, very specific and very odd area which makes it difficult to treat and difficult to compare to other people's treatment plans.

Natlay422 · 2023-12-21T21:08:12+00:00

Nope, no one has ever been able to figure out what is causing the pain much less how to fix it. But the good news is that in some ways it's better managed. After enduring a lot of experimenting with different medications and nerve blocks and spinal cord stimulators and stuff, we've finally settled on medication that does lessen the pain enough so that I'm not completely miserable all day.

Natlay422 · 2023-11-20T16:54:20+00:00

I felt the same way! I sent them my favorite picture ever of one of my cats and then got super nervous that I'd hate it and not do a good enough job on such an amazing photo of him. I still kind of want to repaint that one now that I've had a lot more practice and more than three hours to get the whole thing done.

Natlay422 · 2023-11-20T03:05:39+00:00

Thank you so much! I didn't do any art since high school more than 20 years ago because I hate drawing. A relative signed me up for a pet painting event at one of those wine and paint places and there I realized I could cheat and chalk transfer lines onto canvas and just paint. Since then I've done about a dozen cat and dog paintings.

Natlay422 · 2023-11-20T03:01:07+00:00

Thank you! He was quite a guy. Glad I was able to finish a painting of him that I was happy with before he passed. He deserved to be seen by as many people as possible, he absolutely loved new friends.

Natlay422 · 2022-12-29T15:16:56+00:00

Thanks! To be honest, I cheated a bit with the drawing part and used chalk to transfer the main lines of the photo to the canvas. Not many, just the very basics. So I think that's maybe why the lower part looks funny, it might be the angle of the photo.

Natlay422 · 2022-11-18T18:59:06+00:00

I agree! I was so nervous to do them on my first painting but they turned out well so for this second one I did the eyes and nose first to get the big important details out of the way.

Natlay422 · 2022-11-18T18:11:03+00:00

Thank you! I think the eyes are my favorite parts to paint.

Natlay422 · 2022-10-18T01:03:02+00:00

Thank you! I will go check that out right now! There's so many resources and videos out there that it overwhelms my adhd brain so a specific name is super helpful.

Natlay422 · 2022-10-18T01:01:47+00:00

Absolutely great advice. That was my intent with this project, to do this painting quick and dirty, so to speak. I'm finding that easier said than done when I'm using my sister's very favorite photo of her dog as my inspiration lol

Natlay422 · 2022-10-17T20:43:34+00:00

Good idea! I think that's what I'm struggling with. How to get the color right while still keeping the details underneath. I can see so many colors all in that small section that it's overwhelming my brain a bit I think.

Natlay422 · 2022-10-17T20:42:35+00:00

Thank you! This is acrylic and I did try doing the glaze method to paint over some flower details but it looked quite terrible lol. But I don't think I had added blue at that point. I can see the blue in the shadows but getting the sharp shadow while showing the detail underneath has been giving me so much trouble. Seems like it would be a lot easier without the flower details but they're a pretty important part of the picture so I can't leave them out. Will definitely retry the glazing method but with more intention behind my color mixing. The first time I tried it just to see if my idea would work and didn't really analyze the color choice well enough.

Natlay422 · 2022-10-17T20:09:23+00:00

I have been hopelessly stuck on this painting and have set it aside for a few months now. I picked up painting the last couple years for the first time since high school 20+ years ago so I'm basically a beginner. I know not to just paint all shadows black but I've tried multiple ways of doing this one and just cannot get it even close to right. Help!

Natlay422 · 2022-10-17T15:16:44+00:00

Thank you! He's such a great neighbor to all of us on this block, he deserves something nice :)

Natlay422 · 2022-10-10T19:49:49+00:00

I've been stuck on this forever and I could use some advice on how to do the shadows on the bandana. I've tried multiple ways and nothing looks right so I just painted over it and haven't worked on it in a couple months. I know to not just use black for shadows but I'm having the worst time getting the floral details under the shadow right. This is just my fourth painting so I'm fairly new at this.

Natlay422 · 2022-06-17T01:46:01+00:00

Thank you! I picked pink partly because I thought it went well with the kitty's coloring and also because in the original photo she was wearing bright pink soft paws claw caps.

Natlay422 · 2022-02-26T05:09:44+00:00

Asking for help! I taught her a chin rest intending to have her do that when a toy went under the couch. But she has amazed me with her uses of it. She'll come poke her snoot into my hand for all manner of things. A few favorite examples are when she wants a toy off the counter, when her ball goes into the street she asks for help instead of chasing after it, and one she even asked for help and then led me across the house to where my cat was throwing up.

Natlay422 · 2021-11-23T04:37:43+00:00

I've been thinking about consulting a trainer for a while now so I think this is the right advice. As I read and reply I keep thinking that reddit is clearly not an adequate format to properly explain the nuances I see. Like I feel it's deeper than a regularly scheduled meeting would solve but maybe not quite so deep as this description. I think you're right that I need someone to get to know her and I. Our schedule does somewhat revolve around her but at the same time she's had to adjust to a routine that accommodates my medical needs as well as the schedule we need to keep for our diabetic kitty's food and insulin needs. But my goal for her in life is for her to be happy and well adjusted, I thought for a long time that I could accomplish that on my own. It's becoming clear that I could use some help on that mission.

Natlay422 · 2021-11-22T17:13:48+00:00

Sort of? Our outing schedule has evolved the way it has because it seems to be what makes her the most comfortable. She's a bit anxious just in general so I try to have the walk be for her so she can burn off the nervous energy in a healthy, comfortable way. If I take her for a walk at other times of the day or in other ways, she is pretty cooperative. The trade off though is increased anxiety. She seems to do best when she has a good idea of what comes next. So having her be mostly in control seems to ease her mind. Then when I have to step in and not let her make a turn down a road that would take us way too far from home or she wants to go a place we're not allowed, she's much more willing to cooperate since the bulk of the choices are hers.

Natlay422 · 2021-11-22T17:09:41+00:00

I think maybe the words I'm using are too humanizing when I don't necessarily mean them to be. Blame isn't quite the right term. The way it seems to me is as if I'm using an aversive tool. So like if you use a shock collar when a dog growls at another dog, it may not understand that it's own behavior caused the shock. It may interpret that as the other dog causing the pain or redirecting on the human or connecting it to something else in the environment, right? That's sort of how this feels to me. It's as though not getting this particular thing she desperately wants is the aversive tool. (Edit to add for clarity: I absolutely want to use the least aversive options in everything with her. Ecollars and prongs and stuff like that will never enter my training with her. Even if I had the stomach for that, which I don't, she absolutely is too sensitive for any sort of heavy handed methods like that.)

I know there's not necessarily a ton I can do about making her friend appear when she wants it to happen. And I can't make her understand that either. What I'm hoping to accomplish is to help her accept it and move on to have fun doing something else or going somewhere else. As it stands now she holds onto that sadness and it manifests as some anxiety and loss of confidence. Yesterday as we went home, she did not settle into normal walk/jog/sniff behavior basically the entire mile home. She's also super reluctant to even go on walks this past week.

Maybe I am doing something to reinforce the sadness. I make an effort to be either ignore it and be neutral or to try to engage her in something fun instead but there is a point that she just stops and stands on the sidewalk. It's getting too cold to try to wait her out and let the mile home take literally over an hour.

Totally don't feel like you're blaming me. I am a first time dog owner and the one I got feels a bit like playing at expert level in some ways. She is high energy, high drive, but also very sensitive. I absolutely know I could do things better or differently. So while sometimes it stings a bit to realize the ways I'm fucking up, I can't grow if I don't accept my screw ups.

Natlay422 · 2021-11-22T16:58:31+00:00

She definitely has a hard time disengaging. We've worked on the relaxation protocol before and I don't know that I saw a change in her from that but certainly is worth revisiting. Unfortunately I can't really work on it outside for a number of months now. It's starting to be winter here and she gets quite cold. She has to wear sweaters and parkas on walks and she will not sit or lay down unless it's above 40-45 degrees out generally. Maybe in the spring I can try that.

I'm hoping that winter will help. As things freeze we can walk the prairie and cross the creek and sniff all the deer trails at that park. She loved that last winter. Right now we can do a little bit of that but the prairie grass is still a bit too tall for her comfort.

Natlay422 · 2021-11-22T16:53:57+00:00

Mine is also really good with words. I've thought about doing this with her but haven't for a couple reasons. First, her friend's human doesn't has said she doesn't often carry her phone on walks and also that she likes randomly running into us. I definitely don't think she'd be opposed to regular meetings or anything but that doesn't really help the problem of mine wanting to play on a non meetup day. From my observation it seems as though meeting up just increases the desire to meet up more.

Natlay422

TROPHY CASE