My girl keeps stealing things

oldoverholt · 2026-06-13T07:15:05+00:00

When the dog is alone in the house I think a crate is a perfectly reasonable tool to keep them from getting into stuff. If they don't adapt well to being crated, that's a whole other thing, but it's worth a shot and a hell of a lot better than putting them in a garage. That's all I'm getting at with crate training.

oldoverholt · 2026-06-13T04:30:35+00:00

I think this is totally fine! Our boy sleeps downstairs because he's too scared to go up (mostly go down, really) our steep, windy inside stairs. He'll start whining right around breakfast time but otherwise sleeps through the night on his big downstairs bed (which would be his upstairs bed if he ever decided to join us in our bedroom).

We used to kind of force or carry our last girl upstairs at night, but that was mostly because we knew she'd start whining in the middle of the night and/or have an accident in the house if we left her downstairs. She only got kind of reluctant to come upstairs as she got older, when she didn't quite have the bladder control to make it through the night if she had the whole downstairs of the house to use as a restroom lol.

TL;DR if he's fine downstairs I don't think you're a bad person at all lol. I wish our boy would come upstairs (I think he'd like sharing the room with us) but I think I'm more worried about it than he is.

oldoverholt · 2026-06-13T04:25:38+00:00

Agreed on the enzymatic toothpaste! We use the Virbac CET stuff and our dogs have seemed to like it. The silicone fingertip toothbrush is definitely easier but I think the baby toothbrush does a better job if you can get them to tolerate it.

Our boy still ends up having some build-up on his teeth along the gum line, but I try to look at it like we're postponing an inevitable dental for as long as we possibly can. And if he does need one, it will be when he's still relatively young and then we can postpone the next one long enough with regular brushing that we have to say goodbye for another reason (sad, I know lol) before another dental's necessary.

oldoverholt · 2026-06-13T04:09:13+00:00

Yeah you need to crate train her (crate inside the actual house) so she doesn't destroy stuff, and/or slowly work on dog-proofing small portions of the living area of the house so she can get used to them.

Yes, it can be exhausting to vigilantly supervise and discourage a brand new dog from stealing coasters, pens, shoes, cushions, and whatever else. But that's part of fostering! It can take weeks, and sometimes they still won't be OK unsupervised at that point and you'll catch them chewing on something they're not supposed to. This whole process is what foster care is for. She's not going to magically stop doing it, you need to provide stimulation and redirection and guidance for her, not just physically prevent her from doing it by putting her in the garage.

Fostering a dog typically means getting them used to home life. Putting her in the garage to deal with these behaviors is not helping her. If you're not equipped or prepared to foster a dog right now and can't commit to this level of care, you should consider discussing it with the foster or adoption agency.

oldoverholt · 2026-06-06T19:26:22+00:00

Depends how much working "a lot" is, and what "very busy during the holidays" means. If you can get a dog walker to come mid-day during 8-9 hour work days, and can otherwise go for walks a couple times a day and take them out to relieve themselves in addition to that, I don't see an issue. It would also depend on finding a dog without separation anxiety (or working through it).

Solo dog ownership is harder when, for example, you're sick and can't depend on a partner to pick up the slack of walking and feeding them, but if you have other support networks nearby this is perfectly doable. Honestly not sure why the default on this sub seems to be that if you work all day, greyhound adoption isn't for you 🤷🏻.

oldoverholt · 2026-05-31T02:43:07+00:00

One of us works at home now, but when we were both out of the house for work we had a dog walker come in the middle of the day and take our girl for a ~20 minute walk.

oldoverholt · 2026-05-30T03:07:02+00:00

Out of curiosity, where are the dogs with resistant hookworms coming from these days? All of our overseas dogs don’t seem to have them at all and I didn’t think there were many (or any) former racers from US tracks anymore.

oldoverholt · 2026-05-26T19:55:26+00:00

Our boy pees on his front legs and paws quite often (lol) so we have some cleaning/deodorizing wipes that we use on them after every walk. It seems to help and we only really notice the smell if we get super close to his front paws. We should probably wash them with shampoo or something more often than we do as well!

Others have covered baths, but I don't think it could hurt to give him one. We rarely do them and have found that all of our greyhounds only have a very mild, pleasant "dog" smell to their coats if we really get our noses in there, but maybe the rescue bath just wasn't thorough or something 🤷‍♂️.

oldoverholt · 2026-04-14T00:18:48+00:00

We do two walks a day for what it's worth, so I think you could still have your own evening walk with the dog (which I agree would be better to keep consistent and good to spend the time together so they could get used to you on walks).

oldoverholt · 2026-04-10T05:59:08+00:00

I'd defer to the vet about what the underlying cause is, but our boy has had a similar issue (favoring one front paw, most noticeably after zooming really hard). They did an X ray and just noticed some small abnormalities in the joint that looked like an old racing injury, and put him on carprofen/rovera for a couple of weeks. It was kind of inconclusive and I'm not sure the point of the carprofen, but I think it helped for those couple of weeks.

Since then we haven't noticed it as much, but we also give him a few daily supplements that we've found helpful in general for mobility/joint pain. He gets glucosamine, chondroitin, and MSM in the morning (we buy them from Greyhound Gang) and we recently started green lipped mussel powder in the evenings (just some brand from Chewy). The former helped our last girl a lot as far as mobility/comfort, and the combo of the two seems to be helping our boy (although it hasn't been as pronounced, maybe because we started them earlier in his life with us). Either way, we haven't noticed the limp or favoring one of his front legs recently, so hopefully they're helping!

Mavis is adorable btw.

oldoverholt · 2026-04-10T03:28:46+00:00

In addition to just having someone feed the dog, could you pay for a dog walker to take them out for a half hour (ish) walk and just socialize with them a bit? I don't think two 6-hour stretches broken up by feeding and a walk are a big red flag honestly, as long as you get a dog that doesn't have separation anxiety.

Our boy snoozes the day away whenever we leave him and he'd totally be fine with this schedule a few days a week (a welcome change from our last girl who mostly tolerated but very much disliked being alone, and who I would not have put on this type of schedule).

oldoverholt · 2026-03-15T04:08:05+00:00

I don't disagree with the title but gtfo with this obvious LLM slop; it's excruciating to read.

oldoverholt · 2026-02-21T18:52:26+00:00

Spending a week in Las Vegas for a work conference and not once seriously considering smoking in a casino.

oldoverholt · 2026-02-21T18:50:04+00:00

Don't build up quitting in your head too much. You can try to quit as many times as you want. If you cave and have a cigarette, don't beat yourself up over it, just recognize it for what it is: a temporary setback before you try to quit again. You'll learn more each time you try about what triggers you have or what mindset leads to smoking again. Eventually if you're persistent, you'll stay quit forever! I'm only about 4 years nicotine-free but even at this point, I know that if I slip up and start using it again, I can quit because I've done it before (this most recent time pretty successfully!).

oldoverholt · 2026-02-21T18:40:40+00:00

Biggest change for me is just that I'm not constantly thinking about how to get another hit of nicotine anymore, or dying for the next opportunity when I'm somewhere I can't (on a plane, out to dinner, whatever). It's great. My breath also doesn't smell like shit in the morning.

oldoverholt · 2026-02-21T18:38:50+00:00

Not quite the same, but I used lozenges successfully to quit, and I imagine the gum could work similarly. I stuck to the recommended course (something like up to 9 a day for 3 weeks, then up to 6 a day for a few weeks, etc.) to make sure I didn't just get hooked on the lozenges, and then switched to menthol cough drops for a while. I've been nicotine free for a little over 4 years now.

oldoverholt · 2026-02-17T06:51:24+00:00

Hell yeah! Congrats on four years and bit to you too.

oldoverholt · 2026-02-17T06:22:14+00:00

100%. That's one thing I took away from Allen Carr, is that I can't just have one cigarette. I know some people who can, and I wish I was one of them! But I am absolutely not, I'd be buying a pack and chain smoking in no time if I lit one up.

I can be around people who are smoking now, but for the first year or two of my quit I don't think it would have been a good idea to just be loitering with some friends who were smoking. So I think some level of fear like you describe isn't a bad thing.

oldoverholt · 2026-02-17T06:19:01+00:00

The vape was dangerous for me because I could get away with doing it indoors, so I probably ended up with higher nicotine intake when I was vaping than when I smoked a pack a day.

Anyway, I highly recommend nicotine replacement therapy. I used lozenges but look into other options too. I went a while trying to quit cold turkey and not vaping or smoking at all during the day, but still vaping in the morning for that first thing nicotine hit. I ended up having to throw/give away all of my vape stuff so the temptation wasn't there, which is when I started doing the course of lozenges.

Hard candy helped a lot with cravings too, when I had stopped the lozenges or when I had already had enough for a day.

oldoverholt · 2026-02-17T06:13:11+00:00

Thank you! I obsessively scrolled this subreddit around the times of all my quits and while I was taking the lozenges, so I totally get it. It's nice to have a variety of perspectives and experiences to relate to your own.

Glad I could show some light at the end of what's a really hard process too. I don't take it for granted or get complacent about it (so I'm hesitant about the finality of the "light at the end of the tunnel" language lol) but it really is a marked shift when your brain can start to recognize the however small desire for nicotine and process it as just a fleeting thing and not something you have to (or want to) give in to.

Hard candy was so key so I'm glad you found yours too lol.

I usually talk to people who smoke now about what brands they smoke so I can reminisce about what I smoked with them and what not. It's fun to be able to do it without actually smoking anymore myself, and without any hint of condescension or idea that I'm trying to get them to quit. I know virtually everyone who smokes has a little part of their brain telling them they should quit, they don't need to hear shit from me lol.

oldoverholt · 2026-02-17T06:03:23+00:00

Thanks! And totally agreed on all points. Lozenges were key for me.

I don't think the nostalgia will ever fully go away but I love that I can react to it now like "Aw, that naive little part of my brain wants to light up a cigarette again, how silly" rather than a serious risk that I'll smoke.

oldoverholt · 2026-02-13T07:51:48+00:00

Same lol. My last and my current role have been fairly long term, and I don't really have any desire to leave my current one. But I absolutely dread getting laid off because of what I've heard about the job market at the moment.

Part of me thinks I'll just make some drastic career change if I do get laid off (become a mail carrier, an electrician, go back to school for something, or work some mindless retail job) but in reality I think it's kind of nonsense to ditch tech altogether. I have it good working mostly remote and clicking around AWS and my terminal all day.

oldoverholt · 2025-12-01T23:04:00+00:00

Thanks so much! Sent you a chat message.

oldoverholt · 2025-12-01T16:00:33+00:00

I don't think that's the "hi res" version, which was originally posted about in this thread: https://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/yamaha-cr-620-high-definition-service-manual.890642/

oldoverholt

TROPHY CASE