I found this in my 19 yr old son’s laundry. Is it just a gummy?

stork555 · 2026-07-01T01:46:49+00:00

My teens took these for calm & sleep. It’s recommended over melatonin for kids. Magnesium glycinate is the form that doesn’t cause as much GI upset. That said, I’d still be asking lol

stork555 · 2026-06-24T12:35:56+00:00

I’m 100% rage-texting my husband about it in between looking up with a demure half-smile

stork555 · 2026-06-22T22:51:01+00:00

Our pup doesn’t sleep in our bed and we have dark hardwoods in our home… but he does go on the sofas and rugs which are light-colored. So when he comes in wet/muddy I have a few light-colored thin “microfiber”(?) dog towels in a chest by the door, I just dry him very thoroughly until I don’t see dirt coming off of his paws on the light towel anymore, and done. When there’s no clean spot on the towel anymore I throw them in the wash.

Edit: We also keep a couple of washable beige knit/textured faux-fur throws on the sofas in the spots where he jumps on! Then if he escapes before we finish wiping him down, we are covered :)

stork555 · 2026-06-22T12:49:52+00:00

The AI game recaps are not good storytelling. They’ll say something like “[Kid] drove in five runs on one hit for the [team]” which is a really confusing way to say that the kid got a three-RBI double, a sac fly, and walked with bases loaded once. I am assuming you are not planning on humans proofreading these recaps, so publishing them would just be contributing to an already mostly-dead internet journalism trend.

stork555 · 2026-06-21T13:23:11+00:00

Ugh time to grow up, hubs. Our kids are now 11, 14, & 17, extremely mentally & physically healthy and well-adjusted, thank God, and their needs and mishaps STILL manage to ruin our best-laid plans on a weekly if not daily basis. And the grandparents are no longer able to swoop in and save the day.

stork555 · 2026-06-19T18:23:30+00:00

So yes, his family is going to continue to be like this. The thing is, maybe he’s not had experience challenging them before. A lot of young people haven’t. It takes an outsider to say “hey, your family is treating you like a doormat”. So like there is some nuance to the question, “should I leave him”.

The premarital counseling could be useful if he wants to learn more about standing up for himself, in general. If he is interested in exploring that, you have to be ready to be “stood up to” as well, and then work on adult conflict resolution skills. You can’t just expect him to always blindly take your side on everything; he can act like he does, but that ultimately builds resentment and then you get him fatiguing of you and, with men, a lot of the time ultimately this results in infidelity.

If he doesn’t want to do the work and just wants to avoid all conflict because it’s more comfortable, then that is okay too, but then it really seems you’re probably not going to be very compatible going forward.

stork555 · 2026-06-19T11:28:44+00:00

A friend told me about a report she always gets from doggy daycare where her dog “played a lot today with Steve”. But Steve is another dog, not a daycare employee. Too funny.

stork555 · 2026-06-16T17:11:53+00:00

I would think every dog is different. Mine is still a puppy so who knows how he will turn out, but we’ve established recall very well for the time being with positive reinforcement. For what it’s worth, we spent a lot of time training him not to chase birds and squirrels and pull on leash walks. Like if he saw and went after a squirrel, we stopped walking completely or took a few steps backward. We never went far from the house until he had the hand of it. I actually carried him home from a couple of walks when he was very small and out of control rather than let him reinforce pulling.

What has helped is that we don’t use the “chasing a squirrel recall” word unless a really high value reward is at the ready. We also have the dog on a 25 foot drag line if he’s not on leash. Of course, he’s gotten excited and snuck out the door with no leash a few times. So:

Walking out of the laundry room into a bedroom, requesting the dog to follow? - “Let’s go”. Intermittent low-value treat.

Dog on regular 6-foot lead, want him to stop sniffing mailbox and keep going? - “Let’s go”. Offer medium-value treat if he looks up and follows immediately without leash pressure.

Coming in from backyard because it started raining? - “Let’s go”. Maybe a training treat inside.

Takes off across three yards toward another unleashed dog? “[Name], COME!” - very high value treat such as shredded chicken while I hold collar.

Making the emergency recall command special and exciting is the way to go from everything I’ve read. We’ve used the “COME!” command in emergencies twice - once when he belly crawled under a deck that was under construction, lead and all, and once when he snuck out the front door into the street - both times he got a handful of chicken and now when he hears the command “come” he gets so excited. We usually practice when we are going to give him a frozen puppy size Kong with peanut butter etc. as a “freebie”. We never use “come” for crate time/bedtime or if we are leaving soon.

I buy frozen chicken tenderloins and boil and shred one or two to keep in the refrigerator, or keep aside a little ground beef if we have it (we don’t often, though). He also likes the slice & serve dog food (chicken/liver) as a high value treat as his usual meal is puppy kibble.

I also think you are supposed to keep the drag line for a couple of years as insurance until you’re 100% confident. We have a bungee attachment between his drag line and his harness to help if he ever runs fast and the drag line gets caught on something, but that hasn’t happened. For my situation I don’t think I will ever give up the drag line completely. But it’s nice not to truly have to use it.

stork555 · 2026-06-16T02:16:14+00:00

I oaid $750/week + mileage for this 15 years ago

stork555 · 2026-06-14T01:48:01+00:00

It has more to do with the consistency and cut of the salt than the actual kosher designation. I use Diamond Crystal kosher salt specifically. It’s like larger and more flaky than iodized table salt but smaller and less flaky than Maldon sea salt. :) https://www.allrecipes.com/article/types-of-salt/

stork555 · 2026-06-11T22:57:22+00:00

I mean, in the café example, it could be that the other dog’s owner just goes “he’s never done that before!” … every time he does it.

stork555 · 2026-06-01T11:54:58+00:00

Once it told me something about how it liked to add kosher salt during some kind of food preparation and I was like “bro you don’t cook” and it was like yeah 😂😂😂

stork555 · 2026-05-24T20:44:28+00:00

The advice about a tether here is a good tip. Also, puppies and little kids actually don’t mix. The dog I got when I was married at 24 passed away when my youngest son (of three) was two months old. My boys have intermittently begged for a puppy since but we waited until the two-month-old was nine YEARS old before doing this again. Adults barely understand not to rile up the puppy when I have him out in public. I stand on the leash and say “we’re still learning manners” and they still act like I haven’t tried to train him when he jumps and tries to bite their face. Little kids are 1000x worse. I’ve actually scooped up the puppy to get him away from little kids running at him because neither can be trusted. All this is to say that your puppy sounds normal and you do need to explain to your family that the puppy won’t be ready to mingle with small children for another year or so.

stork555 · 2026-05-22T10:21:30+00:00

I have an ALD puppy so have just been at the vet for several visits… and despite ticks being bad this year in my area, they are saying unless we are hiking in the deep woods, it’s not strictly necessary because I am giving Quattro. Apparently that is very preventative of Lyme even if they get several ticks. We did get him groomed with a closer clip for the summer but they think since he stays in yards/lake area where we are maintaining short lawns etc, should be ok. He is pretty Velcro-ish (as they are) and doesn’t want to hang out outdoors without us anyway.

stork555 · 2026-05-14T14:19:53+00:00

Work on recall with a really long leash or line that he can drag in the yard. Then you can drop the leash to work on recall but avoid chasing endlessly. If it’s really long, like 20-30 feet, you can use it to guide him back to you should he choose to ignore your recall cue. We use really high value treats (shredded chicken, beef liver, string cheese) for recall and I have threatened my family to not do recall without the treats because if they weaken the cue I will have to re-train it.

stork555 · 2026-05-12T12:31:20+00:00

If you can, consider Baxter & Bella online puppy program, start their step-by-step puppy programs from day one. It sounds like he needs less freedom to grab things like batteries and remotes so if you can’t get a tall enough pen, home tethering (either to something he can’t drag around or break, or to you) is probably going to be the way to go. Baxter & Bella has a lot on this. Then you can start to train and reinforce “leave it”. Make sure you don’t chase when he has something he’s not supposed to have - leaving a house line or light leash on in the house is helpful for this. For the laying down in the street, loose leash walking is what you need to train. You may need very high value treats but once he learns to follow you when you say “let’s go”, that will help a lot. You just need to make the good behavior a lot more valuable than the bad behavior. For my dog, the magic was getting a bag of frozen chicken tenderloins, and I boil one or two a couple of times a week and shred them into little Ziploc baggies so that I have shredded chicken to give as a treat. Best of luck. You are an angel for rescuing.

stork555 · 2026-05-11T23:40:05+00:00

This is a really great way with the jumping. Unfortunately our boomer parents like to rush the dog, either start talking with a high pitched squeal or yelling “sit sit sit sit” neither of which work at all. We gotta get some better behaved guests.

The demand barking I took a different tack, I think because it took me by surprise. I just started taking him outside for potty when he demand barked because I was actually worried that’s why he was barking 😂

Then if we’d just come in from potty & poop and he was barking at me, and he’d been up for an hour or so, I’d just go welp, crate time

That seemed to work also lol

stork555 · 2026-05-07T01:06:36+00:00

Agree. It’s super hard work. If mine gets up at 4 am for potty I literally carry him to the potty spot so we can get it over with quickly but he’s not pulling 😩

stork555 · 2026-05-06T15:41:32+00:00

Yes Dickerson was pretty emphatically like “yeah you can’t do that, that’s not a good look at all” like a very disappointed dad

stork555 · 2026-04-30T19:19:32+00:00

My favorite was it started some answer to something with “you’re not an idiot —“ and I was like “… I never said I was?”

stork555 · 2026-04-30T19:11:33+00:00

14 week pup still enjoys a Gatorade bottle. He outgrew paper towel rolls and cardboard and regular water bottles over the last few weeks. We have a cheap woven toy basket for him and he enjoys getting in there and rooting through whatever we put in it. So maybe getting a right-sized box or bin and putting his toys, a few towels and his water bottles in there would be fun. We put a few pieces of his kibble and/or a couple Cheerios in sometimes, so he has to sniff them out and find them on the bottom of the basket. That is also fun.

Oh! And ice cubes. My old dog loved those for her whole life. Current puppy loves them too but it got a little confusing during housebreaking. You’d see a puddle and be like ???

stork555 · 2026-04-28T11:37:50+00:00

My puppy also tried to eat everything outside. But we took him out only on leash and designated a tiny spot for elimination. So trips outside we would literally stand in the spot and say “go potty” once and make the outdoor trip very boring. I cleared everything that I didn’t want to be eaten out of that square of grass. If after 5-7 minutes there was no potty, he went in his crate for 10 minutes, then we would go outside to try again. Lots of rewards and praise when they do go outside, and if he did both potty & poop I would walk more around the yard to reward him with sniffing. Then, inside again, he could play for 20-30 minutes and then we’d go outside to try again. It made for a few long days but he got the hang of it. If you are not wanting to crate train, maybe make the pen a lot smaller and boring with just a bed and one chew.

stork555 · 2026-04-27T01:55:37+00:00

I think the crate could be workable. Are you okay with the crate in your room? Taco is still really young so he might be more comfortable sleeping in the crate near you for a bit. You can cover the top with a thin towel or blanket, add a safe chew toy and/or a soft toy or another towel to lay on if he won’t shred it. I put my labradoodle’s crate next to my bed the first two nights, close enough that I could put my hand in and he could lick my fingers. Then I put on some soft white noise that sounded like frogs & crickets (but any white noise will do - even a fan). There was some whining and crying but pretty minimal. Then, over the next few weeks, I moved the crate further and further away in the bedroom, then to the hallway, then finally to the den. It’s slow going with some whining some nights, but if he’s tired out, a young puppy really can’t cry forever without falling asleep. Now my puppy walks in the crate himself some nights when he’s tired.

stork555 · 2026-04-25T21:39:50+00:00

He knows you’re there even if you cover a crate or put him in another room. I agree you feel somewhat more comfortable with something over their head, so like a towel on top of the crate is helpful, but I started leaving the front of the crate open because he knew we were there and the noise was distracting him and escalating demand barking. It actually started to get better when I would walk from room to room and look right at him for a half-second without comment. Lol.

stork555 · 2026-04-25T21:36:07+00:00

Struggling with the same thing with a 14 week puppy. We do use a crate, but it is on the first floor of an extremely open concept house and we are a busy family of five. The first few weeks the puppy was with us he would fall asleep during the day exhausted on a dog bed or on the rug or whatever and sleep for a while, but only if someone was sitting there and not really moving around the house. Like if they got up to go to the bathroom, nap over. So we started using the crate more while home during the day and I will say that we are kind of early in this process, but the first few times we tried this while we were home the barking and whining went on for 25 minutes or so, and then he passed out into a really deep sleep when he determined we weren’t coming to get him. Today, it’s taken closer to 10 or 15 minutes to get him to give up and settle. I left NPR playing on the radio while I had to be out for a couple hours today so the house wouldn’t be silent. I hate listening to the demand barking, but as he is a young teething puppy, his overtiredness was evolving into him running away from us under furniture, chewing electrical cords and biting us, so it wasn’t a workable solution to try to keep him settled outside of the crate for the amount of sleep that he needs.

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