Everything's Relative

I wish I could make that into a pun about relatives and family and so on, but in this case, I mean it's all in how you look at things.

Timber's seemed a little depressed to me lately. I decided maybe he needed to (a) get out of the house and (b) have some quality Mom-time, so I crated Taenzer (who was horrified), put on Timber's collar, and off we went. First we went to the vet--which to my total astonishment was practically deserted--I mean, Saturday, right? The day all the working folks take their pets in? Not a soul. So we got Annie's thyroid meds, and I let him rear up and put his front feet on the counter so the girl could pet him.

Then we drove down to the Farmer's Market. Now, remember, this is Forgottonia, so it's not a big farmer's market; also it's getting toward the end of the year, although I hope there will be locally-grown apples and honey soon. At any rate, it was pretty sparsely populated, but enough that a couple of small kids and their dad (and btw, how nice to see a dad out with his kids!) stopped to pet him--and I got a firm hold on him first, just in case, but he was good, and I think too hyper-stimulated to think about jumping on anyone. Then a couple of ladies wanted to pet him, and once again he was very good. We walked around the Courthouse Square and he peed on every corner and lamp post and barrel of flowers (when he decided to be a little boy, he decided with a vengeance!). We worked a little on remembering Mom's at the other end of the leash--he tends to forget that--and worked on him sitting at street corners.

It's very odd--he makes very little eye-contact with me. Stella and Taenzer seek out eye-contact, but I'm lucky to get a glance from Timber. Obviously I need to do much more individual work with him, because I feel like there's no connection there between us.

But the point of the title is that practically everyone we saw, including people who didn't pet him, exclaimed "He's a BIG dog!" I kept looking to see who was on my leash. *lol* Although he's well within breed standards, as GSDs go these days Timber's on the small size--about 25-1/2 inches at the shoulder and within a pound or two of 65 pounds (Taenzer's about 25 inches and 60 pounds). Standard calls for males to be 24-26 inches, females 22-24), but my first two GSD girls were 75 pounds and there are plenty of people on GSD-L with dogs in the 80 pound range. To me a BIG dog is a Newfoundland or a Pyr--you know, something BIG.

But then it's all in the eye of the beholder, I guess--there was another dog there, a Yorkie that I'm absolutely positive wasn't as big as Timber's head. If that's what you're used to then yes, Timber's a BIG dog. (And btw, Timber was very good and didn't bark at that little tiny dog. But I didn't let us get very close, either.)

Taenzer had a spasm of anxiety when we got home, brought me every shoe and sock she could find, then climbed into my lap and licked my face: "Mom? Mom? You still love me best, right?"

Meanwhile, I'm fighting with computers. I got so tired of getting error messages when trying to load stuff with Internet Explorer on my laptop that I downloaded Firefox, which enabled me to download a copy of RealTek that actually worked, which means I now have sound on the laptop again. Now I'm trying to get a copy of .NET Framework that works onto the desktop so that I can get my new version of Family Tree genealogy software to work. I'm learning more about how computers work than I care to.