Thoughts for Thursday - This is Tucker and other news

Everyone has been asking to see a picture of Tucker and here he is! As you can see, he probably needs to go to the groomer's. I'm not sure he's ever been, so we might do that tomorrow or sometime next week. Right now we're working on potty training, sleeping through the night without whining and what he's allowed to chew.

Potty training is actually going very well. Sunday evening and Monday he had a few issues with peeing and pooping on the carpet or bathroom floor. Fortunately, Weyrd got some good suggestions and Tucker had no indoor incidents on Tuesday or Wednesday!

Tucker is also learning to sleep through the night without whining. Sunday night he whined all night and Weyrd got very little sleep. Having a new puppy and not sleeping much the first night, in combination with Weyrd's new multivitamins led to a few days of feeling queasy and wondering if a puppy was a good idea (this leads to loss of appetite and weight loss on Weyrd's part which isn't so bad). However, the multivitamins have been discontinued (yesterday) and Tucker hardly made a peep last night, so Weyrd is feeling much better about puppy ownership today.

By the way, things that work are using the dog crate (it's cozy and ultimately calming) and wearing an old t-shirt and then putting it in the crate with him. We're now working on leaving him in the crate for a few hours during the day to build up to 9 hours or so by day. I'll probably get a kennel at some point in the next week. A neighbor has two dogs that are a bit bigger than Tucker and they are very good with being in their kennels while she's at work. She says dogs sleep alot more than people think (until they own one) and with a kennel there's room to get up and move around and play with small toys. With a portable kennel, I can put him in the living room where he can look outside and also watch Animal Planet (another friend does that with her dogs).

Chewing is another issue. The vet's dog trainer said to keep him on his leash during times outside of the crate so I can control where he goes and what he does. Unfortunately he likes to chew the leash, so I may get a lightweight chain for that purpose. He's also more comfortable with me, so he thinks I might be a giant chew toy...um...No Tucker! Right now he has a nubby ball, a rope with two knots, a chicken liver flavored rubber bone and for the crate he has a buddy to lay on that has a tail for chewing. He also has two towels (one in the living room and one in the crate) and my old t-shirt. So that's the news about Tucker for now.

In other news, I finally got a reasonable explanation regarding the job situation. The gal in charge of the whole department is dealing with several new people and attempting to NOT tell them how to do their jobs. First she has a new HR director (and last year the district got a new Finance Officer) so they didn't know what to do regarding paying me hourly and had to meet and draw up proposals. Now all of this would be moot, if the gal she hired to be our department coordinator would just hire me on a regular salary contract. That's the gal who is working on "forming a team" and she feels uncomfortable pulling the trigger until she has a pool of applicants to match up together by areas of expertise. Unfortunately for her, no one is applying for the other position, so the gal I've been talking with said at some point she thinks they'll convert me from hourly to salary but she wants her new coordinator to come to that conclusion on her own (so as to empower her).

And actually as I have mentioned before, I prefer the hourly independent contractor pay (a 1099 contract), if the pay is the same as what I got last year. Because, the annual amount for full time is slightly more pay than I would get with the value of salary and benefits combined. The only issue with being on an hourly contract is that it's less certain long term and I'm not sure what they would do regarding raises if they kept me on a 1099. If they decide to keep me on a 1099 contract, I will set up an additional retirement plan for the self-employed to sock away more money than I can with just my Roth IRA. That's the news for now. When I have a signed contract of some sort, I'll provide an update!