Spoon theory refined

I have in the past talked about spoon theory, I’m going to elaborate further here and expand on it with new bits I have recently been told about. 

So the basis of spoon theory is complicated so I asked chat GPT for an explanation and it did a pretty good job:

Spoon theory is a way of explaining what it feels like to live with chronic illness, disability, neurodivergence, mental health issues, or honestly just the kind of exhaustion that makes putting socks on feel like a hostile negotiation.

The idea was originally created by Christine Miserandino, who used actual spoons in a diner to explain energy limitations to a friend. Because apparently forks didn’t have the emotional range required.

The basic concept is this:

Most people wake up every morning with an unlimited subscription to “doing things.”

Other people wake up with twelve metaphorical spoons.

Everything costs spoons.

Get dressed? One spoon.
Answer emails? Two spoons.
Go to work? Four spoons and a small piece of your soul.
Unexpected phone call? Catastrophic spoon incident.

Healthy people tend to operate on a “battery fully recharges overnight” system.

People living with chronic fatigue, pain, ADHD, autism, depression, etc. often operate more like:

“Congratulations. You have been issued seven spoons and one of them is already on fire.”

A further problem is that spoons are not allocated fairly. Some days you wake up with plenty.

Some days you wake up already in overdraft because your body spent the night apparently fighting demons in the astral plane instead of sleeping.

And once you run out of spoons, you don’t magically keep functioning. You enter increasingly cursed stages of existence:

  • “I’m fine.”
  • “I just need tea.”
  • “Why is the fridge open?”
  • “If one more person speaks to me I may dissolve into static.”

It’s also important to note that spoon expenditure is wildly inconsistent.

For example:

  • Going to a concert: 8 spoons.
  • Researching medieval plague burial practices at 2am: somehow gives spoons back.
  • Making one phone call: legally considered an assassination attempt.

People without spoon shortages often accidentally say things like:

“Just push through it.”

Which is a bit like telling someone:

“Have you tried simply not running out of blood?”

Spoon theory is useful because it explains that energy isn’t just about being tired. It’s about having to budget your ability to function like a Victorian widow managing candle expenses through winter.

You start making deeply strategic decisions:

  • If I shower today, can I still cook dinner?
  • If I attend this social event, will I need three to five business days to recover?
  • Is this errand worth wearing outside trousers?

And honestly, once you understand spoon theory, a lot of behaviour suddenly makes sense:

  • why someone cancels plans last minute,
  • why “small tasks” pile up,
  • why overstimulation can feel physically painful,
  • and why people become irrationally protective of comfortable blankets and quiet rooms.

Because sometimes the difference between coping and crying in a supermarket aisle is literally one spoon.

But along side spoons there are fucks and tickets. 

So if you have spoons you can get stuff done. If you have fucks you have the motivation to get it done. So spoons and fucks; you get what needs to be done, done. Whether that is homework, housework or planning to build a Death Star and learning to ride a unicycle.

There are also tickets. Tickets act as ‘entry for specific tasks’ so you may not have motivation for everything but if you have a ticket something (whether it’s important or not) will get done, regardless of whether you have spoons for it. 

For example I had a ticket a few weeks ago to build a flower bed. I also had a migraine. So instead of dealing with the migraine I built the flower bed and then had dehydration, dizziness and a migraine that lasted two weeks instead of three days. I could have not used the ticket, but then the flower bed would not have got made, the sunflowers my daughter grew would have died because there was nowhere to put them (and who knows when another valid ticket would turn up). 

So yeah, spoons, fucks and tickets. The extended theory

Annual pointlessness

Yesterday I spent an hour and a half in a meeting room at my daughter’s school. One with a giant window, where anyone walking past could see the private and confidential information projected onto a screen because a staff member thoughtfully decided it would be easier to read than huddling around a laptop.

Nothing says confidentiality quite like displaying your child’s educational records to passing traffic.

We were there for my daughter’s annual EHCP review. The idea behind an EHCP is that it is a living document, reviewed every year so that it continually reflects the child’s needs accurately as they change over time. In theory, this sounds reasonable. In practice, the only thing more soul-destroying from a parent’s perspective is the DLA form.

Both require you to focus entirely on your child at their worst. Not on who they are on good days. Not on what they love or what makes them laugh. Not on the things that make them them. Instead, you sit there cataloguing every struggle, every difficulty, every moment of dysregulation, and presenting it in a way that highlights deficits as clearly and efficiently as possible. You have to provide examples. Evidence. Accurate descriptions of behaviours and disabilities.

Not because you want to, but because if you don’t, your child doesn’t get the help they desperately need. 

So you sit there while someone explains that the bright, charismatic, hilarious child you adore is performing “below age expectations” in reading, writing and maths, as though this is some vast moral failing that requires immediate intervention.

They explain that when she saw an ice cream van she ran across a road without looking because she was excited, and somehow this becomes evidence that she requires supervision because she has “limited awareness of danger.” As though every child in existence hasn’t momentarily forgotten basic survival instincts at the sight of an ice cream van. Although I do have admit she has no awareness of danger when she still insists on climbing and jumping off the highest object in any given area and accosting strangers to take her down drop slides. I asked her once why she kept kidnapping parents to take her on the drop slides and she told me that ‘bigger people go faster’ and as I’m ‘small’ she needs a bigger grown up. While this makes sense to her, as her mother it was not reassuring. 

You hear, in the same breath, that your child is the class “high flyer” while also being told she still reverses letters and numbers, can’t copy from a whiteboard and cannot sit through a learning session longer than ten minutes. Naturally, when I asked what that actually meant, I got a blank stare.

Because what exactly am I supposed to do with that information?

Apparently she behaves too well for a school increasingly focusing on behavioural rather than educational needs, but simultaneously cannot attend mainstream school.

Excellent.

Clear as mud.

I have no intention of moving her. She loves her school and that matters more than almost anything. But even if I had to move her, where exactly am I sending her?

Before anyone suggests hubs or integrated units: no. I’ve worked in schools with hub units. They don’t work. They fail the children inside them and they fail the children outside them. Children become separated into camps. The units become dumping grounds for children needing additional support managing behaviour, while everyone talks earnestly about inclusion.

But they don’t integrate. Not really. Allow me to pull from my own experience here: You cannot safely run a science lesson involving Bunsen burners and chemicals while another child (regardless of their needs) is ‘bear crawling’ under benches, as a teacher you have to adapt the lesson and axe the practical. Then twenty-nine children miss out for the sake of one.

Resentment builds because children are children and fairness matters deeply to them.

But equally, if a child is that dysregulated, forcing them to sit still and “cope” isn’t support either. If they’re bear crawling under tables, they don’t need discipline; they need somewhere safe to regulate. When you point are to the LSA that is in theory assigned to the child that they need to leave, they stare blankly at you and say ‘but they are not being disruptive’. By which they mean they are not shouting, fighting or throwing things. Also the LSA who should be on one to one with the child has three children with them because there isn’t the money for the ratios they should be on. It doesn’t work it not funded correctly and no one checks if the money allocated to the child is actually being spent on the child. 

Education should fit individuals.

Not force individuals into systems.

Anyway. I’ve digressed.

Because my main source of despair with the EHCP process is this: before any of it can actually happen, a faceless bureaucrat at the council has to approve it. Someone who has never met me. Never met my daughter. Never spoken to her teachers. Someone with no educational or SEND qualifications. Yet somehow they have the final say on my child’s legal entitlement. The last time anyone officially signed off on this annual document was 2022.

The EHCP was written in 2021. It has been updated every year since.

And because none of the changes have ever been approved, the tracked edits now resemble the aftermath of a stationery shop explosion. The original text is in black. Annual updates appear in blue, orange, green, pink and purple. Microsoft Word only contains so many colours before they start merging into one another. At this point I’m interested to see what next year brings. Perhaps a nice chocolate brown? Possibly taupe?

Because I have absolutely no faith anyone will look at it this year either.

At some point, if this continues long enough, we may accidentally invent a new colour entirely.

And at least then we’ll have achieved something

Anyone got a paddle?

For the last month our daughter hasn’t slept through more than one night a week. Most nights, if I’m lucky, I get a three hour block before I hear the tiny voice at the bedroom door informing me she “had a nightmare.” The nightmares, according to her, involve snakes, witches, monsters, spiders and, somewhat less creatively, “the dark.” She refuses to elaborate on any of them. The details apparently remain classified information.

What she does require is physical contact. Immediate, unwavering, legally binding physical contact. She clamps onto my hand like a particularly vindictive clam and will not let go until sheer exhaustion finally drags her unconscious. By that point I’m wide awake, questioning every life choice that led me here and considering intravenous caffeine as a viable medical treatment.

The effects have started spilling into the rest of life. She stopped wanting to attend after school activities. Sports clubs became impossible. She’s quieter at school, clingier at home and generally behaving like a tiny emotionally overwhelmed limpet. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the absolute muppet of a puppy demanding constant movement and chaos, I think she would happily retreat entirely into her bedroom and become some sort of anxious woodland cryptid.

Meanwhile I am functioning on roughly the same level as a malcontented poltergeist debating if blinking counts as power naps. Sleep deprivation is genuinely used as torture and I now understand why. Your brain stops working properly. You become irrationally emotional about dishwasher noises. You eat things standing in the kitchen like a raccoon. You lose the ability to remember why you walked into rooms (not that I had that ability in the first place). I am currently over caffeinated, over eating and operating entirely on spite.

The frustrating part was that none of the explanations seemed true. The nightmares felt too rehearsed somehow, but every attempt to ask what was wrong was met with shrugs, silence or increasingly elaborate stories about monster spiders. We cancelled activities left, right and centre trying to get to the bottom of it.

Then today, after a month of this, she finally admitted that some children at her sports club had been “mean” to her.

A MONTH.

Why could she not have told me this when it started? I could have done something. I could have spoken to staff, dealt with the issue, at the very least directed my rage toward an actual target instead of just stress-eating cheese at midnight.

Naturally when I asked why she hadn’t told us sooner she informed me, very seriously, that it was “a secret.”

Who told her it was a secret?

“Nobody. It was my secret.”

Excellent. Fantastic. Very useful information. Apparently my child has independently invented Fight Club.

And that’s the bit that really hurts, because how are you supposed to help a child who instinctively hides problems? How do you support someone whose first response to distress is apparently “become nocturnal and suffer privately”? It’s heartbreaking because you can see the anxiety spilling out everywhere except the place it needs to.

So at present I have no real answers. We’re trying reassurance, conversations without pressure, gentle encouragement and rebuilding her confidence slowly. Also caffeine. Industrial quantities of caffeine.

And yes, in my weaker moments I do find myself looking wistfully at historical medicine. Victorian parents absolutely had easier bedtimes. Of course they did. Their “sleeping syrup” was essentially heroin dissolved in brandy and optimism. The cough medicine contained cocaine, everything had chloroform in it and half the population was technically being tranquilised against their will.

Tempting, isn’t it?

Earning his keep

We are a long way from having trained our puppy in any serious way. I mean that in both the sense of he’s not a service dog yet and in the sense that i spent the last week teaching him to play ‘the floor is lava’ and to drop to floor if I make a finger gun and yell ‘bang’ at him. Neither of these things are necessary for being a service dog but playing floor is lava with my fae child does bring a smile to her face as they both run round the garden like maniacs trying to find something to stand on and frankly there are times that I want to shoot the creature for mauling me/stealing things or generally just existing in a way I find objectionable. Doing this with a finger gun means I can repeatedly ‘shoot’ him; no consequences, no witnesses and no awkward questions. So win-win. 

Since his arrival there has been a significant decrease in the number and intensity of meltdowns my daughter has had. She’s not masking more at home but when she has run out of spoons she will turn into a small immovable boulder in the middle of the kitchen floor and let the puppy bounce over her. I don’t understand why this helps her regulates – it may be some form of deep pressure message that wasn’t covered in the books or by OT or a new form of chaotic canine therapy that’s so advanced we’re not there yet but it makes her laugh and that’s all that matters. 

On days where she has energy but no capacity for conversation, he adapts accordingly.

They run what I can only describe as puppy laps.

This involves sprinting in increasingly tight circles around the garden until both of them collapse in the centre, dizzy and wheezing, in a tangle of limbs and fur.

The lawn is… no longer a lawn.

It is now an early-stage NASCAR track since it appears that they can only turn left.

At this rate, I expect erosion to complete its work in a month and leave us with a functional moat. I am currently considering suitable fish species for it so we can rebrand it as a “water feature” and pretend this was intentional.

Days when she hasn’t the energy for anything he seems content to follow her around with a stuffed banana in his mouth until the sheer absurdity of it makes her laugh. 

So yeah, not trained yet but when it comes to emotionally regulating our fae, he’s already earning his keep. Which is good because he cost a fortune. 

Puppy bench enthusiast

Watching the World Go By (Or: How I Accidentally Trained My Dog to Become a Bench Enthusiast)

We are still working on the puppy being less reactive. By “less reactive” I mean ideally he would like to stop attempting to greet every individual leaf, blade of grass, and passing breeze like a long-lost friend.

To help with this, our trainer introduced a new game called “watching the world go by.”

The concept is simple. You go somewhere vaguely public—a park, a street, possibly an asylum depending on how the week’s been—find a bench, sit down for half an hour, and… watch things happen.

Every time the puppy notices something interesting (cars, dogs, children, a football match, small aircraft incidents—you know, the usual) without reacting, he gets a treat.

Simple. Calm. Almost peaceful.

The puppy, naturally, thinks this is the best idea anyone has ever had.

He gets roughly a sausage and a half for sitting still and staring vaguely into the middle distance like a tiny, slightly unhinged philosopher. The first time we tried it, he was confused. The second time, he was fully invested.

Unfortunately, while I believed I was training him to calmly observe the world…

I have in fact trained him to identify seating.

With remarkable accuracy.

Every bench we passed on the way out of the park was enthusiastically located, mounted, and presented to me as a business opportunity.

“Oh look,” his entire being says, “a bench. We could sit here. I could receive sausage. This seems like a good plan.”

I did not realise how many benches there are in a park.

There are so many benches.

Also:

  • Why is there an outdoor rowing machine?
  • Why does it have a seat?
  • Why had I never noticed it before?

The puppy noticed it. Immediately.

Because it has a seat.

And therefore, obviously, it is a sausage station.

We have also discovered that the following may or may not qualify as acceptable seating (depending entirely on the puppy’s interpretation):

  • Fallen trees
  • Low walls
  • Anything vaguely horizontal
  • Bins (jury’s still out, but he’s optimistic)

So on the plus side, the puppy is now extremely observant and excellent at environmental scanning.

On the downside, it now takes approximately three to five working days to walk around a park.

Pouring from the non-existent empty bucket

Ever heard the phrase you can’t pour from an empty bucket? I have. Mostly from therapists. I hate it, it’s such a stupid thing to say. We’re not containers with a finite amount of ‘stuff’ also what is it that we’re pouring? Love? Energy? Sarcasm? That last one I promise I have an endless well of not a bucket. 

Besides which if we are going to run with this bucket analogy mine is still not empty, it’s full to the brim – practically overflowing the only thing preventing a tidal wave at the moment is limited movement and surface tension. The problem is that mine is full with desperation, stress and sleep deprivation. So when anything goes even slightly awry my ability to cope is in fact non-existent. I remember a time when I had patience, I was in fact prepared to practise gentle parenting and remind my fae that she can use kind hands (until she told me she only had one set of hands and they were the ones she was using), or that she could put her own toys away without following it with the statement ‘because if I do it they’re all going in the skip outside’. Those days are long past. Now I just try to practise silence and 7/11 breathing (in for seven scream out for 11 or something) and try to limit the psychological damage I am doing. No doubt she will be relating some of this to her own therapist in the fullness of time but at least it will be different from the stories I have about my own childhood. 

What brought all this on is my inability to deal with her latest meltdown after school. I picked her up and as is routine on a Wednesday the intent was to drive her to the gym for dinner, and the two hours of sport classes she has. As it was she got in the car and demanded to know where the red bag is. Confused? I was. It turns out the red bag was a back pack she had constructed for her doll, that through either telepathy or precognition I was supposed to know she wanted to take with said doll to the gym. Did I know this? No. Was this mentioned today? No. Could she have put the bag in the car this morning before school? Absolutely. So whose fault is it? Correct mine. 

Now either we can go home and get the bag – which means we will be late to the gym, and she will get no dinner, or we go to the gym as normal and she deals with the lack of bag with imaginary food for the imaginary baby. She wants to go home. I tell her if we go home we aren’t going to the gym, queue meltdown. 

I just stare at her because every comment, everything I can think to say is not age appropriate for an 8 year old and definitely not appropriate in this situation. Honestly since she woke me up at 1am today all I want to do right now is recline the car seat and have a nap.  

So yeah is the bucket empty? No, is it full of anything useful also no. 

Things I wish could go unsaid

But Apparently Need Saying: Don’t Poison the Puppy

In her defence, she didn’t actually mean to poison the dog. She was simply having a minor meltdown over the outrageous injustice of not being allowed her iPad at the table.

To put this into context: she has never been allowed her iPad at the table. This is not a new rule. This is not a recently introduced tyranny. This is a long-standing, deeply embedded, “older-than-the-child” household policy. “No tech at the table” was adopted from a boarding school I used to work at and has been in place since before she existed.

So naturally, her reaction was… dramatic.

She decided that if she couldn’t have breakfast with her iPad, then she didn’t want breakfast at all, and flung it across the table. An inch-square piece of toast with chocolate hazelnut spread skittered to the floor.

The puppy—essentially a sentient vacuum cleaner with legs—hoovered it up before anyone could intervene.

Now, for those unfamiliar with dogs: cocoa is bad. Not “a bit of an upset tummy” bad. Properly, vet-call, Google-at-7am bad.

The puppy, however, was delighted with his life choices.

The fae child immediately began hyperventilating, convinced she had killed her beloved pet. My husband, meanwhile, was switching between yelling at the dog for eating the toast and yelling at the child to calm down.

For future reference: yelling at anyone to calm down is about as effective as using kerosene as a flame retardant.

We survived the immediate aftermath long enough to get the fae child to school (via a stop for a regulating hot chocolate and calm down) and call the vet. We were told to monitor the puppy. Because it was a small amount, it should be fine.

Here’s the issue with toxins and dogs—particularly chocolate: there is no clear “safe” limit. Dog breeds vary so wildly that what might be dangerous for a Chihuahua wouldn’t even register for a Great Dane. And even if someone did establish a definitive threshold (which would be wildly unethical and practically impossible), humans would immediately start crossbreeding dogs like some sort of chaotic paint palette and render the data useless anyway.

So the official veterinary advice remains: don’t.

Sound advice.

Unfortunately, puppies are not known for their commitment to sound decision-making. They respond primarily to “walk” and “food,” and even then only selectively.

We thought we’d gotten away with it.

We had not.

Two days later, the puppy wasn’t himself.

Now, this is a dog who usually behaves like a caffeinated land shark. So when he:

  • refused treats (deeply suspicious),
  • sat quietly next to me (alarming),
  • and did not attempt to chew my hand off (deeply concerning),

…I knew something was wrong.

I picked him up—no small feat, given he’s over 10kg and usually powered by chaos—and took him to my husband. The fact that the dog tolerated being held without attempting escape confirmed our fears.

Something was definitely up.

At the vet, he received:

  • a haircut (because apparently you can’t check a dog’s eyes if you can’t find them),
  • a thorough poking,
  • and the deeply insightful diagnosis of:

    “He’s eaten something he shouldn’t have.”

Well.

I am stunned.

This animal—who regularly consumes grass cuttings, bees, poop, gravel, and yes, chocolate toast—has eaten something he shouldn’t have.

Who could have predicted this.

After a stabby painkiller injection, an alarming amount of money spent on prescription tinned food, and something described as “medical-grade yoghurt,” we returned home.

It turns out he loves the prescription food.

He adores the yoghurt.

He is now deeply offended by his regular kibble.

Or at least he was—until I covered it in bacon grease, at which point he decided life was worth living again.

Moral of the story:

Don’t poison the puppy.

Or you will find yourself bribing it with bacon grease just to get it to eat like a normal animal again. For once this advice didn’t come from the trainer (now known forever as three dogs in a trenchcoat) but is probably in her playbook somewhere. 

Neurodivergent puppy

The Puppy Is Possibly Neurodivergent

I am beginning to think that we have ended up with an autistic puppy. I mentioned this to another dog owner and was informed that all dogs are autistic. Learn something new every day.

He definitely has ADHD and access to the same endless energy supply that the child so selfishly hoards.

Still, he is fitting in rather well for the most part. He is now approaching six months old and has been given a little more free rein to explore on walks. This means that we have discovered an endless list of things that I never knew were scary but are, in fact, absolutely terrifying.

This week the list of Terrifying Things includes:

  • Daisies
  • Pinecones
  • A new type of dog treat (this needed to be growled at and thrown around the room for ten minutes before it was cautiously licked and determined to actually be food)
  • The neighbours (also growled at, but they were on the other side of the fence so there was little to be done about them)
  • And a dandelion

The dandelion was so scary that when it was discovered on a walk with Dad it had to be sniffed, pawed and licked.

Then, on a walk later that day with Mum, she had to be dragged back to the exact location and shown the dandelion again, because you can never be too sure about suspicious yellow flowers.

Unfortunately, there are things he has discovered that should be on the “scary and not to be eaten” list that he seems to believe are perfectly acceptable playthings. These include:

  • Bees (which he appears to believe are some sort of spicy raisin when chewed)
  • Herons
  • Angry dogs
  • And lakes

The lake appears to fall into the category of:

“The ground has gone weird, wobbly and wet… I should bite it.”

At no point did it occur to him to get out of the lake.

I think it amused the ducks, though.

Still, he has got the hang of holding a toy if he wants to play with the child. This is a rule that is enforced rigorously by all members of the household (with the possible exception of the cat, who appears to believe that if we were stupid enough to bring a loud, bitey, blundering thing into the house and then get it a puppy, we are very much on our own).

Our daughter is very good at “playing dead” (see previous post) if he doesn’t have a toy, so he will generally go and find the nearest legal chew and grab it.

Last night his toys had been tidied away, so he grabbed a Dentastix and hoped for the best.

She keeps trying to teach him games with varying levels of success. He sort of understands tag, at least to the level of:

“We are running in circles and you are chasing me.

Now I’m chasing you…”

He also understands that if he falls over on her foot he will get a belly rub or possibly a cuddle with the friendliness of a boa constrictor — a risk he is entirely prepared to take.

This past weekend, however, she has been trying to teach him to play hide and seek.

On first glance this would appear to have the possibility of success.

Except she is very insistent that he needs to hide first.

We tried to explain that he would be much better suited to the role of seeker and would be highly motivated to find her, but she wasn’t having it. In her world she could count, therefore she was the seeker.

We pointed out that we could count for the puppy, but apparently that was just silly.

Every time she closed her eyes he sat (with toy in mouth) approximately one millimetre from her nose and waited patiently for her to open them again. Nothing was going to make him move because:

a) This was his best friend.

b) We had been training him that when we count we drop that number of treats on the floor.

Now we only count to three, but she made it to ten, so he was feeling extremely optimistic.

So hide and seek was a bit of a failure.

The puppy wanted treats.

The child wanted to find something.

And no one got what they wanted.

Apart from myself and my husband, who were struggling to breathe through the laughter.

The puppy is still convinced that counting should result in food appearing on the floor.

Which honestly suggests the trainer really is three dogs in a trench coat.

Instruction unclear…

We are still (how long does the land shark stage last?!) trying to convince our puppy that body parts are not chew toys and that he is not to ‘mouth’ us. That’s such a cute term to have a carnivorous predator with a mouth full of needle sharp teeth latch onto your extremities and gnaw on you. When we asked the trainer (still not convinced she isn’t three dogs in a trenchcoat) about how to stop this without resorting to either a muzzle or water spray bottle or possibly chain mail (for us not him) she suggested that instead of reacting to being impaled by multiple sharp pointy objects we ‘play dead’. By which she meant that we allow the limb he grabbed hold of to go limb and uninteresting while waving a ‘legal’ chew such as a toy or nylabone in his face with the other hand. 

That’s all very well but he prefers chewing on the squishy body temperature bits. She asked us to explain this to our fae, which we did. She locked on to the ‘play dead’. That bit she got sort of, to the point where I heard her snap ‘no’ at the dog, followed by a thump and some scrabbling. When I turn around she is laying on the ground, completely face planted like a planking statue while the puppy scrambles around trying to determine if this is some sort of game, a threat or if some awful ailment has just overcome his favourite playmate. I needed to leave to stop laughing. On the plus side it did stop him mouthing so I guess it worked, on the down side she now makes like a swoons like a Victorian heroine if he even opens his mouth. 

So yes endless treats is a successful training tool but apparently confusion works just as well. 

Three Dogs in a Trenchcoat

Because we have questions over how to train our puppy to be a service dog, and frankly how to train it so it doesn’t eat its own poop and to come back when called we hired a trainer. 

She’s a lovely lady who is accredited to train therapy dogs, great. She is local and happy to work with us, wonderful. She only uses positive behaviour training, perfect. However my husband is beginning to suspect that she is in fact three dogs in a trench coat. The reason for this is that the answer to any question, training issue or problem seems to be the judicious application of treats. Needless to say the puppy loves it when she visits. It doesn’t matter what you want to do with your pup it seems the answer is make sure you have an endless supply of treats. 

Do you want your pup to sit? Use a treat. Do you want them to come? Hold a treat? Do you want them to leave something? Hold a treat and THEN give them two treats from the other hand for leaving the single treat alone. Today trainer wanted to teach us ‘positive interference’ this is a technique to use when puppy is ‘mouthing’ (she says mouthing it feels like biting) someone. It’s very straightforward, when puppy is mouthing you to ribbons you chirp happily ‘to the fridge’ and skip to the cooler, where you give pup a yummy treat – ham, cheese etc, to interrupt the behaviour. 

So there you have it, puppy biting? Give them a cold treat. Puppy not biting give them a room temp treat. Puppy crying in crate give many treats. 

So yeah, three dogs in a trenchcoat.