Happy Halloween

Birthday dog
Originally uploaded by suzipaw

And Happy 10th Birthday, Rex!

Though this "holiday" is not very obvious to me today, particularly since I've been sort of hibernating. We didn't do jack o' lanterns this year and I'm limiting my costuming to a tea-tasting party we had at work on Friday afternoon. I wouldn't really call it a costume since it was a perfectly lovely ensemble that someone had worn quite a bit, though it hasn't been fashionable for a good forty years. My false eyelashes were a little outlandish. The one nice thing about Halloween on a Sunday is that there are celebrations throughout the weekend and it's kinda fun seeing people going about their business in scary outfits and makeup and thinking nothing of it. I certainly didn't get much of a reaction when I ran errands on the way home Friday evening. M has proposed we hide from the trick or treaters tonight since Rex despises them and gets upset and we don't really know how Roxy will react.
Roxy seems to be settling in pretty well, but it's not all a bed of cedar chips with Rex. They've gotten into a couple of scraps and she's bitten him and drawn blood. That's been the worst. At best they cede positions at the door or water bowl and sort of ignore each other. We had a dog trainer visit us yesterday. I was a little disappointed that she didn't work more with the dogs--we mostly chatted--but she did observe Roxy giving Rex "the eye" and that's something we hadn't really noticed before. Her overall advice to us is to establish us humans as the idols and taking all decisions away from the dogs, not giving into their requests for food and petting and the like--it all has to happen on our terms and they don't have to figure anything out between them. It's going to take some adjustment--it's been 10 years since we've been in training mode with Rex. Well, that's a part of why we adopted Roxy, to change things up at home. The trainer guesses that she's a mashup of Lab, Shepherd, and maybe Boxer--no Pit Bull as we had thought. She got a clean bill of health from the vet last week as well as her rabies shot, so I sent off her certificate to get her tag from the county.

I took a break from my shrug project to whip up this cowl meant for motorcycling since it's not as bulky as a scarf. But it's not quite right. I think I need to make one that's adjustable somehow. But not bulky. This is a knitting conundrum.
Today is the last day of October, meaning that tomorrow NaNoWriMo begins. I have been a total slacker on that assignment. As night draws nigh, I still don't have any bright ideas for a new novel, so we'll see how it goes.