Kimmy has phantom pregnancy

Kimmy thinks she's pregnant (or even that she had puppies!). She collects her squeaky toys and brings them in her bed and lays down with them and licks them as if she would puppies. She whines when she can't be with her "pups".

She seems withdrawn and somewhat depressed. Subdued and just taking care of her imaginary pups.

When I take her for a walk, she is back to her normal happy self, though. Finally it cooled off a bit here so we can go out during the day without risking heat stroke.

Always when I think things are going swimmingly

something happens to awake me from the dream...

Yesterday, I needed to run some errands in a nearby town and decided to take Kimmy with me. She hasn't been in public for a while, and I thought now was a good time to start taking her to town with me again.

But she was like a raging maniac! Instead of holding her leash with one hand and Ben's hand with the other, I needed both hands to hold on to her because she lunged at people and other dogs. It was awful.

At least she didn't bark at people, just tried to jump at them, but with other dogs we met, it was a disaster. She would lunge at them, barking really angrily, and I had a hard time holding her down, because at 10 months of age, she is strong like a horse. I did manage to rein her in and put her in a sit, but not without some struggle, and of course, the minute or two it took me to handle her was enough to scare the other dog's owner and people around.

I felt horrible, sweat ran down my body in streams, I capitulated and decided to cut the errands short and head back to the car immediately. We had to pass through one last street of the town centre (pedestrian zone), with a small café that had tables outside where people could sit and have their drink.

At one table, the people had a small dog under the chair, I didn't even notice the dog until all of a sudden Kimmy lunged under the chair, with me attached to her leash like a flag, barking very nastily. I lost my footing and she dragged me a couple of meters with her, effectively pushing several chairs (with people in them!) out of her way with my body, until she was millimetres away from the poor little dog.

I started dragging her away and it took all my power to do so. I was painfully aware of the shocked looks of people and honestly wonder why the dog owner didn't call police on me, I was so not in control of my dog, it was absolutely dreadful :(

I dragged Kimmy to the car, got in and cried. I am such a failure of a dog owner! If I saw someone in the street with a dog behaving like Kimmy did, I would think the dog was a disaster in the making.

I am just sick to my stomach from this. Kimmy behaves so calmly on our walks, even when we meet people or other dogs, but yesterday showed me how uncontrollable she can be and shattered my hopes that she was "trained".

It's clear - I can't handle her :(

Kimmy - 10 months old

Kimmy and Benny

We need to move!

Yesterday morning Gerry was at work as usual and there is the phone ringing in the butcher shop. MIL answered it and it was our neighbour from across the street, and wanted to speak with Gerry.

MIL told Gerry who was calling, and Gerry said "I can't come to the phone, the shop is full and I am in the middle of serving a customer. Tell him if he wants to speak to me, to stop by in the afternoon - he lives across the street from us!"

So MIL went back on the phone and told him Gerry was busy and couldn't come to the phone, and the neighbour then proceeded to tell her that he wanted to warn Gerry that he is going to file a police report against our dog."

WTF???

So Gerry then called me home to warn me and say if someone rings at the door not to open.
Nobody came, though, not even this afternoon. So I guess the neighbour doesn't have the guts to say things in Gerry's face?

By the way, Gerry and I were wondering just a couple of days ago why this neighbour stopped greeting us...

The worst thing? He is a primary school teacher in our village school. Ben will have him in 2nd grade!!!

We haven't liked this guy for various other petty reasons already before, but now we REALLY hate him, obviously.

About 2 months ago Ben was riding his bike to school, I was walking beside him, when this idiot came blazing with his car from behind a turn and startled Ben so much he fell from the bike and skinned his knee. The asshole saw that Ben was crying, I was checking his bleeding knee, and he SMILED and drove away.

(There is no sidewalk in our cul de sac)