Nothing irritates me more at other peoples houses, than untrained, unruly dogs, and hypocrites. Which means I have a lot of work ahead of me. Rocky, the Rottweiler puppy, is settling in nicely, and he is smart! He has learned his name, and how to sit. What comes next, is learning to fetch, heel and lie down. Maybe later we will train for defense once the basics are established.

Having grown up training horses, I know the two biggest secrets of animal training psychology: the reward and consistency. Everything else flows behind these two actions.

All pictures are my original photography and rights are restricted to Open Minded Traveler. I use a Sony NEX-3N, and a Samsung S7. Most pictures are edited using Canva Pro.

Dear Diary - Puppy School Has Begun

This morning, at 6:30 AM I hopped up out of bed, into some clothes, and took our dog for a walk. The message is clear: PLEASE POOP OUTSIDE! Reception:Patchy to none. Now that he has had his first vaccine, we are taking him out and walking him every day. But, he is still resisting the leash and I haven't caught a poop. We will get there.

My mother is an angel and handed me my coffee, in my giant cup as I was walking out the gate. Dios la bendiga! We wandered the neighborhood for 30 minutes and gave up as it began to rain. The outside-poop-challenge will resume again later. Now, it is time for devotions, reading and prayer.

After breakfast, I showered, got dressed and tackled my computer tasks. Checking email, working on a new article which I am publishing Sunday, September 13th - I will leave the link in a future post so you can learn about my newest client project.

At a quarter til noon, I dropped everything and headed to the kitchen to help my mother prepare lunch. Lunch was lentil soup with meatballs, fried ripe plantains (maduro), and cauliflower arepas with costeño cheese and guacamole. This is my families Mexo-Ameri-Colombian food!

I was so hungry I forgot to take a picture.

After lunch I tried to focus on my work again, but instead felt so tired I had to lay down. Even then, I took advantage of the free time to watch YouTube video's about dog and puppy training topics. After resting a bit and watching video's, it was time to take Rocky back out for another walk.

This time, I bought some sandwich meat, chopped a slice up into little pieces and carried them with me for rewards. By the time I came home, I had reinforced "Rocky" is his name, and "Sit" for treats. He learned sit almost immediately. Smart little bugger. During our time out we had wandered our little corner of the neighborhood and even visited the park. Daniel loves to climb, and blow on dandelions. We also bought a fresh package of arepas for dinner. Daniel picked the white corn instead of yellow.

The rest of my afternoon was spent writing, working on today's Steemit, and waiting for Rocky to jump up and start sniffing around. It is puppy potty training season.

I need to start getting back into my exercise routine again. Tai Chi has been my stop-gap, but I am going to, at the very least, start jogging on the trampoline for 20 minutes in the morning. Long, slow and without stopping!

It is almost time to start dinner - Arepa, with cheese and egg! The best part of living out in a barrio popular, is being able to buy fresh arepas cooked on a barbecue with charcoal - gives it that smoky taste when you warm it up with your gas burner flame. These fresh made arepas for me, have a taste that is without equal and impossible to find in the store-bought arepas a la cardboard.

I am one of the only foreign residents, or expats - as we commonly refer to ourselves, who really loves Colombian food. I don't eat it constantly, but every so often I LOVE a good Sancocho de Espinazo, Spine Soup (made from pieces of pork vertebra), it's delicious! Definitely try Beef tongue! And, you absolutely must taste the Arepa de Choclo, cooked in a wood burning oven.

The only dish I really can't stand is Mondongo, which is chicken stomach - looks like pieces of terry cloth towel cooked with potatoes and typical spices and fresh cilantro. That one, and Lechona, which is a whole-cooked pig with the head intact and the inner meat mixed with rice and spices, are the two items I typically run away screaming from.

My favorite Colombian style meal is breakfast featuring Calentado Caldense, which is yesterdays beans, rice and chicharron all mixed together, and fried up in a pan. With scrambled eggs w/ tomato and green onion, arepa with cheese and hot chocolate. Sometimes I eat breakfast at La Galeria when I want a very typical style meal. It is a monthly ritual I want to start doing again soon.

If you feel a kindred spirit with my DIARY entry in times of Coronavirus, New Opportunities and Colombia, then do your part to help a neighbor! Be sure to upvote, comment and/or give me a resteem, of this post. Tell a friend - and join #thediarygame so we can all bring home the rewards of high quality content curation on the @SteemitBlog ecosystem during #the50daysofsteem

I am a proud member of Team Colombia with @marpa @franyeligonzalez @josevas217, and @helengutier2.

If you missed my last post from Day #31, you can read it HERE:
https://steemit.com/thediarygame/@openmindedtravel/the-diary-game-or-09-07-20-or-day-32-a-special-day-with-daniel