we are dog sitting for an indefinite amount of time and I am chicken shit to tell my parents.

Why scared to tell your folks?

They think I take on to much.

relying on a logical fallacy

My favorite doctor has a graph in his office proving the correlation of the increased sales of McDonald's hamburgers and the decrease in heart attack fatalities. Love him.

Freakouts can be productive.

Must be going around. Mine have been directed at my overly demanding and unreasonable customers. Must have scared them because they have backed the hell off, paid their bills, etc. Perhaps I should be a bitch more often.

They think I take on to much.

They might be right, but it's a good thing to do anyway. Lab mixes can be a handful. Perhaps Mac could teach her tricks? If she can catch a ball, she can catch a frisbee...

I just got off a conference call with 20+ people on it, and someone put the call on hold and walked away. Which meant that we got to listen to the moderator trying to hold a conversation over Souza marches for the last ten minutes. (Then I left.)

Note to universe: NEVER PUT A CONFERENCE CALL ON HOLD.

She likes to run and she will fetch (the owner did not know that she would bring things back and drop them, but she did with me after 2 rounds). She knows "sit" and "leave it" and understand "stay" but will not "sit and stay". She will go out of the mudroom when I tell her, but clearly reluctantly. I am getting some outdoor toys (balls and frisbees) as well as a strong chew since they did not have any of those for her. She destroys pillows and chews fabric, so they do not have a cushion of any kind in her crate. She is crate trained for night.

She destroys pillows and chews fabric, so they do not have a cushion of any kind in her crate.

This may be unfixable, but if she has enough other things to chew, she may stop that. The key is to replace the thing she shouldn't chew with the thing she should, and keep doing it, so she learns what's acceptable and what isn't. Which I admit is hard to do (certainly my sister's 9-mo-old puppy hasn't yet learned).

But she can certainly learn to "stay" with some work.

Can she walk on a leash?

Aww, puppy. That is a lot to take on, but good for you.

So, phone fear? Is awesome when someone schedules a call for you, and then the wrong phone rings, which means it was routed over to your husband who never answers his phone. So now I can't tell if it was them or not, so I don't know if I should call them back or not. It's to schedule a convention space, so timing matters.

She pulls on a leash pretty badly. I am not leash walking her for a bit since the yard is providing so much run jump freak out space for her that she has never had.

I texted my parents. chicken shit, but done.

She pulls on a leash pretty badly

Argh. She's pretty much a classic case of a dog who is failed by well-meaning owners. If she can't walk properly on a leash, she can't be taken out into society. And if she can't be taken out, she will over-react to things, and that never ends well.

If you have time, perhaps you & Mac could set aside ten minutes a day to work with her on things like walking on a leash, sitting for treats, and so forth.

... which, on edit, is probably not what you want to hear. Sorry if I come across too strong there.

Fun kickstarter project - kind of a build your own monster toy.