My First Blog Post

I have a young dog, Rosie, she’s about a year and four months. I adopted her from the Southwest Humane Society in Vancouver. I’ve been training her, she’s the first dog I’ve trained on my own. I used to help my dad train our dogs. Currently we’re working potty training and basic commands. She’s doing well with it. Of course there’s accidents and she doesn’t always listen but with time I think she will do well. When I first got her from the humane society there was a few issues with her health. She had just been spayed and she hadn’t been wearing a cone, which wasn’t good because her stitches were dissolvable and it could’ve caused them to open up her incision. I got her one so it kept her from licking her stitches and her incision has healed very well since. She also had kennel cough and a fever. I took her to the vet and got antibiotics for her. I have other dogs at home so I had to isolate her from the other dogs, she really did not like that.

Rosie also has severe separation anxiety. There was some methods I tried to help her adjust to me being gone. I ignore her 30 minutes before I leave and usually 30 minutes after I come home, but most times she needs to go outside. I’ve got her special toys that she loves but only gets when I leave as a distraction. I’ve tried giving her melatonin treats as a way of getting her calm before I leave. However, Rosie still yelled and barked constantly while I was away or just out of her sight. Nothing really helped until I got her a thundershirt from PetSmart. The first day she started wearing it while I was away she was silent and she had no accidents. It was a pretty amazing immediate change in behavior. Thundershirts can be expensive but in Rosie’s case it was literally a lifesaver. It helped her calm down and in a way helped me feel better about leaving her home.

There’s a podcast I’ve been listening to while training Rosie for some extra help. It’s called Your New Puppy: Dog Training and Dog Behavior Lessons to Help You Turn Your New Puppy into a Well-Behaved Dog by Debbie Cilento. It goes through the whole process of getting a new puppy and where to start. Even before you’d bring the dog home. It’s a great idea for new dog owners. It was helpful for some tips on training Rosie as well as how to introduce her to the other animals in my home. 

Some other influencers who I’ve found helpful happen to be on TikTok. The first influencer on the app is @nicedoglady. She’s a professional dog trainer. She has some tips on training and has made helpful demonstration videos. As well as things not widely known that aren’t good for dog training or just aren’t good for dogs in general. The second one is @imcesarmillan from Dog Whisperer. I remember watching the show when I was younger. I started watching his videos because I was like Cesar Millan has a TikTok? He makes some funny videos but also some informative ones. 

Also if you’re adopting a dog or cat from any humane society, PetSmart will give you a coupon book worth $450 of savings for free. Including a free exam at their Banfield Veterinary Clinic and many other amazing deals to help you with your new dog.

Reflection Blog Post COM210

My favorite project of the semester for me has to be our last one. I liked using premiere because it was a mix of audio, pictures, and short clips. I really enjoyed shooting short clips of my dogs, they were super cute and fun to do.

During this course I learned a lot of different things and I feel like if I needed to do something similar in the future it would help me to have these experiences. Even just for fun making little videos I think I’d like to continue to do. It was a lot of different types of tools to figure out and was confusing at first but I think what I’ve taken from it can help me do similar things later on.

I currently want to become a elementary teacher. I think some of the things we learned like communicating in writing to keep people engaged. I think the skills I learned can be used as fun ways to keep kids engaged and make things fun.

I think I would’ve liked if the adobe lessons built more on one another.

I mainly looked at other YouTube videos for help on specific problems I had with adobe.

COM210 Draft Video Story

My idea was to show a video of practicing leash training with Rosie, but it kind of turned into just the main focus. I only had a minute or so but I took a lot of videos. Rosie’s not good at being photogenic. I thought a neat slow mo of Rosie running would be a good intro. It’s kinda funny and she seriously runs so much so fast all the time. All. The. Time. I also wanted a title so after all the video I’d picked I thought it was really just a fun day with Rosie. I showed my other dog Tango as well he usually comes with if we’re going to the park but if we’re doing training he doesn’t always, that’s why he isn’t always there. I had a dip to black transition for all video transitions except the ones where I was walking Rosie down the same strip of sidewalk. After I’d pieced together all the video I started recording. I’m not good at recording myself speaking but I tried to do it so it aligned with the video and would be easier to edit if I needed to. I also added some music in the background (https://freesound.org/people/Drumartist/sounds/512674/). I ended it with a cute little video of Rosie in the flowers. One thing I did have issues with was the clips of me walking Rosie I couldn’t scale to fill the screen it just wasn’t working so I’m not sure what happened.

COM210 Storyboard & Raw Footage

This is my rough storyboard I think I’ll have more figured out when I get all my footage. I was trying to do more of walking on the leash by the sidewalk but a creepy guy showed up and followed me so my friend came to my rescue and we played with the dogs instead… p.s. please ignore my baby talk to the dogs.

Put vid of Rosie running with like an intro title

Videos of both dogs at the park 

Narration talking about how I’m trying to get better leash training for Rosie

“I usually walk down this way”, video of sidewalk

“I have treat in my hand and we walk, every couple steps of her staying by my side and looking occasionally up for me she gets a treat”, video of me doing this

More video of rosie and I walking

“We do this for a bit and then take a break at the park”, video of the dogs having a good time

“I usually bring Tango as well”, video of him 

“He’s wanting my attention now”, video of him begging

“Then I play with them a bit before we head home” couple videos of them being goofs

Video of us going in the gate home

COM210 Draft Audio

For the audition project I decided to do a sort of explaining a list of things I wanted to train my dog while we’re all stuck at home. It relates to my blog topic because it relates to dog training. When I’d first got Rosie and was working on potty training I listened to a podcast about dog training. That’s kind of what I thought of while doing this project. I’m not all that great at presenting or talking about something but I tried to pick a couple things I knew I was practicing with Rosie. I used a song from Internet Archive called “Emma Wallace”. The dog barking in the beginning is Rosie and my other dog Tango. I made my brother ring the doorbell to get them to start barking. I used the fade and adjusted the volume of the sounds. I also cut out the majority of “ums” and similar things. Some challenges I had for this project was mainly, I have a cold so recording was a little more difficult because my throat is sore but I have the brain fog from being sick.  

Logo Final – COM210

For my logo final I decided to make a logo for my blog. I have an outline of my dog, Rosies, face as the  center of the design, it’s significant because it’s not just an outline of a dog it’s my dog and it’s what my blogs kind of all about. The words “Dog Days” are significant because it’s the name of my blog and what I want to kind of be the main tag of it. I have the words and Rosie’s face outline in a circle so I thought it would be a fun touch to add a little hook at the top to make the whole logo look like a dog tag. I think it brings it together as a dog centered blog and makes it more significant than just being a circle. For my final I added some color, I decided on a rosy pink because, well, my dogs name is Rosie. I also copied the words I already put on there and changed the color to a different hue of the color I’d originally chosen and placed it behind the black lettering to make a sort of shadow. I changed the order of the layers so the pink words were behind the black. Using the arrange > send back doesn’t work for this because then the pink words would be behind everything and then you wouldn’t be able to see them. Keeping the colors similar helped keep it a simple look and helped it kind of blend together and match.  I also did the same thing for my dogs face outline.