mittmegettan

A bit more snow fell overnight and this morning, putting the kibosh on a trip into the city to PetSmart. We have lots of things to practice, but honestly, the living room is not challenging enough. 

Last week we started sits and downs in motion. Adia already does an automatic sit so she’s ahead of the game and we’d done some play with downs while we were walking so she was head of the class with that. She’s mastered it in the house and did well in class - now to take it ‘on the road’.  This week we added stand/stay in motion which means me cueing a stay, dropping the lead, and walking away. It took a few tries for her to figure out what I wanted, but what I loved is that she kept throwing behaviours at me until she figured it out. She’s developed a good ‘try’.

Her stay is pretty rock solid and can handle some distractions, although not the doorbell just yet. She can manage to stay while I open the front door and say a few words, especially if we’ve just practiced a bit. Bouncing toys might require a reminder. People coming in the door however, is a complete disaster...

Yesterday for fun while I was dancing around I taught her to walk backwards - a fun first step to free-style dancing! It took her a few minutes to get the idea. She hasn’t fully mastered it yet (!) but is well on her way. Since I was in a bit of a crazy mood I added in walking through my legs; again, she’s got the idea but hasn’t fully mastered it yet. Spike gets involved and with two dogs getting tangled in my legs it gets a bit tricky! Regardless, I was pretty stoked at how quickly she caught on!

I’m getting rather fond of the big dummy :-)

Poor Spike though… he tries to get involved but sometimes it doesn’t work out well for him. I had the treadmill on low, sort of to show Adia that it isn’t a good idea to use it as a step to get our workout socks… Spike jumped on but didn’t get himself turned around and flew off the back into the chair :-(  Sometimes he misses when he jumps on the futon or bed. He often falls running up the outside stairs. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were black and blue with bruises. Will he learn that he can’t do all the things he used to be able to do? Meanwhile, my heart breaks for him.

Our life doesn’t totally revolve around the dogs !surprise!… we went to Vashek & Marie’s last night for a lovely supper. Trudie & Leo and Jirina & David were also there. So much lively conversation! 

And the fun continued… tonight we had a fun supper at Trudie & Leo’s. Lots of talk about travel and implications the virus might have.

We are slow learners though… with a flush of optimism we left Adia loose in the house when we went out for supper. Peering at the camera revealed a few oddities on the floor that looked suspiciously like treadmill socks… and yes, they WERE. The worst sight though was the battlefield of destroyed mittens and gloves that littered the floor in front of Grace’s cage. No more second chances for the red whirling dervish for at least another month.

We are booked on a Caribbean cruise in 3 weeks and I’ll be honest, I don’t want to go with the covid-19 virus circulating. I’m not afraid of getting it, but if you remember, I always get sick on a cruise so will probably be quarantined in my room for some of the cruise. And if it shows up on the ship there will have to be special arrangements to bring Canadian’s home to a quarantine facility. None of which sounds particularly fun… I guess the odds are low that the ship will get infected… or are they?

“to know how to read is to light a lamp in the mind, to release the soul from prison, to open a gate to the universe."

~Pearl S. Buck