Jeremy and I went with his father's side of the family on a cruise to the Caribbean to celebrate Grandma and Grandpa's 50th wedding anniversary. We had a fantastic time snorkeling, swimming, exploring, eating, and spending time with family that we don't see often enough. I think our honeymoon will have to be on a cruise - literally everything is taken care of for you, and of course, you get to take an awesome boat everywhere!
I've got the best tan of my life! Jeremy is peeling really bad (ew) but mine is a minimum. Hopefully it sticks around!
The injury report includes a run in with a decorative boulder. Seriously. I was trying to keep to the extreme right side of the road to get back to our cabin and somehow misjudged the distance between my right foot and this rock. Blood everywhere and a numb foot later, I tried to walk it off because I had an audience. I've got a lot of bruising, but the doctor says there isn't a fracture she can find, so I guess I'm good to go.
This afternoon I managed to burn my hand on the mower I borrowed, followed by twisting my left ankle in a divot in my front yard. Win!
And now onto the important part of the blog - training!
I haven't updated in a while, but things are progressing the way they should. I've shortened the amount of time I train Rocket at a time, because he seems to be in a better place the less time I spend asking for repetition on exercises. We are getting distance on go outs, much better attention on heeling, and, out of nowhere, we can now drop from a signal at a distance. WOO!
I'm trying to work on his attention span. He has a tendency to want to trot the ring when he feels he's accomplished something, or, sniff the floor if he thinks that food may appear. I've had to keep his attention by being squirelly - and for those of you that know me IRL, you know that I'm about as squirrelly as an ice berg. Which leads me to....
The K-dog! Someone should have told me that Dobe bitches are so much easier to teach things than dumb boys. I can be squirelly with her (I practice!) and she gives me the look of "Ah yes, watch the lower life form monkey herself for me. Perform, monkey, perform!"
Her attention is stellar, I can re-direct her bitchy tendencies (if I catch her hairy eyeball early enough) and she loves the work. I've never been punched in the ovaries or about lost my fingers so much in my life, but she helps me not be serious - because she's serious enough for the both of us. We'll see how she continues to progress once I start asking the "hard" stuff from her - dumbbell work and working in a ring with other dogs.
For shits & giggles I asked Leah to bring Revy with her to Kaylee's training yesterday. Holy cow - I now know why I would never train a short dog. My neck was starting to hurt, but it went really well overall for a dog that hasn't spent a lot of time at the club training. It did help me remember how to control my body movements - I had to keep reminding myself to stand straight, bend the knees, keep the back straight, etc.
I can't decide if I'm ready to attempt Beginner Novice with Kaylee or Rocket at the State Fair dog show....maybe I'll just keep that plan for our September show. I think I'll make sure I enter Ruby in Rally.
Rocket's next UKC show is next weekend - keeping our fingers crossed that we can pick up some more competition wins!
