Friday, October 19, 2012

Day Number three with my new partner (October 17, 2012)

This day started differently from the others. Hubby had to go work *sad face* so we were up at 7am, normal feed water and break for the pup. Hubby and I had breakfast together. Hubby left for work, and then I started to work on catching up on personal things. Sadly I didn't get much done, as I was so incredibly tired. If I fall asleep in front of the computer I am tired. I did get a few things done. Like for example, I still needed to send Emma's harness back to TSE. I had been putting this off, denial is a great escape. To explain further, I mean that if I still have her harness, she is still working, thus she is still my pup and she never retired. Logically I know this is not true, BTW my heart has not caught up to my brain on this matter. A note about Emma is that she apparently loves her retirement home and very happy. I miss her so much. I also worked on trying to catch up on my blog entries, but for whatever reason blogger would not let me post the entries I had written up. Thus you will see the previous three posts all in one spurt, because I had to have hubby post them for me.

At 1:30pm My MIL came and picked me up to do a bit of shopping. We headed to Target. Surprisingly not many people said much about Missy. Or perhaps I didn't hear them. I had to get a few birthday cards. My son is turning 16 on Sunday. It’s hard for me to even come to a reality that I am that old and that my son is that old. I remember the day he was born, LOL I won't go into that now. We then headed to the Post Office to send the harness off and the card. Missy was very well behaved in both places. It’s harder to figure out how to follow someone in a store, but Missy has done a great job. I have a person talk so that I can hear them a little. If I know where they are, then I can tell Missy where to go. I have vouched to my family and hubby that Missy will go everywhere I go. You’re probably asking why would I not take Missy everywhere I go. I'll explain, with Emma I got out of the habit of taking her when family was taking me or going with me some place. Not because she wasn't needed, but because it was easier not to take her. Maybe this helped that she retired earlier, or maybe it didn't do anything to her retirement, but in my mind I have to think about these things. It is easier for me to take Missy, yes I have to think about others, but Missy is the choice I have made to my independence.

After my shopping trip, I headed home. Yet again, I tried to work on school work, but I again fell asleep in front of the computer. I got home from my shopping trip at 3ish, but then hubby came home around 4:30pm. We then fixed and ate dinner. On this night, hubby had worship team practice. Around 7:30pm we started walking to the church.

Our walk to church certainly was the hardest and most challenging thus far. We started out okay, until we got to the path that goes from our circle to the street. Before it was a true path, but the HOA put dirty on the path, to seed it for grass, so thus to take the path away. In this area lot of people in the area let their dogs do their business in the grass. I am assuming they pick up, but Missy wanted to sniff every single blade of grass on the ground. Getting her back on track was hard, with lots of leave its". I felt like I was very mean to her. So back on our walk, once we got to a curb, she stopped as normal, but then crossing the street; she didn't take me to the curb. So we re-worked it 3 times. At this time, my hearing aids were not working well, the traffic was loud, and then they came apart. I am not sure why we had such issues on this walk, it was dark already, and I knew that I should have waited until a person could do this route with me, the someone from the school, not my hubby. Not that my hubby wasn't a good person to walk with, but it was a challenging walk. So we work through the curb issue and got back on track. This particular sidewalk is very broken up, but Missy steadied down well. So we are walking, and then the sidewalk turns off to the left, and there is a fire hydrant, and Missy takes me to the curb. I almost fall off the curb into the traffic. I re-worked it again with her and so she did well the second time. Shortly after this point we get a cross walk on my right and have to cross the street. At this point there are no more sidewalks, so we go to our country walk. I really dislike this street because in the gutters, there are tons and tons of leaves. Well Missy avoids the leaves like the plague. On the way we did well, it’s only about half a block that we do country work, then we turn right, cross the street that we are walking along, to the corner. We found the corner well, and then we must turn left and find the next curb. From here we walk in a parking lot that is not busy at all. At the beginning of the parking lot part, hubby was leading, and Missy was following. She did very well at following. We did arrive at the church a little late, but made it all in one piece. We have to work on those sidewalkless walks, and on those curbs.

When we got to the church, they were having a marshmallow roast, we navigated around this okay. The pioneer clubs and children’s activities were just wrapping up when we arrived. Missy did very well around all of the children. About 4 different people asked me about Missy name. Missy again is my pup’s online name. I am not giving anyone her name, sorry! Hubby and the worship had their band practice. Missy was not bothered by the singing or the instruments. It was nice to friends, all said they missed me. I missed everyone too. The worship team practice was not long on this night, so we headed home. I will say that the way back home, was much more of a patience tester than the way to church. Again we started off well, Hubby in the lead, walking at a brisk pace. Then we get to the part where I need Missy to find a curb, she did, so then we crossed the parking lot entrance. First try she took me into the street, second again the same, and then she found the curb. A huge huge huge, did I say huge mistake I made with this walk is not taking treats to give Missy to re-enforce curbs. From this curb we follow the left hand side of the street, doing our country work. Again she, Missy did not want to hug the left hand of the street, or be in the gutter, why. Because of the leaves in the gutters. There was quite a bit of traffic on this street for this time of night, so she was taking me into the line of traffic. It’s a wide street but Missy has to learn to hug the left hand side curb. So we finally we get to the street where we have to cross a two lane street. We cross and turn left to go down the sidewalk. So I thought we had passed that same fire hydrant, boy was I mistaken. Instead of going around, instead of taking me to the curb, Missy ran me completely into the hydrant. Oh let’s just say it hurt, I was going at a pretty brisk pace, and then hitting the hydrant at that pace hurt. I have a huge bruise on my right leg, above the knee. I made a huge deal about her running me into this object, and we re-worked it. The second time again she got it, and went around it. Again she did well for the part of the sidewalk that was very uneven and broken up. The next big challenge is the curb crossing the street. First time across she did not take me to the curb, and second time, was the same, and yet again the third was the same. It didn't help that this street that we were crossing was busy with lots of cars. On the fourth time across she took me to both curbs right away. I again made this a big deal, so she was happy. From there the walk was pretty uneventful; we found our path or our cut through to our circle. Before going in for the night, I broke Missy.

After arriving home, we played a bit. Before we could go to bed, we had a few things to do on the computer. Missy fell asleep right away, and when we got up to go to bed, it was hard to wake her. On this night we did not get to bed until after 11pm.

Until tomorrow, our first day of classes, Whoopee! 

No comments:

Post a Comment