Thursday October 4th, 2012

 

This day like the previous started the same. Our route in the morning was walking in area called KingsPark. This was specifically to work on rounded curbs. I know you all are asking what rounded curbs are. They are curbs that are round, DUH! LOL just kidding. No seriously with normal curbs they face the direction of the curb across the street. These curbs face into the middle of the street. So the trouble lies in that when crossing your alignment must be correct, or your dog could take you into the middle of traffic. I know sounds scary, and yes it can be. This is why there are several lessons just devoted to this subject. On our way we did horrible. Perhaps I expect a lot from my pup, but on the way back she did better. Overall we could have done better. Again today was humid and warm. The funny thing is that I am wearing shorts, and when I put them on this morning, they were too big. Like if you had yanked at them, they would have come off. So I decided to wear a belt. Maybe, just maybe I am losing weight.

 

For the afternoon we had our custody or ownership lecture. The difference with custody is that if for any reason, the dog needs to come back to the school, and it can. It’s up to the handler on what they want for custody and ownership. It was explained to us that there are some very few instances that a person is recommended to go with custody and now ownership. We were told this is rare. I chose ownership.

 

After that we had our individual pictures taken. It was incredibly funny because our instructors were making funny noises to make the dogs look at them. One was even making a chicken sound, we all joked with him that we were going to record it. Then we had our class picture. It’s hard with 10 students, 10 dogs, and 3 instructors to all get into place, and to get the dogs to look at you. In my individual and the group picture I was in a skirt. I thought it would look nice to be in a colorful skirt because my dog is all black.

 

Soon after I changed, and had some free time. But of course you can only guess what my free time was taken up doing….School work! Another chapter, another paper, *sigh* is the semester over yet? Just about the time when I get into the groove of reading, we had to go do our advance obedience. Advanced obedience is where we put the dog on a “sit stay” or a down stay” and we drop the leash, we walk away. And the dog is supposed to stay and be there when you get back. None of the schools I have been to before work on this. We worked on sits, and stays, but never for so long. We also had the dogs in sits stays putting food in front of them. We would say “leave it” if they even thought about going for it. Missy did well. Our instructor got the vacuum cleaner out and ran that around the dogs, again with the sits and stays. We dropped chains in front of them to react, but nothing happened. Missy just sat there. And the last but final challenge was a ball rolling around the floor. Again most of this stuff I didn’t have ahold of the leash. There were 3 other dogs and 3 other humans in the room too.

 

Lately I haven’t mentioned the food in my blog, but I have to give mention to tonight’s. The cook made personal sized pot pies, chicken, peas, carrots, and potatoes, with the most delicious crust on top. It was hard to eat all of it, but it was out of this world. I am not usually a pot pie sort of person, but this was good.   

 

Tonight’s lecture is on giving medications to your dogs. Both pills and liquid.

 

So Missy has been itching her back legs and it was getting on my nerves. So I asked my instructor to take her over to the kennel. When she did they found a few spots on her tummy and inner legs. They gave her an oatmeal bath, and now she is on antibiotics. I am use to just pilling the dog. Pilling a dog is opening their mouth and putting the pill down there throat. It sounds gross and dangerous, but all of the dogs I have ever had, are used to this. They won’t bite nor hurt you. You also do it in a way that won’t hurt the pup or me. So for her dinner time, I also put a pill in cream cheese in her food. She ate it all. I didn’t know that cream cheese was good or okay for the pups.

 

The other interesting thing, is that since the poop pick up lecture everyone is picking up after their dogs. The bags that GDF uses are small, so someone brought me big bags.

 

The other most note worth piece of information for today is that I got a package in the mail. I didn’t know who it was from or what it was. It was sitting at my place at lunch. Someone passing by helped to read the box. At first when they said it was from Lansdale, I thought “oh, hubby sent something”. But then closer look at the box said it was from Drug store dot com. I thought I didn’t order anything. So I opened it, and there was a card. Its from the bible study family’s house we go to. They sent me a bag of Asher’s chocolate covered pretzels. Yum Yum. It was so very nice to know that people at home were thinking about me. It really helped my mood. Here I am away from home, from my things, my bed, my husband, Emma, from my family, my church family, from school. And I have good and bad days, days I think to myself why am I here, why am I doing this. But to know people care for me so much that they would send me choclates that I absolutely love, just made me smile. So to those who sent the chocolates, you all know who you are. Thank you! You made my day much more enjoyable. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

 

That was my day, I hope people are still finding my blog to be interesting and informative. Please send me an email if you still like or dislike the blog. To all those who have been reading from the beginning, I one Thank you, and two love you. If your family and friends, I miss you. Please do email, call or text, I’d love to hear from you!

 

Until tomorrow…..