Since I’m talking about things that don’t go as planned…I’ll tell you what happened this afternoon. For the last week or so, I’ve thought that something felt odd with my front teeth. They didn’t hurt, but something didn’t feel right. That is absolutely horrifying for someone like me. It’s nearly impossible to think of something that scares me more than having to go to the dentist. You’d think that after I worked in a dental lab for a couple years it would have helped my ridiculously unfounded fears, but it didn’t. I still avoid going like the plague. I’d rather do just about anything, even go shopping for rustic furniture if it would keep me from having to go to the dentist. Well, today I was flossing my teeth and out comes a filling from the backside of the front tooth. Ack! Now I just can’t seem to keep my tongue out of what feels like a crater in the front of my mouth. So, joy of joys…I will be going to the dentist tomorrow. LOL Definitely, NOT PART OF THE PLAN…

Anyway, the class to qualify for DOCNA Championships is the North American Challenge. It would have been a really pretty run, except that again on the dogwalk, (maybe a little sass was still left over), she wouldn’t turn off it into the tunnel, instead she jumped back onto the dogwalk first. So that’s a 10 point fault. Fortunately…DOCNA allows up to 12 faults in this class. So, despite our bobble, Zoe will be going to Championships again this year.

The drive up and back both had parts I could have done without. On the way up we saw lots of deer because it was so darn early in the morning. We almost hit one coming into a town. Fortunately, Zoe was in a crate, so she was fine. My friend’s dog was riding loose in the back seat, and she got thrown off the seat, but was still ok. On the way home, we hit snow, and rain and slush and mess. It made for a very tense ride home. I’m definitely going to be grateful for warmer weather and decent road conditions again in the next few months.

My husband is out putting in more resumes today. One is a janitorial position. Not his ideal line of work, but it’s with the school district, so that part is good. He probably won’t be using any Anilox roll brushes for cleaning printing presses, just regular old cleaning. LOL For the rest of the week, a friend of ours has asked him to refinish her cabinets, so that’s a small job to keep him busy.

I’m headed out later today for an obedience lesson with Dare. Should be fun. Hopefully we’ll come away with lots of interesting stuff to share.

I better stop while I’m ahead. I’ll just keep posting more and more cute puppy pictures if I don’t stop now. Anyway, after I get done up there today, I need to come back home, pack up the car for the DOCNA trial tomorrow. I wish I could say I was looking forward to it more than I am, but I think the busy week is taking it’s toll. I’m going to need to go to some Outer Banks vacation homes to recover after it’s all over. LOL Actually, I can’t say I’m not looking forward to running agility tomorrow…it’s that I’m going with a friend that doesn’t want to drive to Salt Lake tonight, so we are going to have to leave here at 4:30 am tomorrow. Plus it’s supposed to snow again. Do we all sense a theme here? Whenever I need to drive to Salt Lake, it snows. Bleh. Anyway, hopefully the roads are good for us, and I’ll have lots of fun stuff to report when we get back.

Once we got there though, it was well worth the drive. I can’t say that the weather was much better once we got there. I was bundled up, in a t-shirt, knit jacket, a fleece pull-over, and then my heavy winter coat, gloves and I borrowed a hat from a friend. It still wasn’t enough when the wind was blowing. LOL The agility was awesome though. Made sitting in cold well worth it. I was auditing the morning session and then Layla had a working spot this afternoon. We worked on some really fun sequences and all in all, I thought Layla did well. She did great on her weaves the first three runs. Hit the entrances very nicely and weaved all 12 poles no problem. After that, she struggled. I think it’s just that we had to kind of rush through our weave work last fall, and haven’t had much chance to work on it, since winter came. I think she’s got a basic understanding of the weaves, but under stress, they aren’t a strong behavior yet. Just green dog stuff.

Another weak point I knew would show up would be her contacts. When she came up lame, I didn’t have a chance to really solidify what I was doing with the criteria for the end of the contacts. I had intentions of retraining, but again the weather got the best of me.

So, I really want to be able to see some improvement in both areas by the time we have our next Stacy workshop in April. That means that I may have to haul the equipment back out into the field and hope it doesn’t sink into the mud so we can work it. On a good note, I can see where some of the future steps on that Jump training DVD will be helpful in the kind of sequences that we worked today. It’s always nice to see that you might be on the right track with something you’re training.

I’ve spent the last few days printing up some things for a some friends of mine. Not on an epson tm-t88iv, or anything, just on my regular printer. It was one of those projects that seemed like a good idea at the time, but once you get started you realize that you’ve taken on something much bigger than you expected. At least I’m pretty much done now, and I hope they like it.

Layla and I got out in the yard today and I finally got the video camera out too. So, here is a really quick video clip of her working on the next step of the Jump Around the Clock drill. It’s called, “run by” if I remember right. The idea is to run with the dog, (no stay or wait required) which should encourage an extended jump style. You do the same thing you did on the previous drills, working the jump from different numbers on the face of the clock. Here is the video. It’s nothing great, but you get the idea.

Anyway, I’ll try to update throughout the week as I have time. If you want to check out what Dare is working on, here’s her latest trick video.

As for the wedding part of the post…we got news that both my niece and my nephew will be getting married. We haven’t received any invitations yet, but we know that my nephews wedding is the 2nd of April. My niece will most likely be married in June sometime. Hard to believe that either of them are old enough to be getting married. Crazy!

And now for the winter part of the post. Everything was drying very nicely and…we all know what I’m going to say next. We got more snow today. We’ll see if we get more overnight, but I sure hope not. I have been working with Layla and Dare out in the yard for the last few days, but I haven’t had a chance to get video. I’d like to say that I will get some soon, but I’ll just have to see. This next week is going to be insanely busy.

So, while I wear myself out mentally running through scenarios that haven’t happened yet, and might not ever happen, he is much more productive. He is looking for work, but he’s also just catching up on things around here that need to be done, like an oil change for the car. Or looking into a tune up for the truck. Another day he worked on some cabinets for his mom. The thing I envy most, is that he has the ability to just set aside his thoughts and relax too. I soo wish I could do that. He can just watch some tv, or surf for information about electronics that he’d like to get, or read about random stuff like an Acura Integra, a car we don’t even own. LOL I can do that too, but while I’m doing it, I’m thinking about ten other things. I don’t know…I better watch out, he’ll be ready to send me to the Houston auto repair place for an overhaul on my brain. Anyway, enough rambling for now. I’ll get back to dog training stuff later on today.

My husband went out for an interview for a job yesterday. It’s not really an ideal job, but it’s a job. He thinks that the interview went ok, but of course them more time he has to think about it, the more he’s questioning himself. Bleh. Hate how the mind works sometimes! I guess they will be calling for second interviews on Monday, so we’ll know more then. Monday he also has another interview. So, at least there are some possibilities. The other fortunate thing is that we are not in need of any bad credit credit cards. In fact, we don’t have anything on credit cards so that’s a big relief right now.

The other thing that we are tossing around is the possibility of me taking some online courses to get certified to be able to do medical coding and billing. We have a couple friends that have done it and it seems to be a field that is growing right now. So, I am going to be talking to them a bit more in detail about what is involved and the chances that I would be able to find employment working from home once I finished the courses. I don’t have much choice in that regard, since someone needs to be here to run the boarding kennel too.

Anyway, just a little glimpse of what is running through my head right now.

As you can see, keeping my house clean for the next little while is going to be a real task. LOL It never ceases to amaze me how dirty these two can get. But, they sure do have a good time running and playing out there, so I guess a little clean up is well worth it. In fact it’s not really anything to complain about. It’s not something serious like if someone we knew had Mesothelioma Cancer or something. Today I’m really grateful to have what teeny tiny problems are mine. I’m going to try to keep in mind that these two muddy girls are trying to tell me that spring and warmer weather are just around the corner.

The next video is of the Jump Around the Clock drill. We don’t need any industrial hand wheels to do this one. I just need to keep track of our imaginary hands of the clock. If I remember the drill correctly, you are to have the dog jump from all around the clock. So, if you set the dog at 6 you go to 12 on the clock. If you set the dog at 4 you go to 10 etc. The next step would be that you start changing up the distance of dog from the jump and also your distance from the jump to test out their ability to recognize the need to either extend or collect at the jump. I am thinking that we may run into some trouble doing this in the limited space in the barn. We’ll see though. In the meantime, here is the first part of the drill that we’ve done.