Then the car windshield got a rock chip, so we had to get that repaired before it spread. Thankfully the insurance covered that repair, so that’s nice. I didn’t have to spend a bunch of time searching around for the best insurance quote.

I really need to take advantage of the good weather though and get outside and spray weeds before the wind picks up and makes it impossible again. It should be a great day, I think it’s supposed to be in the 70’s! YAY!!! I’ll try to post more later.

First the mountains to the Southeast of our house…

Now the view to the Southwest of our house…

and the girls at the start of the walk…

And then, I looked to the North and this is what we saw…

You might think that I would have turned around at that point, but NO!!! I just kept walking and we saw this really awesome pair of canadian geese that were about to land on the pond that we were walking past. I had to try to get pictures of that. Well, my camera battery lasted for one shot. LOL So you just have to take my word for it that they were beautiful.

We were about 1 1/2 miles into the walk, when the wind picked up and it got dark, fast. We turned around to head for home, but it was too late. We walked, and ran the 1 1/2 miles back in hail, which then turned to snow and freezing wind. The most irritating part was that I forgot that Zoe thinks that if I start running, she should accompany that game with barking. Ugh! That seemed to encourage Dare that this was some grand game and that maybe she should try to trip me by grabbing my pant legs and shoelaces. I finally decided that we weren’t going to get home without being cold and wet anyway, no sense running to get there. I really didn’t have this in mind when I was hoping for fast weight loss.

Anyway, we made it home and the snow let up enough that I grabbed my other camera, just to show you that I’m not making this ridiculous story up. Do you think I’ve convinced the neighbors that I’m crazy yet?

A couple years ago I got into a really good habit of walking the dogs everyday, regardless of the weather. We went rain, snow, wind, whatever. The dogs didn’t care and really once I got in the habit, neither did I. Since then though, I guess I’ve gotten lazy. Why is it so darn hard to get into a good habit, and so easy to slip back into the old bad ones? LOL Well, one thing is for sure. Whether I get myself out the door to walk the dogs early in the morning or not…I probably won’t be online looking for any pronexin acne cures. If the weather is really yucky, I’ll just work on my schoolwork and the dogs will have to settle for training inside again.

Here’s what greeted us this morning.  It doesn’t feel too cold though, so I think this will all be gone by this afternoon. The weird part is that I even think it’s a little pretty today. Wow! How’s that for sounding positive? Are we all sure that my husband isn’t having some influence on my thinking.  LOL

Just so you know it’s really still me here, I’m not all that excited about following through with my plans for this morning.  My friend has her basic obedience class this morning, and I told her that I’d bring a dog or two to train off the side of her field, so that I can be used as a slight distraction for her students and they can do the same for me. Sometimes it makes me think I’m crazy to have chosen dog sports as a hobby for myself.  Couldn’t I just be happy with a playstation 3 like so many other people? Then I could stay in my nice warm house, and never leave my couch. Hehe. I don’t think that’s going to happen. I wouldn’t trade a day out training with the dogs!

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.

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.

I have a little ranting to do…and a little raving too. Bear with me. LOL I got ahold of Dr. Overall and she agreed that it would be appropriate to add amitriptyline to Rogue’s daily meds at this point since we haven’t seen progress with the fluoxitine alone. I spoke with the vet here in Salt Lake today shared her recommendations, and he agreed to call in the prescription.

Here is my rave. The vet in Salt Lake asked me if I’d considered working with a trainer to help Rogue. I’m grateful that I have a vet who obviously realizes that Rogue’s issues need to be addressed by not only medication, but also through training. I wholeheartedly agree that behavior modification is vital. I would never think that medication alone is the answer. I feel very privileged that we found Dr. Overall through Leslie McDevitt and that she has given us protocols of behavioral modification to work through in addition to her recommendations for medication.

However, here’s my rant. I think I literally bristled a little when he made that comment. Long before I decided to go down this avenue of seeking anti-anxiety medication for Rogue, I had been working with her to modify her behavior. I thought that I’d explained what we’ve done with Rogue prior to coming to him. In fact, I think that anyone who knows Rogue…knows the amount of time and effort we’ve put into training. Granted, in hindsight not all the training that we did was helpful. In fact I think some backfired, but I did what I hoped would help. Bleh, I don’t know, it just struck me like he thought that I hadn’t tried any training before. Whatever, that’s my rant for the day!

So…here’s the latest. We’ll start her out adding 10 mg. of Amitriptyline once a day for 10 days and then go to 10 mg. twice daily. I’ll keep everyone posted if we see any changes. Keep hoping for the best…

Frustration and impatience. Those two words would describe how I’ve felt about this process with Rogue lately. Well, and then guilt. Probably those three would sum it up. They usually come in that order too. I’ve been reading and re-reading the consult and protocols that we got from Dr. Overall, and this phrase always gets me, “these are the dogs who show you the type of person you can – but never expected – to become.”

When I first read that statement I thought, “yep, living with Rogue will reveal good qualities about us that we didn’t know we had.” How egotistical! LOL What I overlooked was that it was going to reveal many more negative qualities about myself than positive ones as her stress and anxiety wears on me. As we work through this process, I’m beginning to think that it’s more about being willing to see the flaws in your character and being willing to work to overcome them, to become a better person. Just my thoughts for today….

February is now here and we’ve made the decision to cancel the trip. It seems that for the moment his job is still “secure”, although I don’t think any jobs are secure these days. The problem is that with the lay-offs they need all the remaining employees to be able to step up “if” more work comes in, and so taking a two week vacation is just not possible right now.

I’d be lying to say that I’m not incredibly disappointed! I kind of felt like this was a once in a lifetime shot to compete with one of my dogs at a National level…but life goes on.

Well, come to find out that the dosage that we’ve been giving her of 1 mg. daily of the fluoxitine was wrong. Turns out that was a typo and we should have been giving her at least 5 mg. daily, if not 10 mg. So, after I found that out, I tried to contact the vet here and he’s out of town till next Tuesday. Ughh! At the prompting of my friends at Sheltie Rescue I called the vet’s office again and asked if one of the other atttending vets would consider changing the dosage of the prescription, so that we don’t have to wait till next week. Fortunately, they were nice enough to do that for us, and we’ve picked up the new dosage today.

I’m trying to look at this as a really long ramp-up time on the meds, instead of just viewing the last 7 weeks as being wasted, but I’m only partly convinced. LOL Hopefully in the coming weeks we will have some progress to report. I hope!!!