I live... sorta

Well, it's been awhile. The reason why is that DH's grandfather had a 3rd heart attack and passed away. The funeral had to be delayed as one of his good friends was in France at the time and it wouldn't be right to have it without her after all she's done for him. The funeral itself was as nice as a funeral can be, a good celebration of his life and all the things he did. At 98, it was a pretty amazing life!

At any rate, after the police notified me, I was pretty much in shock, then dealing with the funeral preperations and the idea that he was no longer around, wouldn't be around for Laurent etc. And then life just sort of took over and I let the training slip. We did it occasionally but nothing very focused really. :-?

At any rate, we're back on track again...

I started this time with eye contact. Easy enough, Sierra is an Aussie Shepherd and STARING comes preinstalled and factory standard.

We worked in sets of 20, first rewarding for 1 s. of eye contact. Second set, we raised the bar 1 second/click, 2s/c, 3s/c etc. going back to 1 if she failed. Pretty cinchy stuff, got to 15 seconds pretty fast. It was at this point I realized her little dog-brain had made a weird connection. She figured staring was a bit too simple and was moving all over the place. Just picture it, this little red wiggling dog STARRRRRIINNNNGGGGG holes into my head while moving up, down, sit, to my left, to my right, stretching etc. etc. etc. Never breaking eye contact mind you but MOVING like crazy!

Made me dizzy. I don't [i]like[/i] being dizzy. So I started looking away if she moved and only rewarding 1 second in the same position, 2s, 3s etc.

After a few reps of this I discover my bright dog who I'd THOUGHT had figured out eye contact was the name of the game was figuring that it was really "staring holes into mom's head". Not quite little red dog!

So I promptly ignored her while staring holes in a spot at the floor. I got a, "yo... you alive up there, I'm standing here staring so CLICK me already!" response when staring holes at me suddenly failed to work. After a few grumbling chuffs failed to gain my attention, she had to actually resort to moving until she was standing straight in front of me in the spot I was already staring and staring at me before I realized she wanted a treat. Poor long suffering Sierra to have such an obtuse owner! ;-)

Other than that, the day was pretty good. We went to a screening for Laurent with a child modeling agency. They're pretty selective but we were one of the people who got in and we had his mug shots taken today. So hopefully we will get a few jobs for him soon, sounds like fun and he's such a ham I know he'll enjoy it. Was kind of sad to see some of the mothers there who were pushing their kids, even when they clearly didn't want to do it. :-/ I got my make-up all done nicely and they gave us a family portrait as well as L's standard shots which was really nice. The make-up artist who did it was a hoot and it was kind of cool getting all glammed up like that for once. I can't wait to get the pictures back! Till then here's one DH snapped on our way to the photoshoot... L is teething so he doesn't look real happy but I look decent for once!