Day 1

Day 1 of being unemployed. Yikes, that's a scarey word! We prepped Nic's resume, sent it out to a few people and put feelers out with a few others. Other than that he's mostly just helped around here and played with Laurent. I'm moving between feeling like impending doom is about to come crashing down with the financial situation and feeling completely at peace that this will all work out and that it's necessary and happening for a reason. It's also a bit weird having him here now as Laurent and I have our little routine and having someone else here just throws that. On the other hand, I'm really glad he is getting this time with Laurent. He was amazed by a couple of things that Laurent has done, nothing huge, stuff Lala does about a hundred times a day but stuff that Nic isn't around to see. And it's nice to have him around for "handyman stuff" there never seems to be enough time on the weekends to finish it all. So... yeah. Dealing. Mostly. Unless I think about the money aspect of it.

That aside, the dogs training is coming along nicely... Sierra is doing SO well on the things we were given to work on! :-) Granted it's foundation level stuff and we'd already messed with them to one degree or another yeah, yeah... BUT she is really doing very well and I'm happy with our progress! Heeling, I need to be careful she's not turning her head toward me looking for eye contact. This was taught as a puppy and I've never gotten rid of it. (Through lack of trying due to 900 other things being higher priority...)

It wouldn't be a problem now but I don't want to have to retrain later if we do competition obedience and it puts her out of line for being straight in sit/down/send out if she's slightly angled in. The thing that needs the most work is coming through the legs from the front. I gave up on luring or using the target wand and just started free-shaping it. Hard as I try NOT to lean forward, I do lean a bit to see what she's doing which is the problem I suspect. (Explanation for non-doggy people: many dogs are at least mildly uncomfortable with being leaned over and some find very intimidating indeed. Generally speaking, one dog looming over another would mean it was intending to attack, probably with the intent to kill, so it is a weirdly aggressive move from their POV when humans do it even if there is a long history of nothing bad resulting.) She's doing it, it's just that it's less enthusiastic than when coming from the back or doing a leg curl. Speaking of which, the cute little leg curl I started shaping last night has now been worked into 1.) go around my left, 2.) go around my right and 3.) a passable figure 8. (So using my legs as posts, she moves around them in a 8 shape.) That's about it for now.