Birthday Dinner

Yesterday we went to visit birthday girl and fiance’, they cooked brats (german sausages not children)  for us.  They were really good.  We ate outside it was great.  We took the dog because its five hours down and back no stops.  Thats about Zoey’s limit for being left alone, so if we take her we can eat and visit.  We can’t leave her in the car because its to hot, last week we saw the K-9 policeman, we could leave her if we had the mesh things he had for his back window.  I don’t have a plan for graduation in a couple of weeks, she’s not going to walk but we are going to celebrate by going out to eat.  Maybe we’ll leave Zoey at the apartment with the cats, I wonder if they have the rabbit crate still.  We played a game called Man bites Dog, it was fun, good party game.  Zoey met the cats, she was interested because she likes the bells they had on, they didn’t like her at all.  One ran away the other stayed but she didn’t like it, she was all huffed up standing her ground.  Zoey sniffed a little bit, they got within about 6 inchs of each other.  Last night when we got off the interstate we were sitting at the light and all of a sudden a car turned in on the exit ramp, we blew our horn until he pulled off.  He turned his car around and must have taken the right turn lane.  We thought afterwards it was better to scare the dickens out of the driver, then what would have happen if he had gotten all the way to the interstate.  I keep thinking what if there hadn’t been any cars would he (I think) have driven onto the interstate going the wrong directions, was there something there that would have cued him he was going the wrong directions.  Last year we were sitting at another intersection waiting for our light and the car in front of us started creeping forward, not very fast.  It was close to the lanes of moving traffic and just kept rolling, brake lights were on then we noticed the person seemed to be looking at the seat.  We used our horn but he just keep rolling and looking and crossed in front of 2 lanes of traffic before he looked up and stopped.  Cars swerved around him and nobody got hurt.

Happy Birthday

Happy birthday to daughter, enjoy your party tonight.  The puppy has the crazies already this morning.  I think about a mile should cure those.  I took her to Jim’s softball game last night, she did good.  She laid at my feet under the bleachers.  There were a couple of kids there and they gave her the treats and had her sitting and laying down and wanted to know if she would be back to other games.  It took a few minutes for her to warm up to the people, longer than most dogs but she does come around.

another day

I love spring.  Zoey and I played ball outside this afternoon.  Actually she thought we were playing but really it was school.  We were working on come and drop it.  She would run and get the ball and come back and drop the ball and I would throw it again.  This morning when we did the second circuit of the block she didn’t try as hard to go home when we passed the house, I only had to drag her across the street then she went back to walking.  It is progress, before it was the street and about 3 houses we had to pull her.  Have you ever seen a dog  jump sideways?  It would have been funny if it had been someone elses.  I explained to her several times walks were supposed to be fun not funny for the neighbors.

No Place Like HOME

I’m back home my Mom had a doctor appointment for a check-up, everything is fine, another one in six months.   While I was away, I made one sister a purse, I guess if the other one gets the fabric I will make her one.  She had gotten the fabric last fall and I could have brought it home to make it, but Mom had all the stuff so I just used her machine and whipped it out yesterday.  I sewed standing at the counter in the kitchen because there was more natural light and I was sewing black on black.   I’d like to get some fabric and make me another one.  Daughter has a venue and a date for the wedding, I guess we had better get to work on that.  Jim had to take Zoey to class today by himself, we’re to work on stay, and come this week.  She still needs a lot of work on drop it and leave it.

Not much happening

This week we have to practice with Zoey, drop it, leave it and down.  She is doing better walking on the leash, this morning we did our walk with just her collar.  Most of the time I put her harness on her and clip the leash to her collar and if she gets completely freaked I switch, because I really don’t want to choke her.  One of my neighbors said her dog will pull until she passes out, I thought they would stop before that.  All of a sudden she’s in this digging phase,  she was digging on our bed and right down she digging on the tile floor after I stopped her from chewing on a computer cable.   Lost my train of thought, whenever Zoey comes and touchs me with her nose I take her outside, and she did need to go.  Now she’s chewing on my pant leg.

Yesterday we had Easter baskets and colored eggs.  Friday night when we were buying candy and egg dye, we found out we weren’t the only parents of a grown child, worrying about the Easter bunny.   They also expected that they would be coloring eggs.  To be honest, I’m glad we did.  It was fun, then we played stock market.  And found out to replace our game which we paid a dollar for at a yard sale, (it was priced with masking tape, and we had it when we lived in Oklahoma) would cost about $50.00 or more.  Daughter went online to get her one and found out they are no longer made and very expensive if you have to get it from e-bay.  So we are no longer storing ours in the garage, it has earned a place in the family room.

Puppy Class redux

Yesterday was the second class and we got our “clicker”.  What I found out is I am very uncoordinated.  Holding the leash giving Zoey a command, making sure she did it, giving her a treat and clicking the clicker to much.  Its like when the kids tryed to teach me to play video games, just too many things to do at the same time.  To be fair I don’t think Zoey likes the clicker either I think she would just as soon be told verbally that she’s a good girl.   The big dog that the Maggie the other big dog didn’t like last week wasn’t there, so she didn’t like Zoey yesterday.  Tara the well dressed dog,  didn’t like Ginger that out weighs her alot.  Last week Ginger was terrrified this week she was wagging her tail by the end of class.   Zoey sits so well that we had a hard time getting her to stand, so we could practice sitting with the hand signals.  To work on our fear of ladders we went to softball practice with Jim because they have metal bleachers which make the same sounds.  At first she wouldn’t go near the bleachers after they rattled, but I was sitting on them with a treat and that eventually won out.  Oh by the way we had to run the gauntlet again, dogs barking frantically, but it was better.  There is an alanta bread company, with outside tables,  just down from Pet Smart and if it ever gets warm we going to take her out to eat.  We need a list of places where we can take her.

We went to a formal dinner last night at the Westin, the food was really good except the dessert wasn’t what they had on the menu.  We had raw sugar crusted sea bass and cider marinated pork tenderloin, the description of the dessert sounded like lava cakes with warm chocolate,  it was red velvet cake or a chocolate tart with ganache.  But they served a table really quick  five waiters with two plates they served one plate stepped to the right and served the second plate.  Then they  practially ran from the room and back and did the next table.  There was proably 30 tables, thats a lot of plates.  Sometimes it takes a long time for everyone at the table to get served, and once in Germany one of the waiters fell and broke his leg, that really upset getting the food out, but we didn’t find out about the problem until late in the dinner.

Ladders

If you are a puppy you have a lot of stress in your little life.  Walking on the leash is getting so much easier until one of the puppy stressors comes along, trash cans, trash bags, for sale signs, bouncing balls, and then there are ladders.  Ladders seem to be the worst for Zoey, don’t get me wrong she doesn’t like any of those other things but ladders seem to freak her out as bad as a big barking dog.  This morning we were walking along, she was walking right beside me for about a half a block and then the guy working on the gutter moved his ladder.  That was it, I pulled her the rest of the way down the block and then she pulled me the rest of the time.  Usually we do what ever freaked her twice, but we didn’t today. I can’t imagine what she’s going to do when we have balloons tied to a mailbox.   Tomorrow she has puppy class and I guess we’ll take her to pet smart again tonight so maybe she’ll be a little more use to it.  I just noticed our keyboard is covered with dog hair.  I dusted it.