Fun Thursday

I had a fun little adventure today picking up the dogs' next three months worth of food! I was going to use my lunch break to quickly pop over to the butcher's. Since it's not that warm out, I figured that the meat would be fine in the back of my truck, since I needed it start thawing any way. What should have been a quick trip, turned into a much longer one. On my way out of Portland, I heard a weird kind of vibrating noise. I couldn't see or feel anything particularly wrong with the truck, so I just assumed that it was one of the boxes pressed up against the tail gate and making a funny noise. Plus, I was on the packed streets of Portland and it wasn't like there was any space to pull over and check things out. So I continued on my merry way.

Then I noticed that I just didn't seem to be accelerating as quickly as normal and my truck seemed kind of sluggish. Again, other than the sluggishness, nothing really seemed all that wrong. Finally, as I'm moseying along the highway, an elderly couple drive up along side my and start very obviously pointing to the back end of my truck. So I figured something was possibly going on with my tailgate and causing that noise. I was luckily along a stretch of the highway that actually had a decent enough shoulder. I pulled over, and low and behold, I had a flat rear tire. Lovely! I had to call work and let them know that I was going to be a little later than expected.;) Then I called Adam to figure out what the heck to do. I knew where the spare tire was, but I had no idea how to get to it. He said that he would come help me out, but to start looking through my owner's manual. It's a damn good things they include those things in every vehicle!

As I'm sitting behind my truck leafing through the owner's manual (AFTER hunting down all the tire changing equipment!) and trying to figure out what goes where, a very nice guy pulls over and offers to help me out. And wouldn't you know, he's basically a pro. Had the whole air compressor tools in his truck! Needless to say, he got the tire changed in no time flat. Adam showed up just as he was finishing. Then I was off to Les Schwab to get the flat tire looked at. Turns out it's pretty well trashed. The tread part is fine, it just won't hold any air and something inside it is starting to separate. Which really stinks because I've only had these tires for a few months.

Meanwhile, I'm just really happy that this happened today and not tomorrow. I'm taking the dogs out to my parents' property in Pine Grove for the day, and it would have been a lot worse to be stuck out in the middle of no where with a flat tire and two giant antsy dogs in the truck.

So now I've got a fixed tire, lots of meat starting to thaw in my garage, and an awesome day of hiking to look forward to tomorrow!! It's been a good day.:o)

I haven't really tried out the Furminator on the dogs yet, but I did try it out on Trouble, our long haired cat and it is FABULOUS!! I think I have finally found a way to prevent the massive amounts of hair that he leaves all over the house! He will be getting brushed very regularly from now on.:)

Now for a revisiting of the rally weekend. Kathie, you are totally right, I should have continued on with Heffner past the station that he was stuck on. I think at that point, since I couldn't get him to do anything but stand there, I just wasn't thinking of going on. Which I could have done. I was going to botch the run any how, I should have continued on until we hit something where he was moving with me and then I could have really rewarded him. He was doing well enough at the very beginning that I thought we might be able to make it all the way through. I should have stopped at the sign that I had originally planned on. Our pivot was good and that would have been the ideal spot to stop at because he was actually making eye contact and staying with me. I think that I myself got caught up in being a little disappointed after he was looking like he was going to get through it, that I just didn't think about continuing on.

Our obedience instructor did say something to me though that I think I might try with Heffner. She was talking about her frenchie that she's competing with at the utility level right now. In order to keep her thinking that the trials are fun and just like matches, she does a bunch of matches where she gets plenty of treats and then enters her in one trial. Her frenchie gets so into the mode of matches where she KNOWS that she'll get rewarded, that she usually turns in a better performance at the trial. While she was referring to her own dog and to the previous trial that they had just competed at (we were comparing experiences at the same trial where she showed in the morning and I showed in the afternoon), it got me to thinking that maybe that's what Heffner needs. Lots of matches where he KNOWS that he'll get the rewards that he wants, and then ONE trial where I sort of "trick" him. It's worth a shot!

I'll talk more about our drill team in my next post!:o)