Wow

So that's the longest that I've ever gone without blogging! Holy cow! Lots of the usual. Busy with work and busy with the dogs. I ended up getting offered the new position that I was applying for. And my boss has counter offered. I'm just waiting for my official offer letters to give my final decision.

Gad zukes! The biggest problem with going this long without blogging is that there's way too much to catch up on to fit it adequately into one post. And since my memory can suck at times, I'd probably be pretty sketchy at trying to retell it. I'll do a brief over view.

I mentioned that Bess got her Beginner Novice title! She still didn't sit on the one and only halt in the heeling pattern. And her sit was a bit dysfunctional throughout, though she managed to totally nail the halts on the figure eight. Go figure, since I never throw in the halts when I'm practicing. I just reward for staying with me and for the speed changes. She also got another RAE leg that same weekend. Her performance in rally was pretty poor. Obedience was definitely much better. And then I did this crazy thing where I stopped coaxing her through part of the Advanced run and put my hand on my stomach like I do for our obedience heeling patterns. And she magically got better. I'm not saying it was great, but it was much improved. Maybe there's light at the end of the tunnel!

I also audited a Dee Dee Anderson obedience seminar. It was great! A lot of information packed into two days. Lots to think about and work with.

And then this past weekend I had the danes entered in an AKC agility trial. I apparently did some misrecording of where Bess had what legs. I thought she was in Excellent JWW but it turns out she was one run short. The flip side of that is that she actually qualified in Open Standard back at the beginning of February and she is now in Excellent Standard. Well, this past Saturday after two crazy runs in FAST and Standard (due to too much rain all week, the dogs didn't get a lot of exercise and an under exercised Bess is not such a great thing), she stuck with me and nailed her Open JWW run for that final leg!! Heffner was fabulous in both of his runs that day, but we had little bobbles that cost us the runs. However, he was really enjoying himself out there and I can honestly say that I had more fun running both dogs that day than I've had in a quite a while!!

Technically I had the dogs entered again on Sunday, but that wasn't to be. Ruthie seems to be a little constipated and she also periodically goes through these phases where she gets ticked off in her crate at night and will scream at random hours for no reason that I can figure out. Saturday night was a particularly bad night and she was sounding off at least once an hour. I don't think that I got more than a half hour of "sleep" at a time all night. When my alarm went off the next morning I got up and was going to see if some coffee would help get me through. Unfortunately that just wasn't going to be enough. I was not functioning really at all. There was no way that I could memorize courses let alone run them. And operating on less than all my faculties while trying to maneuver my very large reactive dog around an agility trial venue is not the smartest thing to attempt. So I drove up the fairgrounds to pack up my crates and headed home to try and catch up on some sleep. As soon as I hit the bed, Ruthie started screaming in her crate again. I'm not going to lie, I was not terribly fond of her at that point. Because I was seriously sleep deprived and about to lose my mind and possibly go all homicidal on her screeching butt, I put the bark collar on her and peace thankfully reined in the house.

My wonky sleep schedule over the weekend left me feeling almost hung over on Monday. And I've got a relatively calm but long day at work ahead of me tomorrow. Fingers crossed that all involved are feeling cooperative tomorrow. My sister also went into early labor today and I'm kind of on pins and needles waiting to get the call to head down to the hospital. So lots of exciting things going on!!

I hope that my absence hasn't upset anyone!! And hopefully I'll be back to blogging on a more regular basis. :0)