She's turned out to be a dream of a dog, such a good girl. I can't find any fault with her. She has a super high prey drive so training a recall around prey will prove challenging but otherwise she's super sweet, good temperament around other dogs though she is starting to get excited when she's on leash and she's other dogs posturing at her or behaving out of control. Mostly though she ignores them and/or throws off some calming signals. Gets along with Lola no problem.
And even at 15 3/4 years old, Lola suffers no fools.
She's 2 months out from her knee surgery, had her final x-rays and they looked good. One more month of building up strength and she's good to start jumping on the furniture again and doing more strenuous things. It's so hot right now that it's not like anybody wants to be running around doing anything crazy anyway. We're having a typical summer but it feels hot compared to the past couple few summers which were so much milder.
Ruby loves her roll arounds.
I've not been doing much training with her, partly because she doesn't need much, partly because of the heat and partly because of her surgery recovery. I've been working on having her circling a cone because this was part of her surgery rehab exercises anyway. I borrowed Silvia Trkman's 'Cik and Cap' video from a friend but we're still stuck on circling the cone. I started off luring this because she had to do this for rehab and no way was she going to offer it but now I'm working on shaping, waiting for her to offer it. This is going slowly, she doesn't understand the concept. I've been working on other shaping tricks as well, having her circle the legs of a chair, interacting with a very small box, high five. She's happy and eager to train, she just doesn't get it yet. Could be my shaping skills as well. Aside from being rusty it was never one of my strengths anyway. Once the weather cools off I'll start working on shaping her to tug and play with toys. Right now she'll grab a toy and tug only when she's in the mood and this is mostly right before or after meal times and before we go for walks. She LOVES walks, gets so excited when she knows she's going out. She's going to be a great running partner because she seldom stops to sniff or mark, just keeps trotting for the whole walk, nose to the ground but moving all the time.
So thankful for her, she's just what we need right now.
Now I'm off to continue my battle with the wasps. Spent two hours this morning driving around Boulder and Louisville try to get sticky wasp traps. Two Home Depots, one Lowe's, and two hardware stores later and we still came up empty. Apparently everyone else in Boulder County is also having Waspmageddon and those sticky traps are the only thing that work. Came home and ordered them on Amazon with a few mouse clicks. Duh. Though we were hoping to buy some to have right away. At least Ruby got to come and walk around all the hardware stores. She even got snugs and a cookie from a worker at McGuckin's, Boulder's expensive but has everything hardware store. Well everything but sticky wasp traps anyway. Jonny said there were loads the other day when he bought the one trap we have but all gone by today. Too Many People. Not enough sticky wasp traps.
The wasps are getting in between the siding and the foundation wall right near the corner of the house shown in the photo above as well as to the right of the door. This makes getting the dogs in and out problematic and I was stung again as well just trying to leave the house for a dog walk. So I caulked up the cracks and then we had a traffic jam of wasps on either side of the door because they could still get in but not as easily. They are not happy about this situation and now it's even harder to get out the door and they're getting in the house when we open the door. So we put a trap near the traffic jam and this killed a LOT of wasps.
But they're still getting in and out so I need to add a bunch more caulk which is hard to do because they're angry as a horde of swarming wasps. And even if I do manage to get a good seal there's still the problem of the wasps that are locked out and my current trap is obviously very full. So Waspmageddon continues, at least until Tuesday when my new traps arrive. Poor dogs, they can't enjoy their yard. Ah well, snow will be here soon, right?
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