Waste Of Time, Sitting Still

I somehow managed to put my back out on Friday and spent the few days before and after New Year's mostly lying on top of a heating pad with walks interspersed here and there.  The spasm finally started to let up enough in the past couple of days to let me go to agility class and take more frequent and longer walks.  Being sedentary is really bad for a back spasm (and my sanity and motivation) but so is fighting through the pain so I've been working my way through it the best that I know how.  Probably should have headed to the Rec Center to use the sauna or had a good hot bath with Epsom salts but it's only been a day or so that I've had enough mobility to drive.  I'll hit up the Rec Center tomorrow, maybe even swim a bit of the masters workout if I feel o.k. but of course not fast.

I think it was a combination of shoveling snow then shoveling again a few days later then a weight workout and then finally a masters swim workout that had a sprint set of kicking with a kickboard that finally broke the camel's back.  The few days of bitter cold didn't help either.  Thankfully the sun is out and we're back to normal winter and I'm hoping I'll be completely back to normal activity by next week.  Should probably hit up the chiropractor, I haven't been in about 6-8 months or so and that's not helping either.  Insurance doesn't pay for it anymore and the schlep out to Louisville has become more and more irritating as traffic grows ever worse.

I should probably have a nice long list of goals for the year and I do have some but hmmm, I'm feeling uncharacteristically unmotivated.  The big goal would be to get a new place but that's not something I can completely control.  Other than deciding to make some compromises which I'm only a little bit willing to do.  The one compromise I feel comfortable with, though not happy about, is being open to a larger house.  We accidentally looked at a place that was almost perfect - 14 acres, a decent location and reasonable distance from neighbors, awesome water rights plus a pond and a creek running through the property.  A huge outbuilding.  The house was super nice and even had a sauna, but . . . 4200 square feet!!!  Crazy.  There was just no way.  The price was good too but no.  Neither of us could wrap our heads around the size of it.  But we may have to consider places up to 3000 square feet when 1400-1700 would be perfect.  I hate big houses, they cost a fortune to heat and insure and who wants to clean all that when it's only 2 people?  No thanks.  But unfortunately it seems like the larger pieces of land in the better locations with good water rights have big houses on them.  Makes sense I guess, the richer people would own the bigger, better plots of land and the rich do like their big trophy houses.  I'm optimistic though that this spring will be it, the right place will come along.  This works out better for the guy who wants to buy our house so I'm feeling like it's all going to come together this spring.

So once again it's difficult to come up with goals with so much uncertainty.  But recently I heard someone say, 'Don't wish your life away', to a 7 months pregnant woman who was living for the day the baby would finally be here.  And this is good advice, even for such a woman.  What's that other saying, 'Every day is a gift that you can't give back' or something?  Was an REI commercial I think, or some sportswear company.  Because, you know, t.v. commercials provide the best life philosophies.  But in this case it wrings true, at least for me right here, right now.  I don't want to take another year off of everything in anticipation of maybe moving.  So I suppose now that the haze of back spasm pain is mostly lifted I should come up with some sorta goals, or at least a sorta plan for the year that's flexible enough to accommodate a possible move.  Yeah, I'll let you know when I figure that out.

In the meantime I'll continue with agility foundation class.  It's still too early in the process to set a goal for trialing.  And I have the problem of I'm not sure if Tess will be able to trial and Ruby, well, Ruby can't do USDAA because even in Performance she'd have to jump 12" and that's just too high for her.  She can jump 8" in DOCNA but ugh, DOCNA.  I could almost put up with the boring courses but one of the owner's of DOCNA felt empowered by the current political climate to start posting racist bullshit on Facebook.  And I have a zero tolerance policy of racist bullshit.  I figured out how to turn it off my Facebook but ugh, I'm not sure I can hand money over to them now.  So I might be through with DOCNA for keeps.  AKC is also out of the question.  I don't think I can go back to NADAC with the super boring courses and weird rules and equipment standards.  I live in hope of UKI.  Or maybe screw trialing, so expensive anyway.  But maybe I can come up with some smaller specific goals.

I'm also not sure about going back to triathlon racing.  On the one hand, having a race on the calendar forces me into more formal training.  On the other hand, meh, maybe I'm happy enough doing my own stuff and can muster some discipline to be a little more organized and do a bit more than I did last year.  I like having goals though.  But I'm bored with all the local races.  Hmmm, maybe I'll plan on being fit for racing but keep the schedule open and travel last minute to an out of town race as my schedule permits (or doesn't).  I don't know, these 'goals' seem flaky and I hate flaky.

Think I'll go play with the dogs a bit then fire up the heating pad again and have another think on it.

Mancos Yet Again

We took another trip to Mancos, mostly for vacation but as long as we were going down there we figured we'd look at a couple few houses.  Long story short, we put an offer on a place that had a hugely inflated asking price.  We offered a bit above the market value and the people countered with a still way too inflated price so we said, 'Nah, we'll keep looking'.  The house needed a lot of mandatory work like a new roof and a new hand railing (Ruby could easily have ended up falling to the floor below) and a new garage door opener and and . . . the list went on.  It was too much of a fixer upper for the price though the land and location and water were awesome.  It's possible the sellers will become more motivated as time goes on, I can't imagine anyone snatching that place up and if someone does, well, good for them.  Anyway, the search continues.

In the meantime it was a beautiful trip, leaves starting to change on the Eastern Slope, less so on the Western Slope.  We missed the peak by a  week or two.  Still pretty spectacular.

Outside of Durango

I heart Mancos.  We will get there.

We're having a very odd fall, some days are typical sunny bluebird skies and others not so much.  So much rain this year after a super dry August.  As a result it's been more difficult to find good fall colors.

Drive up Wolf Creek Pass on the way home.

The Eastern Slope on the way there.

The Collegiate Peaks

Ruby taking in the spectacular San Luis Valley

We stopped for a little hike on the eastern side of Wolf Creek Pass.

San Juanderful. Everybody enjoyed the opportunity to stretch their legs and Ruby was off her head looking for critters in the many boulder fields we hiked through.

And today we have snow.

Not a lot will accumulate, the ground is too warm, but a lot of snow is falling.  This likely spells the end of color season in the high country but we should still have some around town as long as too many trees don't lose too many leaves.  If only fall wasn't so fleeting.

Adventures in Crazy Dog Lady House Hunting

At around 5:30 Wednesday night a week ago a perfect sounding house came on the market so I called the realtor and next thing I knew, Jonny and I were packing to leave first thing in the morning for a 7 1/2 hour drive to Mancos.  Coincidentally he already had the day off and I didn't have clients scheduled since we were going to go for a hike.  It seemed like a sign that we were meant to go and that this would finally be the place.  The land looked a bit too sloping from the pictures but the realtor was familiar with the house and thought there was some flat land somewhere.

It was 42 degrees and raining on Wolf Creek Pass.  Summer monsoon season is in full swing.

The house turned out to be near perfect - a remodeled farmhouse, 1800 s.f. which is a bit big but reasonable for us.  4 1/2 acres of land with great water rights and a big ass barn.

That came complete with a big ass barn owl.

And some big ass cliffs.

And a big ass view.

We were all set to make an offer on it when we found out that the land in the photo above would not be ours.  The owner was splitting the lot in half and building their new house on this part of the land which also happened to be the only piece of flat land big enough for an agility field.  Our piece of land would be mostly cliffs, a big ass orchard and a big ass barn with some slope-y bits of land between.  Plus a pond that the owners would retain rights to access even though it was on our piece of land so their dogs could swim across the pond and get on our land.  Plus we'd have to live next to construction noise for a year or two or who knows how long, who knows what they would build?  And they have kids and dogs and we already live next door to kids and dogs and we're so looking forward to getting away from other people's kids and dogs.

So disappointing.

We looked at a couple of other places that didn't seem promising but thought we should look as long as we were down there.  They weren't promising.  We did look at a perfect piece of land - great location and water rights and in great condition - but we'd have to build something on it and find somewhere to live while we were building.  Buy a used RV and travel the country until it's built?  And what to build?  Conventional, straw bale, rammed earth, something else?  There are many alternative building methods and materials out there.  It's all very overwhelming and not an attractive option.  Plus it's too late to buiy something and build before the snow start flying so a potential land purchase will have to wait until spring.  Ah well, the right place will come along.  I wish that drive wasn't 7 1/2 hours long.

We took the dogs and stayed with some friends outside of Durango.

Travel Buddies

Sunset over the La Platas

 Most places give you a mint on your pillow.  We got this.

Since we didn't have that many houses to look at, we had a lot of time on Friday to explore.  We decided to go up to Boggy Draw for a hike and when we drove through Dolores we came upon this.

I knew there was a trial over the weekend but didn't realize it was 3 days.  We stopped to take advantage of a socialization opportunity for Tess.  I saw a few people I knew, including a woman who just sold her place in the country outside of Durango and is moving to Moab in the city.  She helped a lot with Tess, fed her treats and brought her own friendly BC out to say hi.  Sadly Tess wasn't interested but at least she wasn't terrified.  Tess did freeze when a Cattle Dog started barking and lunging at someone else walking by from an x-pen that was pretty far away.  I turned her around and walked the other way, no point subjecting either one of them to each other.  And there was no way she was moving one more step closer anyway.  I was so sure we were past the freezing thing.  But otherwise she did o.k. walking through the hub bub of the shade canopies and people.  I may have shoved some kibble into a complete strangers hand and asked her to feed my dog when she showed the slightest bit of interest in us.  I wish I had had better treats but they were sitting back at the house, I wasn't planning on a socialization opportunity.  Must be better prepared.  And yeah, if you so much as make eye contact with me when I have Tess I'll probably shove kibble or chicken or hot dogs in your hand and ask you to feed my dog.  It's funny, guys want to make her sit or do something and I'm all, 'Just give it to her for being brave enough to go up to you'.  And they won't.  They end up handing me back my treats.  But the women get it, they give all the treats if Tess will go up and take them.  I've not been working a lot with 'Sit' or any other inhibitive behaviors because I want Tess being brave and offering behaviors, not inhibiting them which is her default.  Though at this point I think I need to start working with Sit, Down, and Stay in different locations with both dogs.  But not with strangers asking for them at a busy agility trial.  Sheesh.

We did go up to Boggy Draw for a short hike.  Tess still shouldn't go too far and she'd already been walking around the trial for a bit.  We were out around 45 minutes and the terrain was fairly flat and easy.

When we got back to our friends' house that night, Jonny realized we had a flat tire (slow leak so it was low, not all the way flat).  So we had a delayed departure in the morning since our friend had to take Jonny and the tire to Durango for a repair.  It's a new tire and under warranty so at least the repair was free and Discount Tire took care of it quickly.  We didn't get too late of a start and were home for dinner.

Ruby sez, 'Are we there yet?'

Kind of a fun trip but also emotionally draining.  We were so sure this house would be the one.  I'm a bit burnt out on Crazy Dog Lady House Hunting.  Something really perfect will have to come up to drag me down there again, I've had enough driving to last me until spring.

Tess Update

Tess is now 7 months, 1 1/2 weeks old.  Ish.  Her birthdate of December 28 is a guess on the rescue's part.  She was pulled out from under the abandoned building at around 4 weeks old so I have a reasonably good guess at her age.  She hasn't had any accidents in the house since she was 4 1/2 months old so I'm declaring her housebroken.  Actually I declared her housebroken many months ago.  Can't remember what age Lola was housebroken at.  I'm guessing this is fairly typical though it seemed kinda early.  Not complaining.  It helps if you're home a lot.

Photo from today.

And when we first brought her home.

She's looking more and more like a real dog these days.  Still all ears and legs.

She's doing well with walking through the neighborhood and nearby trails, mostly excited and curious rather than fearful and learning not to pull when she does get overexcited.  I do believe there's a fear aspect mixed in with the excitement so it's encouraging that she can often focus on us in the face of that.  There are still times when she can't though.  She was unexpectedly unhinged by a walk on a bike path that went under a loud highway.  It was early Sunday morning so not too busy but I realized that we seldom walk near busy highways.  We also took her on a trail that goes through a prairie dog town and their high pitched 'eeps' made her a little crazy.  She seemed a bit interested in the critters themselves (not nearly as crazy about them as Ruby is) but was unhinged by their cheeping.  She's scared of woodpeckers pecking as well.  I finally worked out that that's why she didn't want to go in the yard in the early mornings.  Oddly enough she's not scared of thunder or fireworks though she will  bark a little if either get really really loud.  Weird to have dogs that are o.k. with thunder and fireworks, Ruby's not bothered either.  Poor Strummer was a wreck with both of them and got worse as he got older.  Both the other dogs were bad with them too but poor Strum, he suffered the worst.

More photos from today.

She's been to two agility classes, the first was a private lesson so the instructor could see where she was at and we could see what she'd be willing to do at the facility.  Apparently I'd painted a picture of doom and gloom because the instructor was expecting something way worst than what I'd described.  Tess was nervous and excited but she did o.k. and was willing to work with me and mostly focus on the tasks at hand.  We did started with some simple little games (throw the treat on the ground and tell her to 'Find It', shape her to put front feet into a dog bed) then progressed onto 2o/2o on a small, slightly elevated plank as well as the Offering a Jump exercise.  There were probably some other things that I don't remember.  The instructor felt she was fine to come to class so she went to her first group class last Wednesday.  Again she did fine.  Her biggest challenge was waiting in the car when I took Ruby out for her turn.  Oh the barking.  Next week I'll bring more Kongs and hopefully she'll get used to the routine.  It's important for her to learn to be calm in the car without Ruby.  Ruby is her rock.
 






















In class Tess worked on a nose target, more 2o/2o on the plank, sending through a straight tunnel to a food bowl and introduction to the low dog walk (Just walking up and down the plank and along the top plank.  She bailed a few times and then got more comfortable.  She seemed funny about her back feet being on the planks, maybe something about the feeling of the granulated rubber since she seems fine on my wood planks at home).  She seemed fine working in the facility, took her a little bit to go through the tunnel which was longer than my little 10' practice tunnel (maybe was 15').  I think this will be good for her, pushing her limits but not pushing too far.  The instructor Nicole has been awesome with her.  I hate that 35-40 minute drive to and from Arvada but this has turned out to be a really good fit for both dogs and I'm learning a ton and enjoying the One Mind methodology. 

Interesting to see how much she grew in 11 days.

July 11

Today (July 22)

Hmmm, hard to notice much in those photos without something for scale but in real life she seems way bigger and more mature somehow. 

More from July 11.

Coming up next, some hiking adventures.  And of course more puppy.

Puppy, Hiking, More Puppy, More Hiking

I know, so much puppy.  But how often do I get a puppy?  Sixteen years since my last puppy so I think I get to post ALL the puppy pictures.

These are from June 5th, a week and a half ago.  She's so much bigger now.

She's all legs and ears.

Poor Ruby, she's such a good sport.

Loves her.

This is called the 'Mr. Piggles is SO Much More Fun Than My Undies Game'.  This is also one of the first shots with my new camera, a Canon point and shoot.  My old point and shoot is dying and I can't have that with a new puppy.

These photos are from yesterday, also with the new camera.  The light was not fabulous but I had some spare moments and wanted to give the new camera a shot.

Tess loves Ruby very much and gets a lot of confidence from her.

She seems so big, and today she seems even bigger.

She's made some nice progress with her confidence as well.  Took her to Home Depot and she walked right in no problem, even with the sliding automatic door.  We've worked on that at the grocery store.  She was a bit nervous of the carts and people squatting in the aisles but otherwise she walked around, no freezing.  We went super early in the a.m., not long after opening so it was quiet.  Maybe next time we'll go when it's a bit busier though if it's too busy I may have a breakdown.  I've backed off the socializing a bit, mostly for my own sanity,  I hate big noisy crowds and busy places.  It's funny that I'm going to all this effort to get her used to places I never intend on going but it's good to get her as used to everything as possible.

She had her final puppy shots at the vet and did way better than last time but still was pretty nervous.  Shaped her to get on the scale, she was around 27 lbs.  Scale kept changing numbers so could be plus or minus a pound or two.  Now the vet says keep the rear dewclaws.  They're actually formed toes, not just wimpy flappy claws, and kind of freaky looking but I'm all for less surgery.  Normally I would spread out distemper and rabies shots but I didn't want to subject her to another vet visit so we did it all at once and thankfully she had no vax reactions.

Took her to see her poodle friend today and she did great - pulling my arm off to get to the yard, flying around the yard as soon as I let her off leash, going over to my friend to say 'hi'.  Still not playing with the other dog but mostly not scared of him either.  Something had recently killed a rabbit in the yard and Ruby was more than happy to check out the scene of the crime.  Overall a fun morning for the gang.  Now to get her as comfortable with some other yards and dogs.

Jonny and I took a nice hike over the weekend on a quiet trail in the Indian Peaks Wilderness.  Such things do still exist, we saw a total of 2 groups of 2 people, one with a dog.  The trail is an old jeep road for the first couple few miles which is probably why it's so quiet, most people prefer a trail.  But it's not too rocky and we were o.k. with it if it meant no crowds.

The snow melt is in full swing so parts of the trail were running with water right next to some remaining snow banks.

This was above the running water, approaching treeline.

There were some nice views along the way.

Top of the World.  Or treeline at least.

At treeline the trail turned to pure snow and it was super steep, not a great combination for hiking boots so we turned around.  I suspect there are more spectacular views from the top of the ridge but it will have to wait for another day.

Tess is too young for such a steep long hike and despite all the snow it was a hot day so we left Ruby home.  Maybe once things thaw out and we plan for an earlier/cooler start we can take Ruby.  The dogs had a good early early morning romp at the dogpark where we practiced recalls and had the joint to ourselves so I didn't feel too badly about leaving them behind.  It's great to see Tess stretch out and run.  She does these funny flying lead changes, looks like a dressage horse.

Went to Target at 8 this morning to get the dogs a cheapo paddling pool since it's getting hot out and neither dog is thrilled about water.  I did some shaping with the clicker to try to get them in the pool.  Tess was batting the water with one paw after the first session and batting for more reps with both feet after the second session.  Then I took her to my friend's house for her doggie play date and she was batting the water in the water dish in the yard.  Such a funny girl.  By the third session today she was standing in the pool with 2 feet comfortably and had a few reps of all four feet in though she jumped out as soon as all four feet were in.  Ruby was standing with 2 feet in on the first session but I didn't get any further with the second session because Tess kept getting in the way.  Will try again later with only Ruby.

I have a short trip planned for next week, have to deal with the hassle of flying.  We'll see how that goes.  Jonny gets the pups all to himself.  We'll see how that goes.