fire and control

I got my hair cut this afternoon and I must say it looks pretty fierce. And you know I don’t use the word ‘fierce’ that often, so it must be true. After my haircut I went to get some pictures developed at HEB. Then I came home and did some scrapbooking. Is that a verb? Scrapbooking? Whatever, it’s awesome. I can feel myself start to get totally obsessed with it. I try not to shop in the “scrapbooking” section at Hobby Lobby because I feel this urge to spend hundreds of dollars on scrapbooking accessories. God, I love it. It is incredibly fun to do and if I can’t imagine how bad I would be if I were actually a stay-at-home Mom… Thankfully I am not, and instead I scrapbook pictures of my clients and their dogs.

At around 5:30PM I began briefing Mom on what she needed to know to play Judge for Mackenzie and I. And let me tell you, it was quite a challenge. My mom, an extremely intelligent and successful woman, could not for the life of her figure out how to do a logical Heel sequence. Her favorite thing to call out was “Forward…Fast…Slow…STOP!” right before she ran us into the street.

After a few tries however, she gave us some pretty good ones. The “Fast…Halt” was actually pretty good practice even though it can’t be called out in the ring. We managed to get a few good sequences both on and off-leash. We then did a few Stand For Exams which Mackenzie did beautifully for the first (and only) time in her life. And this is my Mom, so imagine how she’ll do with a stranger if she can hardly stand still for my Mom. She’s never understood that even though I gave her a command she is still allowed to be petted. When we are at work and I’m working with her and someone comes up to pet her and let’s say she’s in a sit/stay, she will actually scoot away from the person who is trying to pet her. Either that or she will actually get up, walk a few steps away and then sit down again. Like she simply can not be bothered with petting when she is in a stay. Obviously we need to work on this.

We did Figure 8s with little cones as the posts which she did very well with. And then we did a couple of Heel Off leash sequences. Mom of course was terribly nervous that Mackenzie was off leash in the front yard (no fence) during 5-6PM traffic. Much to her surprise, Mackenzie is actually MORE attentive to me when she is off leash.

By this point I was sweating so much that my hair was about to start getting frizzies so we came inside. I talked to Dad for a little bit about how I was now officially promoting Mom to Head Coach and demoting him to Assistant Coach because she was learning so quickly. As we were talking Mackenzie decided to attack Beethoven (our 16yo Lhasa Apso). Although we’ve made great progress in lessening her food aggression, there are just some times when she can’t help herself (like Spaghetti Mondays obviously). She’s been crated for the past half hour (while we ate dinner) and we will probably work on training some more in a little bit once she calms down.

Tomorrow I’m going to a Pet First Aid class in Harlingen with a few of my clients and people from our therapy dog group.