Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Category Archives: Katie


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Random Alabama photos

It’s been a heck of a week, so I don’t have any cohesive thoughts for you…just random things I found interesting.  I’ve had car trouble, leaking oil hoses and such and the truck has been in the shop for the better part of the last three days.  I had a “rent a wreck” type car that the dealership gave me, but I was afraid to drive it far, so I’ve been “stuck” at the lake.  Oh poor me! LOL

Meanwhile, here’s a couple of photos of life here in Alabama…the first is the local polling place.  Tuesday was a primary runoff election, so it was open for business.

You can’t see in this photo but besides having a big sign on the door that says “Vote Here” there are little signs on either side of the steps pointing inward that say “vote.”  Now I’m pretty sure all the locals knew it was an election day, and where to go, and I really doubt anyone needed the additional signage.  But it was cute!

Those of you not from the south might not know about kudzu.

It grows on anything and everything down here.  It was introduced from Japan in 1876; now it’s a continual battle just to keep it from over taking our homes!  It has a blossom that smells like grape jelly, and if it weren’t so invasive it would be kind of pretty.  It often looks like topiary..only it’s out in the wild.

Wednesday I took the boat out on the lake by myself.  I haven’t been the sole person in a big boat since I was in my teens, ferrying siblings to their swimming lessons across the lake.

Funny how on this trip I’m relearning skills I took for granted 40 years ago.  Being out on the lake was nice, though in the back of my mind I was keeping my fingers crossed that I didn’t have any mechanical problems.  I remember paddling the boat home as a kid, and the lake I’m on now is MUCH bigger!  So is the boat.

I even got the boat back into the boathouse.  I’m glad no one was watching, because it wasn’t pretty, but the boat is unscathed, and the boathouse is still standing.  So there.  I had to wait for the two white ducks to meander across my bow as I idled into the dock…but you know ducks…they were there first so I waited.

I took the jet ski out later in the evening.  The lake is beautiful then, with the low sun making the red clay on the banks just glow.

Husband is flying into Atlanta tomorrow morning, so I’ll have company for the rest of my time down here.  We’re driving back up to Michigan in the next few days.  Katie is at the kennel.

I’m pretty sure she’s forgotten she even has a mama by now.


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Another park

The advantage of not having a job (No I haven’t heard anything good or bad yet on the last set of interviews) is that I get to go to the park more often.  Today I told Katie that I was bored with our little local park, so we went out to my favorite park, the one I used to run in each week –  Kensington –  which is about 30 minutes away.  It has an 8 mile bike/walk trail around a big beautiful lake.  Katie and I didn’t walk all 8 miles, but we did do a total of 2.5!

The black raspberries are getting ripe, and in fact I got to taste one or two.  Yummy!

Mostly we just ambled along until we got to the boardwalk that runs above one piece of lake shore.  Katie wasn’t so sure she liked it, there wasn’t anything interesting to sniff on the edges, like there had been on the path.  And there wasn’t any shade either!  But on our outward trip she trotted right along after she checked the edge just to make sure everything was safe.

Since she was doing so well I planned on going about a mile and a half where I knew there was a bench overlooking the water.  But just before that bench is a bridge across a channel.  It has a wooden deck that moves and makes noise as people ride bikes across it.  And of course just as we got there a whole family of bike riders went by.  The noise spooked Katie a bit, that and being “inside” something.  Then a semi went by on the nearby freeway, running over a joint with multiple wheels, sounding like a nailgun.  She jumped and headed back the way we had come.  That’s OK sweetie, I don’t always like semi’s either!

On the way back to the car we moved slower.  She was getting hot, notice the sideways tongue.

Every time we stopped for a drink (often) I’d pour the remainder that she didn’t finish over her head and back and rub it in.  We sat in the shade at the bottom of our last long uphill and watched people go by, families, individuals, runners, people on bikes, people skating.  She didn’t bark at anyone.  Sometimes a tired doggie is a good doggie!

And she slept most of the way home.  No surprise there!


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Agility review

Another Thursday…another agility class for Katie and me.  Again this week I skipped the Rally class held on Thursday mornings so that I didn’t overtax the Sheltie brain.  Plus I had a ton of garden related stuff to do and it was a beautiful day.   But I’ll blame the Sheltie brain for the missed class just the same.

Again our class was split into two groups, those with more experience (not us!) went over to the other side and worked on contacts.  The rest of us got to start with teeter first.  UGH.  Last time we started with teeter Katie got tired of the game and shut down.  Of course the Sheltie brain had forgotten that, while the human brain tends to dwell on the potential negative outcomes.  So I looked at my dog and decided to assume she’d do whatever I asked.  And when it was our turn she trotted right up that teeter, instructor holding her leash, right out to the end as it gently landed on a couple of stacked up milk crates and got her “Good GIRL!” and treat, then stayed there while I walked a step or two and then jumped off when I released her.  YEA KATIE!!  And it was like that every time, she was pulling on her leash to head up that teeter whenever it was our turn.

But the chute?  What the heck is that Mom?  I’m not going in there!  It’s RED!  MY chute is BLUE!  This is an EVIL CHUTE!  OK.  I’ll go in the tunnel part, but as soon as you’re not looking I’m getting back out of it!  Yes siree!  I am NOT GOING IN THERE AND YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!

In fact when we tried to put together a string of stuff, double jump, send to tunnel, weaves, chute, she bypassed the chute and as I was talking to the instructor about how to get her to do the chute she ran off and did the teeter by herself, with NO MILK CRATES to break the teeter’s fall!!  Behind my back!    I ran over there and rewarded her, she was standing 2o2o looking over her shoulder wondering where the heck I was.  Silly girl, you wear me out!

Then we switched sides and our group did contacts.  We started with them jumping on the table to get to the downside of the dogwalk, then tossed a treat onto a paper plate at the bottoms so the dogs would pause, eat the treat, and then get released.  She did it perfectly every time.  “Don’t need no stinking table mom, I LOVE the dogwalk!”  When we finally got to run the whole dogwalk she was thrilled, charging up and over it, and even stopping at the bottom for her praise and treat!  I was so proud of her.

Her reward, at least in her mind, was that we did A-Frame next and she LOOOOOVES the A-Frame!  Though it wasn’t always this way, now whenever she sees it she tugs to run up and over it, so when we got to actually run it a couple of times she was in heaven.  Contacts?  No problem as long as she got a treat.

So at the end we put the two sides together.  Tire, dogwalk, weaves, curved tunnel, A-Frame, jump, double jump, tunnel, weaves, chute, teeter.  Piece of cake, right?  Well, we haven’t practiced tire in a long time.  It was hot.  We’d been there almost an hour.  Katie was getting squirrely.  We had to wait for all the big dogs to go first.  Enough excuses.  She refused to do tire.  It was already after the class hour, and the next class was waiting to start, so after three attempts I just kept going.  She charged for the dogwalk, ran through the weaves, shot through the tunnel, flung herself up and over the A-frame, stopped at the bottom, I said good girl! and kept running, yelling “JUMP.!”  She did not.   I turned to see where she was and she was SITTING at the bottom of the A-Frame looking at me.  “Treat Mom?  Where’s my TREAT!?!?!  I am NOT MOVING until you give me my TREAT!”  So I did (probably the wrong thing to do) and we moved on to jumps and tunnel and weaves and were running full tilt at the chute!  She ran into it!  She got 3/4 of the way through it, I’m yelling “CHUTE!  GOOD GIRL KATIE!  CHUTE!” and she turns around and runs out of it, runs all the way across the ring and out the ring and into the kitchen.

SIGH.

I went and got her and told her she was a good girl and we tried chute once more, no go, then we did teeter for the treats and that was the end of class.

For the most part she had a really good time and so did I.  In the end that’s all that matters.  The fact that she has a chute at home that she runs through with no problem is something I won’t think about right now.


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Katie and the little tent

The weather here yesterday was beautiful, cool and dry.  As evening descended I suddenly wanted to be camping, but it seemed like too much work to drag the tent up from the basement and accumulate all the pillows and blankets.  But husband said he’d help, so in the last few minutes of light we popped the tent up and loaded it with everything I needed to make it through the night.

Katie watched us put the tent up;  she was very excited because she loves to camp.  But she’s never camped in the little tent, not really enough room, and no little doggie window near the floor for her to keep track of the night’s comings and goings.  A couple of nights ago I slept in the little tent all by myself and had a wonderfully relaxing time sans dog.  This time I wasn’t going to get away with sneaking out the front door and creeping around the house so that she wouldn’t know.  She knew.

So Katie and I trooped out to the tent.  As usual she was in first, claiming the biggest pile of pillows for herself.  She’s such a pillow hog.  As we settled in she was restless, moving around and around the tent, plopping down, getting up, sighing, trying to see out the windows that were still zipped up.

Then I had a brilliant idea.  How about if I unzipped one of the windows so she could see out?

Turns out that is a WONDERFUL idea for both of us.  Suddenly we were sleeping in front of what seemed like a big picture window.  We both watched it get darker and listened to the birds heading home for the night.  The fireflies started to dance, the freeway noises lowered, and the frogs began to sing.  Katie curled up in a ball on her (two) pillows, let out a big sigh and fell asleep.  I drifted off too.

She was such a good girl all night.  While I had trouble getting comfortable she slept on, upside down, curled up against my side, or flat out by the wall.  She didn’t even bark when the guy with the noisy van drove by and threw the newspaper onto the driveway.

And this morning?   She didn’t want to go back inside!


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Peaceful morning working in the garden…and stuff

Last night I set up the little tent even though rain was predicted for early this morning.  I don’t mind the sound of a bit of rain when I’m camping, but Katie is definitely an anti-rain girl, so she stayed inside with her Dad.  I spent the night listening to the bullfrogs, traffic on the freeway a mile away and the breeze in the trees.

Sometime during the night I woke up hot, and sat up to unzip the window coverings.  Outside, across the yard and under some trees were dozens of fireflies!  These were the first I’ve seen this summer and there were seemingly hundreds of them – dancing among the branches and in the long grass of the dark night shadowed lawn.  I watched and held my breath – they looked just like magical fairies  dancing in the night and I was entranced.  Finally sleep claimed me again and I didn’t wake until I heard the gentle patter of morning rain on the roof.  I lay there and enjoyed that too, wallowing in this opportunity to sleep past 6:30, Katie’s normal “got to get going Mom!” time.

When I finally ventured back into the house, about 8 a.m. I found Katie curled on the sofa, nose hanging over the arm, facing the front door (waiting for me to come home?) sound asleep.  Such a guard dog.   I snuck right up on her and she only had time for a quick yip before she was all wiggles and tale wags and licky-licks.  As I was petting her I suddenly realized that Katie had an appointment this morning!  She was supposed to be at the groomer…like right NOW!  As soon as I started to quickly move around the house, getting myself dressed Katie realized what was up and went to hide.  Silly (smart!) girl!  She shook all the way to the groomer and was visually shaking when I handed her over to the groomer.  I felt so bad I apologized to her, which probably made it worse.

While Katie was getting a bath, and probably talking ill of me to all the other doggies, I got a lot of gardening done.  Husband has planted more than a dozen trees and they all needed watering, there were weeds to grab, and a bed of wildflowers to plant.  All done without interruption, because chief interrupter was off getting groomed.

I was going to sleep out in the tent again tonight.  But thunderstorms are predicted, so I guess I’ll sleep inside.  Good thing, because as gusty winds came up this afternoon my little tent rolled across the back yard.  Guess I should have staked it down.

Katie is now back from the groomer.  She looks pretty!

She’s a bit mad at me, but was willing to do a bit of recall given I had treats!

Now she’s sleeping, the better to keep me up tonight when it’s thundering.  A Sheltie has to be prepared at all times you know.


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Lambie, the tunnel, and the park

Katie would like to explain to all of you how to play “Lambie in the Tunnel.”  So, as interpreted from Katie-speak:

First you need a lambie.  And a tunnel, cause you all live too far away to share mine.  Not that I’m particularly good at sharing anyway.  Wait!  Mom!  Edit that out!!

Then you get your human to throw lambie into the tunnel.  You can get her (or him) to do this by standing in front of her (him) with lambie in your mouth and making your big brown eyes look pathetic, as if no one has EVER played with you in forever…or at least in the last ten minutes.

This is where it gets kind of theoretical, so listen up.  You can either run around the tunnel to the other side, then run as fast as you can, scooping up lambie as you go through the tunnel, and drop it at your human’s feet.  Or you can chase lambie into the tunnel from the same direction as your human threw it, scoop it up and run back to your human, either outside or inside the tunnel.

Or, and this is the best part, if you want to make your human feel really silly you can just look at her (or him) and stare as if it were beneath you to run through this silly tunnel, much less collect a lambie at the same time!

Then, after you  retrieve the lambie  a few times beg to go for a ride to the park!

After all, you deserve a park trip, given all that retrieving you’ve done.

Enjoy sitting in the shade and watching the little league kids play ball.  Then resist totally when your human says it’s time to go home.

In this way you keep your human in line.  This is very important, as you all know, to any Sheltie-girl ( or boy!).


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A different dog

Remember last week when Katie shut down half way through the morning Rally class and about 20 minutes into the evening Agility class?  How I was trying to figure out what happened…was it too much school in one day?  The wrong food, or amount of food eaten prior to the second class?  The heat?  Me???

Today I didn’t take her to the morning Rally class, something I felt a bit sad about.  I really want to try to get our second and third Novice Rally leg, and I need the classes (Katie doesn’t) to keep all those directional signs straight!  I scheduled a mammogram during that time instead this morning, so I guess I was somewhat productive!

Then this afternoon, in between planning and planting trees, I fried up six boneless, skinless chicken thighs, with the intention of cutting one of them up as tonight’s “value” food to be used during agility class.  Katie was very interested in the frying process, her little nose just wriggling.  Plus, since she was so interested in the chicken she totally left her normal  afternoon dinner alone, and eventually I just picked up the bowl and put it aside.  She never really ate much at all prior to class.

We got to school early and walked around the building a bunch.  Got all her business done, got her re-acclimated to the building.  Initially she was a bit hesitant to go inside, but once there she seemed pretty OK.

And the best thing?  We didn’t do any teeter tonight!!!!  WHAHOOO!!!  We started out with a series of  jumps!  Katie loves to jump.  We did the broad jump and a bunch of regular jumps in a pattern.  On our first time up I kept Katie on her leash and was telling the instructor that I wasn’t sure how Katie was going to do tonight, given last week, when all of the sudden I felt a tug from the leash and realized Katie was RUNNING toward the broad jump, the first in the series.  I called over my should as I ran to catch up, “Well I guess she’s going to do just fine!”  And she did.

The other half of the class, those with bigger dogs, was across the ring doing tunnels, weaves and the tire.  It all looked complicated and when we got over there Katie and I went first, so we didn’t get to see anyone else attempt it.  It was a curved red tunnel, then jump, then a double jump, then tire, then another curved (but blue) tunnel, then weaves then jump,  then back through the red tunnel the other way.

Right.

I set Katie up in a sit in front of the entrance to the curving red tunnel and as soon as I got her leash off she was racing for that tunnel.  She has a tunnel at home that seems to be permanently set up in the living room and we play all the time “chase the lambie” (her favorite squeeky toy) through the tunnel, so I guess that’s working!   She burst out of the red tunnel, took the next two jumps and the tire at full speed and then totally balked at the blue tunnel in the corner.  It was a dark corner without much light, and the tunnel was dark too.  NO WAY, NOT GOING IN THERE!  She actually turned away and jumped back through the tire, and back over two jumps to get away from me! LOL!  We tried a few times,  but no go, so we skipped the scary blue tunnel and did weaves and jumps and the fun red tunnel no problem!

The second time we got to run the course I ran on the other side (the outside edge of the curve) and we were going so fast she just sailed into the scary blue tunnel and I had to RUN really fast to beat her out the other side to get her into the weaves.  She did the whole course no problem!  WHOOO HOOOO!!!!!!!

Then the whole class got together and we put the two pieces together.  We did the tunnels, tire stuff, then went back through the red tunnel and over to all the jumps.  She even ran through the blue tunnel with me on the inside and I did a front cross after that to get her into the weaves.  KATIE WAS PERFECT!!!!!!!!   And grinning the entire time.  She got a jackpot of chicken and cheese after that last run!  Such a girl!!

So….was it the fact she hadn’t had school in a week?  And no school that morning?  Or was it the chicken thighs?  Or was it that I tried to keep her excited and engaged the whole class and didn’t worry about much?  Or was she just having a bad day last week?

Only the Sheltie knows.


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Shut down

Katie and I had two classes today, the Rally class at 11:30 this morning and the Agility class at 6 tonight.  In both classes she pretty much shut down after about 30 minutes.  It was a bit warm, but nothing like how hot it was last week.

In the Rally class she started out sort of OK, but her heeling is all over the place, and when she sits she still sits far away from me.  Just to taunt me I guess.

In agility we started with teeter, not her favorite, though you can see she’s progressing nicely with her teeter in the driveway.  We have advanced from a 2 inch pipe to a 3 inch pipe no problem.  After teeter we were doing  jumps and weaves and she did the sequence twice then refused to do anything more.      At all.  Not happening.  Nope.  No jumps.  No chute.  Nadda.

After her refusal on the jumps I took her outside to pee.  On our way back to class she didn’t want to go into the building.  And she refused to do anything more, actually trotting out of the ring when it was our turn.  So we went home early. Poor baby.  Maybe two classes in one day is too much.  Next week I think I’ll skip the rally class and just try to do the fun stuff in agility.

She dozed all 25 minutes home tonight.  But when she got home and we were telling her Dad about our less then successful day she was all perky and wanted the rest of her chicken!  HA!  Not going to happen kiddo, no worky, no chickeny!  I had thought that cheese I”ve been using, and that I used this morning in Rally was no longer a high enough value food, so I went to the store after the Rally class and bought chicken and cooked it before the agility class!  Can’t say I didn’t try!  But that’s obviously not the problem.

Meanwhile this week if the weather dries up we’ll do our jumping and tunnels and such in our own backyard where things are always fun and not so much work!