The Future is Here?

I took the plunge and ordered a robot vacuum. I hope the technology is finally worth it. I really do have the perfect house for one, one story, nothing that needs to be blocked off, mostly just wide open – I don’t like clutter. Ideally it would run while I was gone and every day I would come home to a freshly vacuumed house … that may not be the reality. We’ll see. It’s supposed to be quieter than a normal vacuum, and less offensive to pets – so we’ll see what the cats think. As they provide the majority of the hair, they’ll just have to deal with it. Fingers crossed it’s not just a huge waste of money, I love the idea of it.

We continue to very much enjoy the Fall this year. Finally getting more rain, which I don’t mind – and it’s still very warm. Our hike today it was raining on and off and I just find it magical to walk through the forest in the rain – especially with all the beautiful fall foliage and leaves lazily spiraling down from above. It is ridiculously gorgeous out there right now, downright unreal and I feel incredibly lucky to live here. I am always amazed when I’m the only one there, it’s such a treasure. We took a long, winding hike through areas we don’t go in the summer – the dogs thought it was such an adventure and were off roading the whole time. Pretty much perfect.

We did some agility practice this week, the set-up for the Justine class we’re in was up in the arena, so that was fun to try some of the exercises. Bright is a MOSTLY good weaver – the last exercise I thought was the easiest is the one she missed. Fiddled around with some of the exercises with both dogs, I always learn a lot from running through Justine’s stuff. Little holes here and there and things I would not necessarily of handled the same way. We’ll try some more next week, but the dogs can do some good things. Didn’t really work on Navarre’s collection work much this week, waiting for his stop pads to heal. I continue to waffle about entering any November agility trials, but I probably should, maybe just one day here and there.

Having fun playing with obedience and Navarre, he seems more into it than when he was younger. Having leftover steak this week didn’t hurt either. Quality of reinforcement matters! I learned that on the recall he wants you to use ‘come’ and not ‘front’, not sure where that came from but I’ll take it. He’s doing BETTER with his heeling, but that’s a relative term. He can do much better stationary, and his recall to heel looks amazing, but with movement he continues to want to heel 6 inches in front of me. Not all the time, at least, we’ve made some progress.

I find it cute that if he feels he’s not being rewarded in heeling he jumps up and bops my hand. Stand for exam looks good, finishes CAN look good and fronts I’m ignoring for now. As long as he comes in with enthusiasm on his recall I don’t really care about the straight front. One issue at a time. We even practiced some figure eights with people posts, predictably he struggled on the inside turns. Work to do, we’ll get there. Or not, either way we’re enjoying working on it. We’ll have to look at stays at some point, of all my dogs he’s the most likely to just wander off when something catches his eye – very outwardly focused.

Finally back at herding this week – we’ve missed it! I think Navarre knew where we were going somehow, he whined the whole way there (it’s the same way as hiking, so there was no clue there). With Haku we just worked on driving basic patterns, which is still embarrassingly hard for me. But we have gotten better, and that does feel good. Progress is all relative, and it is a cool thing to stand in one spot and direct your dog to go take sheep all over a field. Of course, since I was concentrating on getting through things my ‘no yelling’ kind of fell to the wayside, but I did try to be consistent and fix things I felt needed fixing and abandon the run when Haku was making it up instead of listening.  On the plus side, I felt more in control, but that also meant I was getting to micromanagey. We had fun, it’s all good. We both continue to enjoy herding, I hope Haku can keep at it for a long time.

As for Navarre, once again just gave him to Dave and he was being really pushy today. I do wonder if there is an inverse relationship, like the better he does with me the worse he does for Dave. I have been feeling much better about practicing with Navarre, but he was not showing that maturity today. But, yeah, it’s been a while. Hopefully we’ll get back into our herding groove. I’m feeling cautiously optimistic that when Navarre turns four he’ll be able to actually progress with both obedience and herding. He’s been slow to mature, but 4 is a magic age. He feels better, anyway. Such a good boy. My dogs may not be the best at things, but they are the best dogs to me.

Back at home another big benefit of the Fall weather, I’m now covered in cats. Love me some cat snuggles, and especially in the mornings it’s hard to move from all the cats. Dogs have their advantages – but they just can’t beat cats for snuggling.

And tomorrow I get to play with puppies!