School is over for me, for the summer at least. Only 1 real semester left, and then I am done with undergrad! Time to start looking a grad school possibilities.
I have started working at FOA full time now, and it is so nice to come home after work and not have to worry about homework. Sterling is slowly and steadily improving. He wears his vest day and night, only really taking it off so he can relieve himself. I have not really taken him anywhere lately, and if I do it is usually without even his bandanna. I am hoping that after a nice and mellow summer, where e only associates his vest with normal doggie life, he will be ready to start going back to school with me.
We have been doing some skiing with the dogs at the resorts up here, as they are all closed. The dogs love the skinning up part, where we get to where we will ski down. However, when anyone starts to ski away, Hugo goes nuts!!! This is partly from his search and rescue training, he always gets excited when we do any scenario work, and a person going away from him means that he needs to go find them! That means alot of frantic barking!
We went to Colorado this last weekend to go to a party out at one of Tom's friends ranches. It was awesome! I even got to shoot my first gun. We mostly hung out, helped and and did some horseback riding. Marley and Hugo went with us, and loved it! Marley has even been invited back permanently if we ever needed to find a different home for him. They both really impressed me out there: even with lots of other dogs, horses, and people around they remained calm, mellow, and under control. There were over 100 people there, and Marley and Hugo were the dogs that everybody seemed to know or want to ask questions about.
I also went to my first agility trial and dog show, and decided I would love to get into the sport! Agility or rally looks like so much fun, and seems like it would build a close bond between me and my dogs. (Tom doesn't need to do it with Hugo, this morning the said he loves Hugo as much as me!!!)
Tom had an arthroscopic knee surgery on Tuesday, and Hugo has defiantly been the dog that has been there for him. The devotion displayed whenever Tom and Hugo are together is really incredible. His recovery time has been amazing! Much more so than anytime I have had surgery; he didn't even have any nausea coming out of the operation. Lucky.
Our raising group is getting ready to say goodbye to our oldest dog in June. They will be getting a new puppy the same day, but they are first time raisers and it looks like it will be really hard on them. The recall date for Sterling's group is already staring to come up. Some think that since they were Nov truck pups, that they might go back then. I personally am hoping for April, as I would love to have a well trained pup to go through my last semester with me, and I just love this dog!
My sister is bottle feeding some kittens from my work, and the dogs were really interested at first, but it turn out they just want to lick the kitten formula off of them! Marley in particular is very patient with them, letting them crawl all over him. Dante and Hugo try to play with them, and Sterling just looks confused!
Dante, my co-pilot,
is starting to trim down now that summer is here and he can once again be outside. Man, I love these dogs.And I just couldn't resist. We were passing by this car (parked, thank god!) and noticed this little guard dog on top! How cute.
