My Week

This week brought the winter doldrums.

Tuesday evening I took Sophie with me to the Capitol Canine Club meeting.  These meetings can last 2 hours.  She behaved nicely and there were other dogs there too.  She wanted up on the lap of the man next to me like the good little therapy dog that she is. Sophie brought smiles and one lady even thought she was a new dog since I've been working so much with Amber.  Amber has been my training subject with many ups and downs.  Marge suggested I get Sophie more involved but I never thought of her more than a therapy dog.  After some thought however, maybe she can be more.

Wednesday I loaned my Grim/Dean book to the DAR registrar.  She's been trying to finish where the last registrar left off on my connection to the Revolutionary War.   I've exhausted the search.  I mean really exhausted.  I did get my grandmother's death certificate and her mother's as well.  Death certificates verify the names of their parents.  I would like to fix the markers for my fraternal great grandparents; Vincent and Anna
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/183795972/vincenty-kapuscinki

Then I did a little shopping.  I found these balance disks for $1.99 less my senior discount.  As you can see, Amber took right too it.  There's a bit of a wobble to this but great for conditioning, especially for older dogs.  So when Sean brought his dog over, we had Mo try them and I could see him struggle but at least he tried really hard.  Our club is offering a 1/2 day seminar on conditioning for $100 which I think is too much.  I pay that for a 6 week class.

In the evening we had our AmVets meeting.  I left feeling pretty depressed after that because our membership chair wants to step down because of his health and our Sergeant at Arms is stepping back for 2020 because she is "Giving up Amvets and all toxic things for 2020."  Our post is loosing members and I fear we may have to fold.  This gave me a lot of stress.  I envisioned the sequence of steps on closing our post and turning our funds over to the state headquarters.  I fear the worst.  Younger veterans are not joining.

Thursday I lost my gym key fob when the ring broke on my key chain.  I looked everywhere and that added to my stress.  It found it in the drive the following day which would have been hidden under a parked car in my earlier search.  In the evening I took Amber to her Agility 103 (of 5) classes.  She did pretty well but on the tire she took a short cut trough the angle under the tire.  We were also learning a new way of "switch" directions and I wish I would have recorded that for study purposes because it was a hard concept.

Friday I stayed after our senior circuit for yoga and tried out my new cork yoga mat.  Patti passes out Yogi tea and home made sourdough bread.

In the evening I took Amber to her advanced trick class.  I was really disappointed with her focus.  Sniffing and sniffing and not listening to me.

Sean's birthday was Saturday.  I made a pineapple upside down cake that was a disaster.   Sean seemed to prefer that to a richer type of cake but this pineapple upside down cake up had not cooked thoroughly.  We were under a weather watch for snow and ice so we met up with Alan at a Mexican restaurant in Lincoln IL which was a nice half way point. We beat the storm by going for lunch. I gave him a new quality harness for his dog.  He needed a strong harness for that strong animal. I got home in time to attend a 2PM genealogy meeting at the library and it was snowing when I got out of the meeting. The snow started at 3PM just as the hourly report predicted.  I walked the girls while the snow was still light and decided to try out the saw I got for Christmas to make this agility ladder. 

It was a wet slushy snow. By 9:30PM, Amber alerted me to a man shoveling my drive. It was Johnathan from the American Legion. I went out in my robe to thank him. It was still coming down but little did I know that it was the last snowfall for this particular day.  We had 3".  As I recall, last year we had to cancel the birthday gathering for snow on Sean's birthday also.

Sunday morning I went to church.  Mass was sparsely attended in part because of the snow and that many would be going to the confirmation Mass at 1PM.  Hence the Christmas trees and decor remained for the bishop's visit.  As father explained in his sermon, this is the Sunday for the Baptism of Jesus, the end of Christmas and beginning of ordinary time.  After that I took Amber to the nursing home to perform her tricks.  As I was signing out, there a was a guest at the front desk admiring Amber and said she had a similar looking dog she got in Quincy and wanted to know what breed she was.  I told her that Amber is a border terrier mix per her adoption and AKC PAL.  She showed me a picture of her dog on her phone and said she was a Norwich terrier mix with longer legs than Amber.  Both dogs have an unusual curled tail.  I just showed her one trick before we left since Amber's skateboard was on top of the box of performance props.

In the evening I took Sophie to rally practice.  I would have never envisioned this fluffy butt doing rally.  There's just a few new tasks that she needs to learn to get a rally title.  I might have her ready for June.  She needs to learn to "go to front" and "go behind me" to finish position.
I survived this week.