Update from the home front

Hey Everyone,

First things first, you simply MUST check out the blog for Erin Buckles (www.faithhopeandjoy.blogspot.com) Scroll down until you see the pictures of Erin and SOLOMON at the hospital-are they a match made in heaven, or what?! Those pictures absolutely made my day. A wonderful testament of why everything we do is so worth it-thank you Melissa for posting the great pictures of your beautiful daughters with SOLOMON!

The transition home has been pretty smooth. I've spent the last couple weeks enjoying every minute of hanging out with my cool kid. I've had a few clients and have already started using what I learned out in CA to work on p4p stuff. It's also been wonderful to work my own dogs again. The other day I was pretty grumpy and out of sorts-Jason took Fiona to the store and gave me the task of finding something to do that would lift my spirits-I took Juno outside and we worked agility. Poof! the black cloud lifted from my head. I guess I'm more like Juno than I realize-getting out and working agility helps me to calm down, focus and enjoy myself! Talk about enjoying myself, I have to take a minute to brag. I know this blog is NOT for my dogs, BUT....I have to tell this short story or I'm just going to explode. Today, I took Juno out for a herding lesson. Now, he hasn't herded in 3-4 years and even then, it was only for about 3 months. At the time, I had resigned from search and rescue and was trying both herding and agility with him, we went with agility, but I've always thought about trying him in herding again. When we did it three years ago, his instinct definitely kicked in, but there were several issues and problems we would have had to work through. Anyway, for the last several months I've been thinking about taking him again. This week, I thought, why not? Let's go thursday-OH MY GOSH! He was awesome! Meagan, my (agility and) herding instructor worked him on the sheep, I just watched. Holy Cow, can my dog herd sheep! He didn't have ANY of the issues or problems he had before, it was just picture perfect and an utter joy to watch. Wow! It totally made my day-I'm obviously still on a high from it! There's nothing quite like watching a dog do a job that they were bred to do and witnessing all that instinct kick in the way it's supposed to. Put a big 'ol smile on my face, I'll tell ya that!

Also wanted to let you all know that I will be getting my next dog to work (yahoo!!) on August 10th. He is a beautiful golden named CAMDEN. He will be finishing his public access training as well as completing his transfer training to Alex, Kathy and Matt Crisp while he is here. Can't wait! Updates and pictures will be posted :)

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