A Mixed Bag

I have not written in quite a long time. This is partly due to my recently getting involved in Facebook, and partly in my losing my Internet connection. I have a signal now from my upstairs neighbor. It is not the best signal as I can only get it from a part of my apartment, but it is a signal none the less. I am contemplating, if no other solution is possible, to get my own Internet but I can hardly afford it at the moment.

Little Girl is sick right now. She got something over last weekend, and was feeling better on Monday, but had a turn for the worse yesterday. I will not be seeing them today because of this, and because I am getting a cold myself. It is ironic because I originally called off this weeks meeting due to Little Girl's sickness and my going to my father's place for Father's Day. He has his own medical issues at the moment and does not need a cold on top of them. The irony is that I may not be going now because I am sick. I will see how I feel tomorrow, but I do not plan on taking any chances. My brother and his family will be at my father's as well and I do not want to get any of them sick.

I gave Little Girl her birthday present, belated, last Thursday. I got her a Dora three wheel scooter. She loves it! What I did not anticipate was that Big Girl loved it as well, and now she wants a three wheel scooter as well. Big Girl has a two wheel scooter already, and I just recently found out that she is having a hard time riding it. She is having a hard time balancing. So I will get her one in the next week or so.

They are both becoming much more comfortable with Ruffles. I have started to pick them up at the bus stop again, and we walk with Ruffles to my house. I keep Ruffles on a tie down when we are in my apartment. Before, Little Girl was so afraid of Ruffles that she would not be in the same rrom with her. Now she has gotten to the point where she will be in the room with her so long as Ruffles is on tie down. Big Girl will play with Ruffles while on tie down. She will throw her a toy and Ruffles will throw it back to her. It is cute. Neither of them has gotten to the point where they will pet Ruffles or give her a treat, but that will come with time.

Ruffles is progressing nicely. She still has some issues with scent and dog distraction but we are working on it. We went to a park two weekends ago. There was supposed to be a dog run, but we did not find it. We did run across other dog owners who were also looking for the park. In the end we came across a pond that was partially fenced so that dogs can swim. I took off Ruffle's harness and let her off leash. She ran into the pond and swam like there was no tomorrow. I have heard of other labs loving swimming but this was the first time I saw Ruffles swim. I heard from one of her puppy raisers on Facebook that she would swim a lot when she was a puppy. I was planning on going there again today, but I am not feeling well and it is raining. The one concern that I had was that there were a lot of dogs and they got into a pack mentality. I became invisible to Ruffles and she would not come when I called to her. There were two times when a bunch of the dogs ran out of the swim area into an adjacent part of the park. My heart stopped the first time as I thought she was gone, but shortly after the pack ran back into the pool. I like that she had some free time, got to exercise, and had a good time, but I do not like how uncontrolled the situation became. I had to have this young girl call her over and take her by her collar to get her to leave the pond. I may try it one more time but I will do some obedience training when we get there. Otherwise, I will have to find a more suitable place for her to run and play.

Work is going well. I got a gift card from my store out of the blue for my sales numbers from the week prior. It was nice to be recognized for a job well done. Yesterday, I was supposed to come in at 100o hours, but I forgot and I got to work at 0900 hours. I did not realise this until about twenty minutes to 1800. I told my manager and he let me go an hour early. This was nice as I was planning on meeting with a friend who flew in from England the night before. We hung out a bit and then I went home.

That is all for now. I will try to keep this blog updated at leas twice a week from now on. I was standing outside of work yesterday as I waited for my friend from England when some walked up to me and asked me if I had a blog. I respond that I did and he asked for the URL. Apparently, my blog has been a subject of discussion amongst some people at work. I asked him if it was positive or negative discussion, and he replied that it was a mixture of both.

Well, it would appear that I will need to write more to keep the discussions going. I already have the subject of my next post.