A Hormone For Every Occasion

I'm thinking that title pretty much sums up the last few days...  Poor Gimme, she just seems to be in a constant state of emotional flux.  She tries very hard, but I notice that her emotions are right under the surface and she is easily frustrated.  For now I'm not pushing her in training, but am continuing training.  If I wasn't training she'd be even more frustrated.

We do a lot of walking and enjoying ourselves, with training thrown in.  She's doing well.  However in class last night (Monday) she was very near to official melt-down status.  She was very frustrated by not being able to play with the puppy in the next cubicle... and then another puppy got loose and got too close.  As I said, easily frustrated.  After that we didn't get much done, but got in plenty of practice at relaxation protocol.  I did notice last night after we got home that she was so wound up she just couldn't get calm, so finally had to put her in the puppy pen so she could settle down - which she did.  It's been a very long time since we've had to do that.

This morning I noticed that when she came out of her sleeping crate, she didn't have as immediate of a need for her baaaaaaby and didn't need to keep it close under her chin as before, so I hope that means that she's on her way back to normal. 

We got in a nice long walk today and had a lovely time.  At times she does very well, as shown by her sit-stay here with a Chinook helicopter doing load-ops and coming in behind her for a landing.  I know where they plant their loads, so I knew we were completely safe where we were.  However, Gimme doesn't know, so her trust in me and determination to do her "job" make me so much more than proud.

During our walk we discovered an eagle's nest in one of the trees by the main pipeline road.  Its in the top of a very tall evergreen tree.  This picture is at the limit of my camera's zoom, so you can't really tell anything.  The nest is 6-8 feet across by my guess.

Based on the timing, the eaglets should be ready to fledge (leave the nest) sometime in the next couple of weeks.  I saw a parent coming and going a couple of times, but couldn't get a picture of that - need a better camera, remote shutter and tripod.  The parent never landed, but would hover over the nest before taking off - presumably delivering a meal.  The first reason I noticed them was hearing an unusual bird call, timed with the sudden silence from the woods and fields.  Usually there are all kinds of animal/bird sounds while we are walking.  Then looked up to see the eagle circling overhead before going in for delivery.  I did see some movement, an occasional wing extending over the nest edge and a head popping up - they are clearly very big already.

My friend Carol is a professional photographer and we are going to try to get out there and get better pictures.  She will be able to get more detail and I am sure will grace me with a picture or two that I can share with you.  [stay tuned]

Tonight in class Gimme did much better.  We took the step of taking the end cubicle with more barriers so she wasn't presented with as much distraction or seeing any enticing dogs from close up.  So we got in some good training time and I was happy with our class.  She'd been getting really good at doing a lot of repetitions of things and that has fallen off quite a bit.  Still she is willing to work on many different things with a few breaks thrown in.  That's better than the last two classes. 

And, of course, we are not working on "the hardest thing".  Since that proved so difficult for her before, I don't think it would be a good idea to push her with that right now.  Mostly we are revisiting stuff she knows well and keeping the training fun and rewarding.