Birthday For Me

I spent Friday evening working on Gimme's training level Parkour title submission.  Unfortunately we were going to be well over time in the 4-on, which requires two examples (one at elbow height) in a 30 second or less video.  I have a really skewed sense of time and was making her wait way too long for 5 seconds, plus the video has to show her getting on and off the prop.  So I got up early Saturday and took her to a nearby park to film another example.  Training level title compilation video

You see in the first "table" she looks a bit uncertain and this is because a man walked by just a few seconds before this with 2 large dogs on leash.  The path they were on came pretty close to where we were working.  The other thing to notice is in her creativity, for the "hands" portion, I see the right rear foot was starting to come up, but halted when I said "yes".  So this is a good thing to know in training as we keep trying to get stimulus control between these two behaviors.  I also noticed during "box" when my Mom spoke ("box" and "walkies" were filmed at her house), my hand which was up to remind Gimme to wait, turned toward Mom - shame on me.

After we got the video title submission done, I had a quick breakfast before Glenn showed up.  My friend Bonnie recommended him to reclaim my yard.  He's a very hard worker and did tons of work.  Because he was using a brush cutting blade and Gimme has no fear of weed-eaters, I made her stay in the house all day, for her safety.  Plus the back gate was open much of the time.  We worked for 9½ hours straight.  I was helping move and sort stuff he uncovered as he removed ivy, blackberry vines and general overgrowth.  I was also working to finish clearing the stuff from the carport and to power-wash it in preparation for bringing my agility equipment home from the arena.  The yard is a work in progress, but Glenn is reasonably priced and I plan to have him do all the mowing from now on.  This means the yard won't get away from me next spring like it has each spring for the last ten years, plus I can focus my efforts on other things.

By the end of the day I was thoroughly exhausted.  It wasn't your typical birthday activity, but I'm very happy to see the progress in our yard.  I took a hot bath and soak for 2 hours, then indulged in a late night, more usual, birthday activity.  Went to see the movie Free State of Jones, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  Matthew McConaughey outdid himself, easily his best acting ever.

After we finished the work and the gate was securely closed, I let Gimme out to see the changes.  Her reaction was quite comical and I sure wish I had it on video.  She trotted around, with her head on a swivel, looking here and there with a definite "Whaaaaaat happened."  Because of the ivy and blackberry overgrowth, Gimme hasn't see the back part of the yard for two years and so I'm sure she'd forgotten there was anything there.

I did it all for her...