Once upon a time

I had three good dogs. They were all well behaved and house-broken and the perfect models of canine house pets. We were so happy that our house was finally "crate-free" and they could all be left unattended.

Then they began abusing their privileges. Zodiac slowly reverted to old habits of pulling down towels, digging in the trash and removing selected items from the kitchen counter to chew up. He's 8-what's up with that. Legend decided that "holding it" was optional and if she wanted to pee and no one was home she's just use the living room carpet (which now has to be cleaned-again). So then we started leaving them locked up in the bedroom which seemed to work pretty well. Until the last two nights when Legend decided that rather than wake anyone up to let her out she'd just pee in the living room. I'll probably check her for a UTI again but most likely she's being naughty-not once has she actually had an infection. So now Zodiac and Legend have to stay in crates or in the bedroom when we are gone and Legend will go back to sleeping in the crate for at least a few months. The carpet gets cleaned next week. Only Oreo has never been a problem. He only has accidents when he's sick or a few times when he drank too much water-his kidneys don't concentrate very well anymore so what goes in, must come back out.

They did, however, make up for it by having fantastic practices this afternoon. Zodiac especially. We worked on utility exercises outside for the first time since fall and he was amazing. He did perfect go-outs and directed jumping. I mean perfect-ran straight away, all the way to the fence, turned and sat perfectly square on command. Then took the appropriate jump without any assistance or movement towards the jump on my part. I was so happy. He did almost perfect signals outside as well and did a pretty good job on articles. We are definitely getting there. Yippee. And Legend had a really good agility work-out. We did more stuff from Linda Mecklenberg's article in Clean Run.

I got a lot done today. Laundry, training, more yard work-I'm finally getting somewhere in my landscaping/battle against weeds and grasses. I'm almost to the point where all I have to is maintain. And I got Squirt brushed and his mane and tail combed out before the farrier got here to put his new shoes on. Hopefully I'll be able to do some riding this year. Then Zodiac got bathed and brushed as we are getting ready to go to Pet Therapy. Then we are headed down to Branson for a show-tonight only we could get tickets for $5 to one of the shows. Sometimes they have deals like that for local residents. We figure even if it's not that great it's worth is for $10. Can't even see a movie for that!

Here's my raspberry garden-it's one of my biggest yard projects from last week. I should have taken a before picture-it looked like an overgrown heap of weeds. I never get that many berries but at least it won't look like an eyesore while it sits around all summer not making berries! I hope eventually it's more productive-like the blackberries-I get a ton of those every year, off fewer plants too.