Halloween - a dog's dream and a filly's nightmare.

Maya loved Halloween - so many kids and they actually came to her door!!

 

Destinee - not so much. She was a good sport though and definitely proved herself as an amazing girl. I led Divya around (who ended up being skittish in a couple places) and let Dave take Destinee. She was so chill! No scary ghosts, fog machines or big pumpkins got to her! His biggest problem was trying to keep her from eating hay that was on the ground.... She just keeps reinforcing her wonderfulness and that she'll be the 'go to girl' for kids and novices once she's fully trained.

 

Divya also rocked at the obstacle course and was spectacular. Her "spooks" weren't nearly the size of some! And no worries - they both got lots of apples and carrots for their trouble. =)

Progress!

Yesterday = project day, light version.

Dave took some wood and closed off the bottom part of our screen door! Now the hole is covered over and there was a surprise added bonus of the door benefiting from the extra weight. It's functioning much better AND Callie has been reunited with her porch. (And there was much rejoicing! yaaaaay.) Now to match the paint and get that painted over/maybe add some decorative touches so it looks super cool. He also got the hose working so I didn't have to scrub out the travel kennel by hand, phew! Doing that once was more than enough!

Maya's still getting rice and boiled chicken but things are going much better so perhaps we've dodged a trip to the vet! There's a high possibility that she ate a bit of a dead mouse and the concern is that the mouse had been poisoned. But her continued positive attitude and high energy levels seem to indicate that her stomach just doesn't like mice! Took the camera in the back yard with her today and got some cute shots. Maya's almost figured out fetch with a ball. Sometimes the whole 'holding onto the ball until you get to a person' seems to elude her. But overall, improvement. Plus she learned 'down' in less than a day. It's about time to sign her up for beginning obedience classes - I'm thinking she'll be a smarty pants!

One of those weeks.

It truly has been one (or two) of those weeks... on top of being busy with school, law journal, clinical and luma...

One of the horses at the girls' barn came down with a small case of strangles. So we're watching for symptoms and trying to check in as much as possible.

Maya decided that swallowing a cat toy that had become a LONG length soft string would be a good idea. Cue frantic call home about whether we should pull the end that was still hanging out of her mouth or cut it.

Then Dave and I saw each other for about 15 min both Monday and Tuesday. We had a wonderful house guest on Wednesday night and Maya had a dog park date with a law school friend and her dog. Not bad, just busy!

Last night we get back from small group to a kennel smeared in puppy stuff. Smeeeeeelllly. Cleaned up the floor, the kennel got a rough go through, we threw out her demolished and now brown (again, yuck!) blanket and brought in the travel kennel with sleeping bag.

This morning we woke up to more mess. So in the hour before I had to leave for a client meeting: Maya got a full fledged bath, the house kennel finished getting clean and then I went outside to see if I should be concerned about a string Maya that swallowed last week still being inside her. In the midst of that fun search (and yard clean up!) Callie got out and managed to run around the yard twice with Maya chasing her before I could a hold of her. Put her back inside and realized that if I kept our auto-locking back door even a little bit more closed - Callie would push it the rest of the way trying to get out. So I unlocked the side door and went out to finish the search and sure enough when we were done - the back door was locked!

I just got home from the grocery with chicken to boil and rice to cook for Maya's weekend culinary experience and Callie just got out AGAIN. If I didn't know better, I'd say that feline was in heat! She's crazy about the outside and has been belligerent since the screen door's hole got too big to cover (Thank you, Maya) preventing us from letting her hang out on the porch. I'm thinking a house project day is in order.....

Quick notes

1. Maya's started pointing at squirrels!!!

2. Callie apparently escaped through the screen last night and explored the backyard. Maya was growling so Dave took her outside and Callie went running from the yard to the back door once they got to the middle of our yard! Good girl Maya. But next time, keep her from leaving the porch in the first place!

3. It's hard not to burst with pride when I see how 'soft' Destinee's eyes have gotten or how tolerant she is of me. My goal is to be as annoying as a 5 year old so she can handle anything! Sometimes I just laugh and apologize because truly, I can't imagine being excited to see me! Especially on a 'Oh great, where's the lead rope going to go now?' type day.

4. Divya is such a good girl! She's calmed right down and has even started showing her soft eyes and just enjoying chilling with me. I'm happy she's doing well! Now we just have to get the girls to stop beating her up...

5. Divya and Destinee have switched stalls? At least yesterday and today they've been in the wrong stalls with the wrong names! I hope the girls decided to switch on their own and the humans just haven't felt like making them go to 'their' stall. At least that would mean that Divya gets her full pound of grain each meal and Destinee only gets a half! But perhaps more hilarious would be if the person bringing them in can't tell Destinee and Divya apart!