You need to learn some basic distance skills.

The Team is building momentum as we speak. Otterpop has gone from a sulking, evil eyed Teen Queen to a newly mature Helen Mirren channeling Queen Mum as the owner of many corgis and has decided to Rule Everyone Especially Gustavo but in a non violent, yet sort of snotty way. Basically she either plays with him or sits somewhere and waits for him to BEG her to play with her and he just goes off and plays with his own toys somewhere else then. Ruby either sort of ignores them, as usual, or sometimes actually gets off her ass and gets in there for a ripping game of tug.

Timmy is used to him already and just goes back to sleep on the floor. Although sometimes he has been awake a little bit extra to watch the new style shenanigans, and Gustavo is a good boy and just jumps over him. As opposed to plowing into him, which Otterpop has been known to do in pursuit of a tennis ball. The cat seems confused, she came around last night and I saw her counting, like, is that an extra one or have I always just been counting wrong? I made her come in the house and meet Gustavo all official like and she was relieved that he is smaller than her and she could easily kick his ass if need be. Gustavo had great respect, today is the day he will meet the barn cats so it is good he has cat respect because Calvin, my big yellow barn cat, fancies himself the dog whisperer and will shape up dogs in no time.

It's actually super fun to have a new training project and gets me working with the other dogs on things as well that are lacking. Jim remarked to me, on yet another failed distance exercise on Sunday, "You need to learn some basic distance skills." That is like, in agility terms, a huge insult. Humbled yet again. Becase distance is all we do, pretty much, in our lessons and I just haven't practiced anything in months and months and then some. So I worked on Otterpop's turn command yesterday so she got some Alone Time, and Gustavo is working on good leash skills, sit, down and wait at a gate/door. He did a lot of short car rides yesterday for practice and fun and short little leash walks in side position with sits. He is used to living, at least for a few weeks, in paradise of quiet and a giant meadow, so the loud busy Westside with construction zones and trucks and yelling and dogs barking from all the other neighbors with bad dogs makes him a little nervous. I took the 3 non geriatrics up to Pogonip for a long run walk, which is terrain he feels a lot more comfortable with.

Of course in life all things converge and the Bathroom Guy wants to start this week, as do the Roof Guys! Wow! I am not even sure how that will work so I need to talk to all the Guys and see if they think they can work all over eachother. The thing I am learning about Guys is that when they have time to do the work you do not want to tell them to go away because god knows when you would ever see them again, I want all these Guys to be happy and want to stay and work til everything is completely all done. So that means sometime this week, with a brand new dog who likely will be trying at every turn to escape, we will have no bathroom and chunk of roof! I am just going to baby gate everything up and xpen and go pick up the toilet after work. So our house will truly look as if the insane live here, bathroom-less and dog-full.