I let 8 year olds train my puppy.

Very David Hockney. My camera is very sick so I now just carry around a giant laptop to take low res photos of things. Maybe some people use cameras for this? Does it truly reflect the stunningness which is the new Bathroom?

Of course the damn painter is slow, always a weak link with the subs. There was a near fiasco with the marble counter top which I think it grade A super Triple Class Act. An important thing I have learned in all of this is speak good spanish to remodel anything. Most of the people who actually know what is going on, do the work, have good skills and are on the ball speak the spanish and if you just deal with them you will learn interesting facts about their bosses and also ensure that things are done right, which their bosses may or may not be doing. For instance, a wife of a boss who is one of the subs and who may or may have have not contributed to near fiascos may be lovingly referred to as La Diabla by the guys doing the work. Big red Flag!

We are off to a dog lesson in a few minutes with Jim in San Jose. Always humbling to have my world rocked and be shown the true level of mediocrity that my dog agility skills have reached. Big dog show season starts next week so my weak attempt to get ready with my out of shape dogs and unpracticed skills. Gustavo has been gettting some training time and is doing well, although if he had to go to a lesson with Jim today, I would probably hear differently.

Jim and his wife Nancy Gyes have been publishing puppy training articles in the big national agility magazine Clean Run. Anyone who is anyone in agility got one of their puppies this last winter, and as Nancy and Jim train them, they are writing an article per month. The level of committment and structure and methodical, careful training they put into their border collies is, um, staggering, and quite different in my approach of letting the kids at the barn just take the puppy on the leash and run around with it til they are bored. Such is my lot in life.