Surgical Removal

I'm sick of being sick. Caught a cold some time at the end of last week and am having a hell of a time shaking it. I really want to get back into working out, but my chest lights up as if on fire if I so much as sneeze. Sux.

Looked at another house tonight. I love it! It needs some work, but for $100K for almost two acres, you can't beat it. I think I will look a little more seriously at this one. I love the location. No neighbors! Right across the street from a wildlife preserve and a huge lake.

Worked Echo a bit tonight. We needed to move the sheep from one arena, though the pens and alleyways and stuff into the round pen for an instinct test. This is not a hard transition, however, it requires patience on the part of the dog, and you're putting the dog in very very tight spaces and asking it not to lose its head. This is something Zip and I have done a bazillion times and he does with his eyes closed and without ever riling up the sheep. Doing it with Echo, however, is a little more ... "fun" ...

Tonight, though, she was a pro. My voice never became more than a whisper. And next time I go down this alleyway, I am bringing a giant pair of shears! There's so much overgrowth there now, you almost don't know there's a walkway. Anyway, pushed the sheep down it, and we never crammed them up against the gate. Called Echo to me so I could open the gate without getting run over. This required her to plaster herself along the fence and most past the sheep. Did that very quietly. She held them off the gate while I opened it, and then I sent her blindly into the very narrow alleyway and she handled it perfectly. No popcorn. No slicing, no dicing, no lamb chops. Five sheep came calmly through the gate with a nice calm dog following behind. Trusting her more and more and really enjoying using her for stuff like this.

Had dinner with Janie and Kirk and made some plans for the weekend. Need to firm up what to BBQ and stuff.

Came home pretty late. Was just reading Facebook. What an odd place that is. There is some interesting stuff ... some funny stuff ... some pretty stupid stuff ... so you get quite a variety. What I have been noticing lately ... as far as sheepdog people ... there are open handlers whose success speaks for itself ... and then there are the wannabes who sit on the fence. They don't particularly have an opinion of their own, but instead agree with everyone. And they will comment just to put their name up there with the big hats (most of whom are several states away and she's never even met).

"Lipstick? Yes, I like lipstick. But only if you like it. If you don't like it, then I don't like it either. Red lipstick. Yes, red is good. Oh you don't like red? Me either. Pink is my favorite. You like pink? Yeah, me too. That's good."

Right down to their choice of where to get a puppy (not once stopping to consider that perhaps the dog is not the problem in the equation).

Some of these handlers better not stop too fast, because they'd have this fence-sitting wannabe so far up their ass, they would have to have her surgically removed.

Looking forward to a fun 4th of July weekend! And I can't help it, but I am getting excited about submitting an application for a home loan. I have my doubts about being able to swing it, but I can dream, can't I? If nothing else, I'm having a blast looking at the houses for sale.

Off to lala land, hoping that when I wake up, I feel better than ... what I have been lately.

(Hey Katy, I was going to write, "feel better than scattered ass" ... but decided to UD that term and this is what it says scattered ass is.)

Jodi