It’s been nutty the past few weeks again, but moreso than usual! Lots going on at work and with everything else-I won’t go into the gory details, but I’m searching for a nuclear medicine job in my area now. The good news is that the more I look, the more that things are popping up here and there. Not too close to me yet, but I’m seeing more and more jobs out there day to day. I’m off work the week after next, so I’ll be doing a lot of hunting out there at that time. I think I may have one sort of lined up, but it’s a part time job-I’d be working part time at my current job and part time there. The problem is that the new job, although it sounds really good, is kind of far away. I need to get rid of my gas-guzzing truck before I go down there every day. Good news about that, too-the Blue Book value on it is 17-20k and I owe about 9 on it now so I can probably sell it and get enough to put a REALLY good down payment on something else. Even at a trade in value it was listed at 18k. Will I get that as a trade in? Probably not. Will I try? Hell yeah.
Daisy has been doing great. I think I wrote about my lesson with that trainer from out of town-she gave me some things to work on and I’m finally starting to understand how to do them. I know what a counter canter is, but I wasn’t sure how to ask for it and continue to ask for it, but now I’m seeing where I made mistakes. We would start on the correct lead, cross the diagonal, and Daisy would either drop to a trot or else switch leads. (she has a nice change, so that’s kind of a good thing, but since I didn’t ask for it, it’s not such a good thing to offer it) I was riding her on Saturday and we had some help from another person who has done this stuff before-I asked what I was doing wrong and it turns out that I’m not keeping her flexed to the outside enough. At least, that’s what’s working for now. When you’re teaching a new thing to a horse, you have to reinforce it appropriately until they understand what you’re asking. It makes sense, but I guess at the time I didn’t understand that what I was doing was confusing to her. She’s a good girl and she’s trying, but I knew there was just something not clicking there. I’m glad I talked to this other person and cleared it up at least a little! Hopefully we’ll be able to work on it more now and next time that trainer is in town we’ll be a little better.
Jake and Bandit are doing good-Jake is still slowing down and he’s developed a bit of a dry cough that comes and goes. It’s only one cough about every 3 days, but I know it’s different and I’m starting to wonder if the cancer has spread to his lungs now. He’s going on 11 and he’s looking good otherwise, so I know he’s had a good life. I have pretty much decided that we aren’t going to remove anything else and he’s not going through chemo. He’s a very happy boy and he still has quite a bit of energy, so I don’t want to ruin that for him in his old age. Bandit is getting more and more brave-he will go up to people and play a little now, but he still doesn’t really want them to touch him. When it’s someone he knows, he’s a little less reluctant and he’ll lay down by them or play or whatever, but strangers he still doesn’t like. Lots better than he used to be for sure!
Here’s my fun story to end this post on-I went to my Mom’s yesterday with Bandit and we stopped at my husband’s grave briefly because I wanted to say hi and I wanted to take a picture of a part of his headstone because I’m going to make a letterbox stamp for him-it’ll be my first one that I’m really making and placing, so that’ll be cool! (look up letterboxing on the internet and you guys will see what it’s all about-I recently get into it a bit with my little sister and stepmom when they came for a visit a week ago and I figured I’d place a couple of them too-this one will be my tribute to Mike and my first letterbox!) Anyway, Bandit and I headed back and there was a small deer eating in the distance. The deer over there are pretty used to people because the cemetery is kind of a nature preserve, too. This one was very young, but she had lost her spots already, so she was old enough to be on her own. Bandit didn’t notice her at first and he was sniffing stuff-I pulled out my camera phone and decided to try to get in closer for a picture. I took pictures every couple steps until we go within about 15 feet of the thing! Bandit FINALLY noticed it and froze-staring at her. He started lunging a little on the leash but she wasn’t too worried apparently. We started walking away because I didn’t want to scare her off and she started following us! LOL! My big dog lunging at her on a leash and she’s following us. We paused to take another picture from that angle and she started eating some weeds. I guess she wasn’t too nervous. Eventually she walked off, but not before I got some really good pictures of her.
This is where she started following us-she got closer than we did! We were within 15 feet of her, she walked within 10 feet of us!
She turned and went to eat some weeds when we paused to take another picture
She was within 15 feet again here-obviously not too put off by us because she was looking at something else! Pretty!!
