Time Flies

I can't believe it's the end of July already. Summer's short enough as it is, why does it have to fly by so fast?! I already notice it's getting dark earlier in the evening and light later in the morning; makes me grateful for every minute of daylight, and loathe to waste a minute of it.

Sydney will be going to his new home the first week of August. And I may be placing Max with the mother of one of the parents of Sydney's family. (I'll miss the hell out of Max, I absolutely adore him, but he's so adoptable I can't justify keeping him myself, and I know he'd absolutely love living somewhere he could get all the lap time and all the cuddling he wants.) I just got a great application for Hambone, I'm hoping to do this home visit this weekend. They feed super-premium food, believe in crate training, intend to take him to obedience class, are advocates of positive training methods (and used words like "redirect" and "reward" on the app) - basically, everything I'm looking for in a home for a puppy.

It's been 5 weeks since Ginger broke her leg. We went for a re-check yesterday, Dr. B took the splint off and did a new x-ray. The bones are healing beautifully and Dr. B said "that's a lot straighter than I thought it would be!" (Gee, now you tell me! She cracked up.) She also said "if you can keep her quiet/confined for the next couple of weeks, I think she could go home without the splint." But I don't want to take any chances, and I know Ginger is a lot happier running around on her splint than she would be confined to her boudoir, so I had the vet put the splint back on. I can take it off myself in a couple of weeks. Ginger will have to be closely supervised (and confined when I can't supervise) for a week or so afterward, while putting weight on her un-splinted leg hardens the new bone, but that's OK.

Ginger loves me. I discovered she loooooooves to go for rides in the car, so I take her along whenever possible. She curls up between and just in back of the bucket seats, and allows me to pet her. She also gives my right elbow kisses when I'm not petting her. I took her to my mom's with me last week and she did pretty good, but when I had to run up to the corner store for something and left her there with Mom for the 10-minute round trip, mom said she didn't stop running back and forth looking for me until I walked back in the door. She's back to sleeping in bed, and with our morning cuddle sessions she gets less and less timid every day. I coo "come clooooooser, sugar, come cloooooser" at her and she inches forward playfully until she reaches my face, then she gives me lots of kisses before backing off a few feet. Then she'll settle down there and wait for me to pet her. A couple of days ago I was even able to roll her onto her side and tickle her tummy. (She loves tummy tickles, but usually prefers to stand up to get them.) She still is afraid to let me catch her so she's still dragging a piece of leash I can step on if necessary, but she's even getting better there, too - she'll come within a foot or two of me instead of running away from me, and most times she doesn't try to get away from my hands reaching for her. This morning, when I wanted to lift her down off the bed and told her "up" as I reached for her, she didn't try to get away from me but hunkered down and waited for me to pick her up. I talk to her, and she wriggles and dances and her tail wags wildly. We still have a long way to go before she's adoptable, but she's made huge progress in 4 months.

Chu Chu is the funniest little dog. The serious, plodding little fluffball of a couple of months ago has metamorphosed into a running, jumping, wagging, all that and a bag of chips little girl whose antics make me laugh. Even a month go, if she was out in the big yard and I called her, her gait was still careful and plodding. But that all changed when I made the decision to keep her and told her she was staying here. (Actually, she made the decision. I just gave in.) The dogs who sleep with me (Penny, Dudley, Sparky, Chooch, Ginger, Ruby, and sometimes Max) get access to the big yard first thing in the morning, before I bring them in and put the big dogs out there and close the gate. Yesterday morning when I called Chooch she came running and bouncing with abandon, such a confident, happy, normal little Shih Tzu. I got all choked up remembering what she was like when she first got here, how amazing her transformation has been. I'm so grateful she was able to survive and escape the horror of the puppymill where she was held captive for four years. I adore this little dog.

My summer term obedience class didn't get enough enrollees to make it worthwhile, so we cancelled it. After I'd sent my information in for the fall term I got a note from the Parks and Rec director asking if I would consider a night other than Monday, because she just couldn't make it work. I said sure, I'd be happy to do Wednesday or Thursday. It might allow folks who wanted to come to class but couldn't make Monday night for one reason or another to enroll. It'll also avoid the scheduling problem with elections. The building I teach in is a polling place, and they set the machines up the night before. Whenever there's an election of any kind I have to hold that week's class later in the week, and the schedule change wreaks havoc on class attendance, not only the off-week, but for the rest of the term. When I only have 7-8 dogs to begin with and half the class stops attending half way through the term, it makes some of the important practice exercises we do later in the term very difficult to do. Pass the dog. Practice the CGC test "friendly dog distraction" exercise. I work a lot harder and have to be much more creative when there are fewer students than when I have a full, or nearly-full, class.

I got the carpet up in half of the dining room, and the floor underneath is in much better shape than the floor in the kitchen was. I got another gallon of primer, and bought the paint for the living and dining room floors a couple of weeks ago. I love the color, and can't wait to see it on the floor. I got more wood filler - for the crack between the sheets of plywood that occurs at the kitchen threshhold - late last week and got the crack filled on Sunday. I need to sand it down and do a little touch up, then it'll be ready for priming and then painting. I've been getting the tack strips up little by little, and removing baseboards. (All the baseboards need to be repositioned almost an inch lower so they meet the floor. But it'll be a lot easier to paint the walls without them, and I'll be able to paint the baseboards outside on newspaper all at once, so I won't have to do any taping to protect the walls or floors before I paint them. All I'll have to do is nail the baseboards back on and touch up the tiny finishing nail holes with a q-tip dabbed in paint.)

After taking a couple of months "off" from knitting regularly, I'm back to knitting - and crocheting - about 6 different projects, working on one or two different ones as I sit in the evening and watch/listen to the baseball game. I'm knitting a feather-and-fan shawl in Wool-Ease that may end up being my mom's Christmas gift, and I'm crocheting a rectangular granny-square afghan using all the Wool-Ease I have left over from other projects. (This might end up being my sis and DBIL's Christmas present if the colors come together and aren't too wild and crazy. If it looks tacky, I'll keep it for myself. I don't care what it looks like, as long as it's warm!) I'm knitting a pair of pastel purple socks for my mom to go with her Red Hats outfits, and I'm working on 3 different pairs of socks for myself. One pattern is cabled (not difficult, but slower because of the cabling), one is an easy pattern, and I just started the third last night and am only still on the cuff. Once the cuff is long enough I'll see how the colors are working together; from what I see so far, a plain stockinette stitch may show off the yarn best. It's a very pretty hand-painted yarn with all different shades of blue with a little purple.

A few months back I got some undyed super-wash merino sock yarn that I want to try hand-painting myself. There's enough yarn in this hank for 4 pairs of socks, so I can do 4 different colorways. Last month, I bought a dozen different colors of Kool-Aid to use as dye. Before I do any of that, though, I want to make myself a yarn swift, so I don't have to do all the winding manually. I think I can make a pretty satisfactory one with stuff I've already got here, I've just got to get motivated to do it. But if I'm going to use any of this yarn to make Christmas presents, I'd better get my tush in gear. Which takes me back to where I started this post - the summer is just flying by!