Current Events

This is the house I'm hoping to move into. I love this house. It's a log cabin on 3 acres of land in a rural area. It has a stone fireplace and an open floorplan and a walkout basement that will someday have a dog door leading to the yard - as soon as I get the yard fenced and buy a dog door. Of course none of that can happen until I actually own the house.

We placed a contract on this house in September, but it is a government foreclosure, so I'm not sure we'll ever actually close on it. We have a tentative closing date of the beginning of December. I'm thinking if things keep moving on the schedule they have been, we might have to extend that out a few more months. I might get to move by March. I might be homeless long before then.

I left for work this morning after warning my husband that Ziggy was very wound up and I was not crating him since he and Noelle were playing. He woke up long enough to say "okay". Then I left and he went back to sleep. He called me two hours later saying he'd just woken up and Ziggy had been busy destroying his expensive racing helmet that he'd only used three times so far. Apparently he had worked all night and after being up 24 hours straight, he hadn't really heard me when I told him I was leaving and not crating Ziggy. He was not happy with me or with Ziggy. Ziggy really needs to live with a marathon runner. Or at least another playful dog. Right now Noelle will wrestle with him for five minutes, then she is ready for a nap. And Remi will play tug with him for about two minutes before he is ready for a nap. Then they take a nap and Ziggy proceeds to stand two feet from them and bark at them continuously. He does this even though Noelle can't hear him and he can't hear himself, and Remi pretends he can't hear him. It sure drives the humans nuts, but it doesn't get him what he wants - getting the other dog to play. Still he persists in this strange behavior.

Ziggy's training is continuing. His agility classes have been rescheduled until next session, but in the meantime he's learned "down" and I'm working on teaching him to stay for longer periods of time. I also tried to teach him to target, but he keeps chewing up the items I'm trying to use as targets, so I'm still looking for a solution to that problem.

The pictures of Ziggy in this post were taken by my friend Crystal at last weekend's adoption event. Ziggy keeps going to every adoption event, and he keeps trying to chew on everyone he meets. He usually knows better than to chew on me unless he is really excited, but I'm not having any luck extending that rule of "don't chew on people" to anyone other than myself. I'm going to try to take some video of the behavior this weekend and ask for help from my classmates (many of whom are professional trainers). If any dog ever needed the help of a whole school of professional trainers, it's Ziggy!