Milestone Minutiae

This is one of the months that reminds me to take photos of the "everyday" more often. I always take pics at karaoke, but I forget to get pics of what the kids are doing. And they resist, so ... that's not necessarily easy anyway.  In Other News: Drak finished his first training class. He's slow to get used to new places so he wasn't really accepting treats from me until the 3rd of 6 classes. We're going to repeat the class - it'll be kind of boring for me, but now that he's settled in at the location we can do more actual training. And getting him out of the house at least once a week is a good thing, too. I'm determined for him to not be scared of the whole world!  

Drak update! Having a blind dog is weird. He's settled into our home and yard well enough that it's easy to forget that he's blind when he's in our home and yard. When he had been here just a few days, we tried to walk him in the neighborhood. We only got a couple of houses away - he didn't trust *me* yet, and he was totally spooked by being in a new environment, and just refused to come along. Now that he's much more settled in, we tried again today. Going down the 2 front steps is still a complete non starter. Becasue he can't really see how far it is, going down off of just about anything is really, really scary for him. It took time just for him to get used to going down the 2 steps from our deck to the grass, something he encountered multiple times every day, so that wasn't a big surprise. I carried him down the stairs, but from there he walked really well! He followed me, did some good sniffing, and wasn't too scared overall. Two "funny...

I went to a woodcarving retreat with Raymond Kinman - it was an amazing experience and I can't really believe I made this!!! You are looking at 14 hours of work starting with zero carving experience. The video shows the process, and a little bit of what others were working on while I was there. I can't wait to go back!

 

  Drak's DNA testing came in, and is both surprising and not surprising. He's a mix of more than 8 identifiable breeds, and then a big portion (12%) of "SUPERMUTT." He's almost 1/3 chihuahua, and there are two herding dogs in there (Austrailian cattle dog + McNab, a cattle dog I've never heard of!) account for almost 25%. He's 16.6 American Pit Bull Terrier, which I suppose accounts for the brindle coat and blocky head. There's a bit of lab, toy poodle, and pomeranian, too!  SuperMutt is my new favorite doggie term. :)  On the health side, he's *very* inbred, especially compared to other mixed breed dogs. He's more significantly inbread than most purebred dogs. It's equivalent of parents that were half-siblings. Maybe that contributed to the congenital blindness? Not really possible to know for sure, I think. Anyway, it would be hard to recreate a dog this special, starting from this info!