Our Little Graduate

It's official...Satchel has graduated from puppy training class.  He can sit, lie down, stay, come, "leave it," "look"...and some other things that I'm currently forgetting.  :-)  (He also will fetch and crawl on his belly like a ninja...but we didn't learn those in the class.)  We're so proud!!

We didn't think to bring our own camera today, but our trainer took a "class photo" at the end of the class tonight.  This is the closest she could get to all four puppies looking at the camera at the same time.

That's Simba on the left, then Satchel (I think he may have been yawning...his tongue isn't normally sticking out that far), Burton, and Sandy.  I just realized that they all unintentionally lined up from tallest to shortest. :)

I'm glad we did the training class.  It was good for me to learn how to train him for some of these basic commands, and it was great for him to be around these other sweet puppies.  We're considering signing him up for this same trainer's intermediate level class that starts in two weeks.  Both Simba and Burton are probably going to be in that class, which would be fun.

My Weekend

Shawn found out late Thursday night that he was going to get to go to Dallas with the rugby team on Friday.  So Friday morning, I drove him to the airport, then I came home to work.

My job has been going well.  We've hired a number of new English teachers, so I have begun to mentor some of the new teachers.  I have 4 "mentees," 3 of whom live in Washington state.  The 4th one used to live in Seattle...but has recently moved to Denver.  Ironic, don't you think?  From what she has told me, I think she lives about a mile away from where Shawn lived before we were married.

Anyways...after putting in a few hours of work on Friday, I took Satchel to the vet...to get his claws trimmed.  Shawn and I agree that we just don't feel comfortable doing it ourselves, and our vet is only about a mile and a half from our house.  I'm so glad I did it!  It's nice that Satchel no longer scratches me when he steps on my foot when I have no shoes on.  :)  Because of my various errands on Friday, I ended up having to work until about 11:00pm Friday night.

Since Shawn had gone to Dallas, poor Satchel was restless and confused Friday night.  If Shawn's gone at night, he's usually at rugby practice and comes home between 10:00 and 10:30.  By 10:00 on Friday night, Satchel was trying to sleep on my lap...but every time he heard a car door slam outside or any other noise, his head would pop up and he'd start looking around.  I really think he was looking for Shawn.

On Saturday, Satchel and I went hiking with a couple girlfriends of mine!  We went to Wallace Falls, which is a hike that Shawn and I have done a few times.  The weather was absolutely perfect for a hike (upper 60s and sunny), and the trail was packed.  The girls I went with had never really been hiking, so it was strange for me to actually be the experienced hiker of the group.  :-)  Satchel had an awesome time, and he did so good!  He gladly did the entire 4.75 miles with us (roundtrip), and he happily let lots of people pet him (I honestly would estimate that more than 100 people petted him on Saturday!).  He also played nice with every dog we encountered...which was a lot of dogs!  Unfortunately, none of us had a camera, so I have no pictures from our hike.

Poor Shawn...the weather was perfect here, but Dallas was about 35 degrees and rainy!  The weather for the game was pretty much miserable.  But his team won!  They've now started their season with 2 wins...which is more wins than they had all last season.  I took Satchel with me to the airport to pick him up Saturday night, and Satchel was definitely a happy pup.

Finally...today.  We started off early, since I was the lector for 8:00am Mass.  Then we brought home McDonald's breakfast.  We were thinking of going to Meadowdale Park with Satchel, but the beach access is closed until this summer so they can repair the tunnel.  We decided that it's not really worth it to do the full hike there if we couldn't access the beach, so we tried a new park not too far from here.  It was great!  It was a super easy trail, so not strenuous.  There was a pond area with some tall grasses and weeds...and Satchel's retriever instincts totally kicked in!  It was fun to see him get super excited and start bounding through the grasses, and this was the first time we've seen him happily walk into the water.  I think he would be thrilled to be a hunting dog if we trained him for that.

On our way home, we stopped at a local co-op feed store and bought Satchel some better dog food than what we've been feeding him.  We're hoping that he'll be healthier (read: less gassy).  :)  Truthfully, this stuff is more expensive, but our trainer pointed out that since this food is higher in protein, the adult dog will eat much less food and still be full (and have enough nutrition)...so ideally, the cost will end up being lower in the end.  As of today, our dog is eating better than we are!  (His new food contains things like roast duck, roast quail, blueberries, sweet potatoes, carrots, and tomatoes.)  We also got him his first bully stick, which he loved.  It also kept him busy for about 2.5 hours...so I'm very tempted to stockpile these things and give him one every time I have something important to do for work!  :-)  (And yes...I do know what bully sticks are.  I've also eaten Rocky Mountain Oysters...so it seems that Satchel and I are even.)

So...I think that's basically our weekend!  I would promise to update the blog more often...but, well, I've been making that promise a lot lately, and you can see how well that's gone.  :-)

Snuggling

I fell asleep on the floor last night, watching TV.  Satchel decided to come join me and snuggle in.  Shawn decided to take a picture.  :-)

Why I Don't Blog More Often

Who has time to blog when I have this adorable creature to spend time with in the evenings??

Yes, the jeans on the left of Satchel would be me, and the clothing on the right of Satchel would be Shawn.  And no...no part of the dog is touching the floor.  He fell asleep like this.

He's really getting too big to do this, but every once in awhile, he finds a way to get comfy on Shawn's lap and falls asleep.  I think he's comfortable around us.  :-)

Valentine's Day

We had a pretty darn good Valentine's Day this year!  We kept it very low-key, which was nice, actually.

We got up early enough to make it to the gym before going to church.  After church, we stopped by McDonald's for a V-day treat...chocolate dipped cones and french fries.  Yum!  Then we went home long enough to get Satchel before we headed out to West Seattle.

This is actually the same place we ended up last year on Valentine's Day...Alki Beach.  We were excited to see how Satchel would react to the sand and the water!  And all the people and all the other dogs we were sure to run into.  :-)  He wasn't super sure about it when we started walking, but once we got onto the sand, he was a happy puppy. 

We actually walked down the beach to get our late lunch first.  We went to a place called Spud, which my friend Annie introduced me to this summer, and I took my parents there, too.  The Alki location is the original store, which was opened in 1934.  They specialize in fish and chips, and it was really good!  We ate on picnic benches outside so that Satchel could also hang out with people and a couple other dogs.

After lunch, we walked back down the beach to the car.  Satchel got to play in the little waves a bit.  It was funny to watch him...he kept trying to eat the bubbles.  :-)  He got to meet lots of other dogs, and he was petted by lots of other people.  He enjoyed running around in the sand and digging through the rocks and driftwood for sticks and other fun things.  We actually would've spent more time hanging out on the beach, but it started raining (harder than normal for this area), so we all got pretty wet and cold.

After getting home, we all crashed in the living room and took a nap before dinner.  :-) 

Oh, and for my Valentine's Day gift...Shawn got new tires for my car today!  Yay!!!  :-)

(I was going to post pictures, but I seem to be having some issues with my xD card.  I'll try to get some posted from the weekend within the next couple days.)

Two Week Recap

Wow.  Why am I being such a bad blogger lately?  Sure...I've been busy with the puppy and other things going on.  But surely that should just mean that I have more to write about, right??  Hm.

Okay...so here's a brief, two week recap, as best as I can remember it.

1.  Social: 

• I held a Super Bowl party!  Unfortunately, Shawn was out of town that day (I'll explain that in a minute...), and he took the camera with him, so the only pictures I have access to are what friends posted on Facebook.  We had a great time, though!  A couple friends came over early to help wear out the puppy before the game started.  But he actually stayed out for pretty much the entire first quarter, and he did really good with all the new people!  Those same couple friends stayed late and played MarioKart with me until Shawn came home.
• The day before the Super Bowl, I helped our friends Emil and Kristin pack all their things because they moved to Detroit.  I was very sad to see them go, and I already miss them.  They were some of the first people we became friends with here!

2.  Puppy:

• Satchel is growing like a weed!  We think he's gained about 4 more pounds since we had him at the vet a couple weeks ago for his shots...based on our super-accurate weighing method of holding him while we stand on the scale, we think he's about 20 pounds now.
• He's doing a good job at his PetSmart puppy training class.  He is always super excited to play with the other puppies in the class...and he's learning some things, too.  :-)  We're still working on most of the commands, but he has "sit" pretty good.  I somehow managed to teach him "come" one night while Shawn was at rugby practice, and we're currently working on "lay down," "leave it," and "fetch." 

3.  Rugby:

• Shawn is technically in pre-season right now, but he's been training hard, hoping for the opportunity to play Super League.
• On Super Bowl Sunday, Shawn got to fly down to Santa Monica, California, to play with the Super League team!  And his team won, 28-8!  He had a great day, despite the fact that he missed out on my awesome Super Bowl party.  :-)
• The season should be getting into full swing within the next few weeks, so hopefully we'll have some good weather on Saturdays coming up!

4.  Jobs:

• Shawn has been super busy at work.  He's actually been working 6 days a week for the last few weeks, which stinks for both of us.  But I'm proud of him for working so hard!
• My job is going pretty well.  My course load has lightened recently because I'm starting to mentor some new teachers.  I'm enjoying that aspect of the job!

That's us in a nutshell these days!  Once again, I promise to try to do a better job of updating the blog on a regular basis.

So Excited!!

Here's an example of an awesome reason to have a dog.  They get sooooo excited when you come home after being gone all day long!



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