Today I volunteered for an event with the K9 Scooters NW club. It was a pull training course. Basically, you bring your dog and all day we teach you and your dog how to pull. We get them fitted with a harness and you both get to learn about scootering together. It’s usually a really fun and interesting clinic to help with; today was no different. We were short on volunteers so it was just Sue, my mom, and me. But there were only 3 dogs signed up so it worked out perfect.

We got a good chance to work one on one with each dog, and they all did VERY well. Most of the time people bring their out of control, exercise deprived, dogs and say “here, make them run” but today we had 3 very well behaved pooches.

It got pretty warm so we didn’t push the dogs too much, but boy did I get the work out. One of the last stages of the clinic is hooking the dog up to the scooter and having “master” ride the scooter, while we run with the dog. It was a challenge but I seemed to keep up with Quincy, the 2 yr. old black lab, pretty well.

They all did a great job and everyone was excited and eager to learn. It’s always nice to see a person a their dog find an activity that they can have fun with together.

Here are some links for more information about the scooter stuff ( in case you have no idea of what I speak!)

K9 Scooters NW

Dog Scooter.com

Meg C.’s advice on hyper dogs!

Alaskan-Husky-behavior.com

Nanny 911! for dogs

Urban Mushing.com

And here’s a little shameless plug for an AMAZING, One of a Kind company to get all the gear you need for your doggy escapades!!

Alpine Outfitters

]]> http://jessicadarling.wordpress.com/2008/08/23/a-day-for-the-dogs/feed/ 0 Jessica Darling http://jessicadarling.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/thanksgiving-and-deploying/ http://jessicadarling.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/thanksgiving-and-deploying/#comments Thu, 29 Nov 2007 05:56:51 +0000 Jessica http://jessicadarling.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/thanksgiving-and-deploying/ ]]>

This Thanksgiving was the first Thanksgiving in two years that I have been able to spend with my family. Don’t get me wrong, because last year I was lucky enough to have friends whom invited me to spend it with them and their family. This year, at 5:50am Leanne, Jeff, Kayla, John and I headed to Canada to meet our parents and good friends, Paula and Richard. Even though it’s not the “Real Thanksgiving” according to Canadians, they cooked us a wonderful turkey dinner. We over ate so much we were all sick. It was awesome. Then we got to spend the next few days relaxing, spending time with good friends, and getting some doggy time in. John got to experience a little taste of the dog life. I think he loves the dogs.

You can check out more pictures here at John’s gallery.

We came back on Sunday and it was back to work on Monday. That was when John was told that he would not be going to Kyrgyzstan after all. He was suppose to go for 4-5 months, from January to about May-ish. It sucked but I was sort of, kind of, maybe just a little bit, getting use to the fact that he would be gone. So was he. He was looking forward to paying off some bills and saving some dough. Well, that all came crashing down. Now, on December 31, he needs to be out of his current apartment and into a new one. The only problem is that Christmas took most of our money. So here we are broke and trying to find a cheap apartment in a not too bad neighborhood, while we have no money. Wish us luck