Still Growing

I had all kinds of great plans for this month. I am trying to get training sessions scheduled with Brydon and Wicked. I had planned to take Vivre to the beach and get some lovely fall photo hikes in. I also just got bought some floating rope as well as a floating frisbee and a bumper. And now she has gone in to her second heat cycle and blown all my plans. Now I remember why I tend toward males.

I might have to break down and order her little heat panties, but I am holding out until I can find some that aren't humiliating. All of them are either pink or have little ruffles. Or, brace yourself for the horror, are pink polka dotted with ruffles. Vivre would bite me and with good reason. (Note: I hate the color pink. For most people the regular pink might not be too bad, but I just can't look at pink.)

So she has just started her second heat, and now I am really having to get in to the spay or not to spay mode. I really have no intention of breeding her since I can't imagine trying to find homes for a whole litter of little Vivres. Just the thought causes me to be in awe of Denise. But I don't want to spay her until she is finished growing, plus there are the new studies that show spaying to increase various health problems.

I am at least going to wait until November. I'll let Denise look at her and see if she thinks she is finally finished growing. Vivre has actually grown about 1/2 inch since July. Putting her at 20.5 inches in height. She is still so small and delicate looking.

I'm trying to fix my wonky fronts. I goofed up badly when training heel. I started by having her place her front feet on a target and then clicked for hip movement. However I focused on hip movement and didn't notice that she had decided that she had to be at an angle to me when in front of me. Her heel is fine, but she wants to front at an angle. I have gone back to basics and back to the foot target and started clicking hip movement that only moves her toward straight. But if anybody has any other ideas I would be glad to hear them. I have to get up early tomorrow. I hate getting up early.

More Hiking

So went hiked back out to dog slaughter yesterday. It was a beautiful day and since it had rained the first part of the day I figured that nobody would be on the trail. Thankfully I got an earlier start than last time so I wasn't racing the sunset. I didn't really get to notice how pretty the trail was before. Which I suppose became really obvious when about 3/4 of the way down the trail I looked around and realized I didn't recognize anything. I actually thought I was lost and turned around before I finally realized I hadn't been lost at all.

Once we got to the to falls I turned her loose and she had a blast running around and playing. I also discovered that Vivre isn't a great swimmer. So that is something to work on. I may head out to the lake and let her get some swim practice in. I don't want to take the hike back from dog slaughter completely soaked if I get in to help her. I didn't get any great shots of her, so I ordered a new lens this morning. It is an old manual prime, so even though it won't auto focus it is faster than what I am using now and should let me shoot some distance shots in low light.

Here is a couple of the shots of Vivre "swimming," I doubt you will see much more than the water, but it will give you an idea.