Free At Last! Free At Last!

I noticed on Vivre's first birthday that she was starting her first heat cycle. I have never had an un-spayed female before. Heck I have only had one female before. So I am not exactly sure when caution crosses in to paranoia. We have no loose dogs up here, though our neighbor a mile away has a loose male. He never did try and come up here. Regardless today is the first time that I have let Vivre out of the fence to really run and she was excited. I picked up a stick and just tossed it for her. I let her run in to the tall grass to retrieve it and she would bound over the grass like a deer. I need to get it on film. I have a camera here that belonged to my uncle, but I don't have a firewire port on my computer. Denise has given me camera envy though so I am going to order a Flip.

She downed on the verbal very well when we were out there. I am not good at fading the visual cues and I need to work on that, but she was really doing well with the verbals today even with out me bending my shoulders.

I usually release her as soon as I start to throw the stick because I haven't worked on her staying with that kind of temptation, which means I need to pull my copy of CU back out and work through the program. It is well past time anyway. A couple of times I faked her out, pretending to throw the stick and release, after about the third time she came flying back at me and launched her self at my hand (which held the stick). I swear I can't play with sticks with out getting bit. I hate to throw a toy though, because I don't want to lose it in the tall grass. Maybe after I get it mowed down.

Good news though, Brydon has scheduled a seminar with Denise this fall that we are signed up for. So as long as she gets enough working spots (which I don't imagine will be a problem) we will have that to look forward to this fall. It will be great.