How embarrasing!

I took Olive to another obedience class last Sunday. She catches on quickly and seems to impress even the instructors. On the other hand, she tried several times to snitch a few treats from the next dog. After all the fuss I went through to put together a variety of treats she would like, including grilling some chicken. I told her she should consider herself lucky: not every dog person grills chicken just for their dogs!

During training the instructors asked each human whether their dogs would be ok participating in a free play time at the end of the session. I was quick to say how great Olive is with other dogs (so they tell me at the doggie day care place). I spoke too soon. So what does Olive do? She runs and finds a tennis ball, then comes and pesters me to throw it for her, ignoring the other dogs. When she showed signs of guarding the ball, the instructors asked me to take her out. I was so embarrassed!

I actually should have seen it coming. At the dog park Olive will be polite to other dogs but when other dogs want to play with her she will look at me as if to say “can we go chase tennis balls now?” I did hear one of the instructors say something about Olive “being a border collie”, and said something to Olive about being “a bit bossy”. Well, no one ever said that partnering with a border collie would be a bed of roses (not that I ever regret it or doubt that she is one of the best things that could have ever happened to me).

On Wednesday I went to an endodontist for a root canal. What fun! Actually the procedure went fairly well, better than I had expected, though I would hardly call it a great way to spend a morning. On the way home I stopped at a pharmacy to fill the antibiotics and anti-inflammatory medicine that the endodontist prescribed. Wouldn’t you know that there was a line of some five geriatrics in front of me, and every one of them argued with the pharmacist about something or other. It delayed me about an hour. When I finally got home I immediately took Olive out for a walk, had a can of liquid meal replacement I bought at the pharmacy (I did not feel like chewing anything), and tried to settle down, though I was not in the best of moods. Olive seemed to understand that. There was no pestering though she did lay at my feet and got up to check on me from time to time. I was much better today and Olive was back to pestering me to throw her ball, take her for walks, etc.

Good to be back to normal!