Teaching a not-so-old dog new tricks

Hey everyone! I hope your week is going really well! Time is just flying, I can't believe it's been around a week since I've posted!

Let's see....what's been going on??? Just the usual stuff - busy at work, home and training. At work I'm currently working on our store's Easter assortment. Yup, Easter. Gotta love retail!

At home we're getting ready for a MUCH needed vacay! We're leaving later this week and spending a few days in a lovely Southern coastal city. We decided against flying anywhere this year - there ended up being so many places in Cal-y that we wanted to see we decided to just go next year and spend more time there. We also spent some time last weekend working on our kitchen on some framing around the door. We really just have a few minor touch-ups to do on a few things and then we'll be done. Our next project is replacing our old fence, hopefully once it's a little cooler this fall.

In Pippin news - we're trying to teach him a new trick - "shut the door". Really, there's no reason he shouldn't be able to. Since we have a fenced in back yard we send him out to play and when he's done he comes running in by pushing the back door open. And he wants to go in and out, in and out. All.night.long. And it seems like every time he comes back in we're both in the middle of something and have to run and shut the back door to keep some of this precious air in when it's 100and50something degrees outside. So, Saturday I decided to start "shut the door" training. When he comes in now we RUN back there and get him to push on the back door until it shuts. It's pretty hilarious. Sometimes he just sits there and stares at us, waiting for a treat. He's put together the whole coming back inside = treat, but not totally why. Sometimes he pushes on us, and then sometimes he has totally figured out he's supposed to push on the door. I know we'll get there eventually, and it's pretty stinking cute when he does it right and gets all excited as we get all excited. His teacher, Miss Mary, would be so proud. I think "shut the door" will fit nicely with his other words - "get daddy", "dance", "get the mail"(which means go to the front door) and "hi-five".

We've been training, too. Saturday we drove to Brentwood Sports - they've had an ad ALL SUMMER in the local newspaper, the Scene. It showed a girl in swimwear and swimcap and said to "come in and check out their GREAT selection of Speedo swimsuits and goggles."SWEET! So, we drove 20 miles to check it out. They had one small rack. Very, very small. As in maybe 6 or 7 items for women, total, and 6 or 7 for men. I'm not talking styles - I am talking entire selection. And in this tiny store - we WEREN'T EVEN GREETED OR WELCOMED by the one lone employee. That's serious false advertising. We were SO mad. So, Brentwood Sports - YOU SUCK.

From there we stopped by the nearby Y and checked out their pool. We got 500m in in their outdoor lap pool. The pool ended up being twice as long as our usual pool- which we were realy glad to find out because it was wearing us out! Overall that's a pretty nice Y and the outdoor lap pool was pretty cool! We also got 300m in the following day at our Y. We had planned to do more but it was SO uncomfortably crowded with irritating people! And I'd like to tell you how swim class went last night but our teacher didn't show up. Didn't.show.up. Didn't call and tell us he wouldn't be able to make it, and didn't call to apologize today. So, tomorrow I'm calling his boss to complain and see if we can have someone else more reliable or get our money back. Because that's just not cool, and we've had a whole summer of incompetent contractors and I'm not going to put up with an unreliable coach.

AND, we got in our first ever brick this past weekend! Sunday afternoon we rode 15.5 miles and then ran 3 (Brent ran 2). It wasn't bad except for the heat. After the bike it took about a .25 of a mile for my legs to get adjusted and then they just knew what to do. It was just so stinking hot by that point. I couldn't keep my HR down and I was pouring sweat. A homeless guy at the park said something to me about being crazy. I was just glad it was more of a heat issue than feeling like I couldn't do it. I took a short walk break in the 3rd mile to get my breath back but still finished the 3 miles in 28 minutes flat. The first two miles were each around 8:45, so I really should have started slower.

So, that pretty much catches you up to date! It actually RAINED here tonight. It was so crazy to hear our gutters overflowing! We haven't mowed since July 4th, and have had about 5 drops of rain since then. The thunder actually scared Pippin, it's been so long since he's heard it! Hopefully we'll get some rain while we're gone, otherwise my already sad, overheated garden is going to be ash like the rest of my yard.

Have a great night!

Rae

WIDTW-
Mon-4.2 run
Tue-30min ellipt, 30min swim class,200mswim
Wed-4.2 run,750m swim
Thur-4.2 run,3.5 mile ride, 40 min tone
Fri-300m swim
Sat-500mswim
Sun-15.5 mile ride, 3mile run, 300m swim
Mon-4.2 run
Tue-1.75 run(stomach issues MADE me stop!), 500m swim
Wed-20 mins tone (no time to hit the gym at lunch today, boo for long meetings!!)