THE GOOD STUFF

I present Clio...caught in the act of thoroughly enjoying herself in my catnip patch on a sunny April day. Nothing like a quiet garden-fresh nibble of the good stuff to make a cat feel sooooo good. Mmm, mmm, tasty! Clio and Kennedy were in-residence chez-moi for the past week while Martha and Joe spent a week up-island at a resort.

The spring weather has had its ups and downs all week—beautiful and sunny one day; cool, cloudy and wet the next. You have to plan carefully to keep the yard under control. You combine the sun with the rain...and you get grass. Lots of it. Growing like mad. I got the front and back lawns mowed today, and even managed a little edging and some hoeing out of the a few of the flowerbeds that have become overrun with weeds. All in moderation, of course. Can't do too much at a time or else my back tells me it isn't happy.

I installed Skype a week or so ago...now I have to look presentable when I sit in front of the computer. Darn. But you never know who might call, and you don't want to look like a total slob.

Agility is ramping up...we've moved our Island Dog Sports practices to private property, and to a new time—Saturday afternoon. No more shivering in the barn in the evenings. Now we get to run in the rain! Or sun. Preferably the latter. It was a bit soggy this past Saturday, but the rain actually decided to stop just as we finished putting the equipment out. We set up a lot of contact obstacles...which was a good idea. My guys are a bit loosey-goosey when it comes to sticking their contacts. They're getting better, but because contact equipment is what I don't have at home to practice on, it's the aspect of the dogs' skills that tends to suffer the most. Working at getting them to stick their contacts at a distance is even more challenging, but at least we got to practice doing some of that on Saturday. Every little bit helps.

Many of my Island Dog Sports friends have now taken a few lessons with AVID—and are definitely jazzed about discovering how well their dogs are doing. It's been great for them to get another set of expert eyes watching them, and offering suggestions. We've known that we've got some great dogs, but I think we were all getting a little stalled in going to the next level. And now that we're all shifting into competing at trials, it was definitely time for everyone to get a bit of a tune-up.

It's been quite busy the last few days—a Rotary fund-raiser for "Malawi Girls on the Move" up at the Edgells on Friday night, and then a girls get-together over at Michele's last night. I could sense the digital digits clicking higher on the scale without even stepping on it! Way too much great food at both events. (And yes, when I did step on the scale, the numbers had indeed crept upward.)