Graduation

Bandit graduated from Advanced Obedience today. We've been taking these classes at the Petsmart in Dublin ever since he was 12 weeks old. We started out in Puppy class, which went over some basic things like sit, down, stay, and a lot of socialization. It was always tons of fun to watch all the puppies play together. After that was the Basic Obedience class, where they went over the basic commands more intensely, as well as learning new commands. Advanced Obedience was a lot of heeling, staying, and learning to work with distractions. Bandit can stay like a pro, but getting him to come when called is definitely still a work in progress.

After class, we were pretty much unproductive. :) I ended up playing Dark Age of Camelot while watching football, and Marc watched football. The 49ers won, so I think he was happy. I'm pretty sure he was, since I didn't hear any of the swearing and screaming I did last week when they TOTALLY CHOKED against the Cardinals.

We're trying to figure out what to do with this one part of our yard. We don't have a very large backyard, but there's basically a porch that's surrounded on three sides by dirt. We've put down grass on two sides, and left the third alone. Problem is, from watering our lawn, and possibly poor drainage, it's turned into perma-mud. Perma-mud + Border Collie puppy = BIG MESS. So we're trying to figure out what to do with that spot now. We've talked about grass (which probably isn't good to do in the winter), rocks (which I don't want), or pine bark/wood chips, which I'm sure isn't going to stop a dog that wants to dig. I hate thinking about things like this because well, I'm lazy, so if anyone has any ideas as to what we could/should do, please share!