HoundBlog

Ahhh……Friday!!! That day of days that those of us in the 9-5 Monday-Friday grind so look forward to…..it’s here…just a few short hours until that magic time of “weekend”!! You who are retired no longer experience this magical time. I feel sorry for you in a way, for what do you now have to look forward to that’s such a nice, reachable short term goal? Oh don’t get me wrong! I’m now looking forward to retirement — and some of you will know that I fought that tooth and nail for a LONG time!!! I just could not envision myself “retired” — no job — no responsibilities — no paycheck. Well, now I realize that retirement does not have to mean (and really won’t in many ways) those things. There will still be “jobs” although they may not be 9-5 or Monday – Friday. There will still be responsibilities galore!!! And, well, perhaps a retirement check will take the place of a paycheck if I’m lucky. I MIGHT have more time to do some of the things I keep saying I don’t have time to do now — like train a dog to do therapy work and actually DO therapy work again.

Heck, just train a dog!! It’s been 8 years since I put an obedience title leg on a dog. I still teach my dogs to be obedient for the most part, but not to the extent that they could compete in an obedience ring with any hope of qualifying.

I will have to admit that my heart went out of training and competing when I lost Brylee in ’98. As long as he was alive even though I wasn’t showing him any more, I still had drive and incentive to train and exhibit and was training and showing Tazz, the Standard Poodle. Tazz will be 10 years old next month. Even if I wanted to complete his CDX, I couldn’t as his vision has deteriorated too much. No, if I wanted to compete again in obedience, I would have to train (don’t laugh) a Whippet or a Crested.  

This weekend I will be attending a two-day seminar in Greenville. It’s a geeky thing — called SC Code Camp and it’s supported by Microsoft and a couple of local headhunter outfits. We get free lunch out of it and an opportunity to learn some stuff from the leaders in our fields. I expect a lot of it to be over my head, but it will give me the opportunity to network with my peers and who knows — maybe this old dog will learn a new trick or two.

Well, it’s that time again folks… tune in next week…same bat time, same bat channel.

Love to all,

Margaret