3 Dog Days

Spent all day on the firing range qualifying on the M-4. It had a optic sight with a floating red dot. My dot kept disappearing. I prefer the "iron" sights. If those disappear you have real problems. I qualified but did not shoot expert.

In domestic news, my "new" washer and dryer came, after being without since I moved in. I bought them off Craigslist for $200 total and the nice couple delivered them to me, unhooked the old, broken ones that came with the house, moved my dog food freezer so they'd fit better, hooked the new ones up, tested them out, and told me to call them if I had problems! If they break will they come fix them? It sounds like they might. They were unable to deliver them as soon as I (and they) had hoped, but they called me with updates. A very nice experience.

Craigslist is a great place, but a lot of people are flakey. Despite that I've found 2 places to rent, and found three new tenants to rent my old places on CL. I sold the Miata and bought my freezer, bike rack, a ceiling fan (new in box offered for $45, got it for $20) and washer and dryer. Lots of good deals to be had. A lot of people using CL just want to get rid of their stuff. That is why you can get such good prices. My freezer works great and would have been around $400 new for that size, if I remember. I paid just over $100. My new motto will be, "Never buy new, buy Craigslist." Maybe I can market that slogan and make some extra $ to spend on CL.

Speaking of $, I took my coins to a coin machine. I had them stored in a Disneyland popcorn cup. I got $11.00 and spent it on dinner.

We got about 2 drops of rain on us today.

I tracked with the dogs last weekend with some experts who thought I need to start using a bit less food. Yesterday I went to a park and used less food. People wandered over my tracks but that was ok. What wasn't ok was I was forgetting exactly where the tracks where, which is the most important thing not to do. All the dogs were sweeping back and forth over their tracks.

Today I still used less food but made sure I knew where I was going, by sticking to boarders around planters and sidewalks. All three dogs did better. I even let out the line so I wasn't standing right next to them. Fancy and Dottie are both so food motivated they get quite frantic to get to the hotdog pieces and start acting crazy if they think they are near a drop. Pie is also food motivated but not quite as much as the other two. Pie likes to cut corners which is a big no-no in Schutzhund tracking. In SchH it is all about style and precision. The dog's nose tells them the track is making a corner and they feel it is silly to go all the way into the corner, but we are supposed to train them to do it that way. So far I'm lacking on convincing Pie that is the only way to go.

ffluffy is coming for a visit and an agility trail next weekend and I'm excited! I'd better have the house put together by then.