October is a busy month

We've been working very hard this month, and it's been a bit difficult to keep up for the past few weeks. We enjoyed our time time in San Francisco, but when you go away for a few days, everything from laundry to work emails to grocery shopping seem to take a long time to get back on schedule, especially when you add in parent information nights and classes and swim practices. Poor Zeldie was in her crate quite a bit this past week as we were both out of the house Monday night and Tuesday night, I was out of the house Wednesday night with practice and then met Anne at the condo association meeting after that, and then Thursday we needed to get some shopping done.

However, yesterday, on Halloween, we got up and took her to Rock Creek Park to the "Mutt Masquarade" Parade. It was a whole lot of fun to see a couple of hundred dogs dressed up in costumes. There was probably a two mile walk with all of these dogs, and also some booths set up for various dog products. We had bought a pirate costume for Zeldie at Petsmart, but it is too small and she was very much tugging on the dangly parts. So, we just put her ND jersey on her, but that might be too small now too. Shiloh came along as well, and is growing quite a bit. Those two get along well, which is great if we ever need to dogsit for one another. There was a man and woman there who had three Irish Terriers, which is the first time we've seen another Irish Terrier. They were very cute and friendly and calm, so hopefully Zeldie at some point will be as calm as them.

Zeldie is showing pretty good progress towards being a fully adult dog. First of all, she's figured out how to show she needs to go out. For a while she would just sit by the door and wait for us to realize she was there. Now, she's doing two or three very audible whines while walking near the door and then sitting with body touching the door when we see her. We haven't had an accident in the house in quite a while, so hopefully we're out of the peeing in the house stage. She also has a fun little trick where we'll have something in our hands. We tell her to sit and stay, and then walk down the hall and throw it in a room. We'll say "go find it," and she'll run and put her mouth on the object.

We're getting ready for Anne to leave for a few days to go to a conference, so it'll just be Daddy and Zeldie for Thursday through Sunday. But, I'm going to be coaching both Saturday and Sunday mornings, so we'll have a good time hanging out each afternoon and evening. Maybe we'll even have a campout on the floor in the living room...