Bizzaro Zeldie

We went to Erin's house for Thanksgiving this year. We were very excited that Zeldie would get the chance to spend three whole days with four other dogs including one Irish Terrier that is only a week older than her. I was a bit nervous about how she would behave so we spent a couple of weeks beforehand focusing intensely on "off" (the counters). But as it turned out, the other dogs proved to be quite a distraction for her, more so than what was going on in the kitchen or with the people for most of the time.

We did come to realize though, that Zeldie has absolutely no self-regulation. On Thursday she spent the entire day playing with Sam and long after all of the other dogs had fallen asleep on the floor, she was still wandering around seemingly not sure what to do with herself until she finally fell, a full 12 hours after we had let her out of her crate that morning, over exhausted on the floor.

We were also completely amused that Zeldie seemed reluctant to do her business in the backyard. This was perhaps the part of the trip that David and I were looking forward to the most, waking up and letting her out into the big fenced in backyard in the morning. No trudging around in the cold and near dark with a poop bag in hand. However, as it turned out, Zeldie is definitely a city dog. On a leash is how she learned to potty and on a leash is how she prefers to potty. It seems to her the backyard was an extension of the house and unless we left her out there for hours on end playing with the other dogs, she wouldn't potty and she never once pooped back there.

I think the thing that was most incredible was watching Zeldie and Bailey together. It seemed as different as they were in stature and looks, they had a lot of the same habits. I noticed how they both scratched their nose the same way with their long back leg which I have never seen another dog do in my life. They both loved to give kisses the same way too. David kept saying it was "Bizzaro Zeldie" like that episode of Seinfeld. In fact they were so much alike that we had a hard time convincing PJ at one point that there were actually two of them there until we showed him the two dogs together. One thing they did do very differently lay down to take a nap. Bailey circled her spot and then laid down tucking herself into a neat little Bailey ball. Zeldie, on the other hand, fell over in her spot sprawled on her back limbs askew and snout thrown back. She's is a wonder.

Above you'll find some video of Bailey and Zeldie together so that you can see if you can tell them apart. At times, it was difficult for us too.

Seven Months of Puppy Love

Zeldie turned seven months old this week. It was a shock to realize that she was that that old and that we have now had her five months. The past three months have just flown by. We were just asking each other when the last time she even had an accident in the house was because we can't remember. She has definitely outgrown some of her puppy behaviors and has grown into some others. We are working hard on teaching her "off" and "heel". She seems to be adjusting fine to the long hours in the crate, even if she has to do six hours. We didn't think she was growing much and then we looked back at some pictures of her and realized that she had gotten a lot shaggier in the past couple of months even if she hadn't gotten much bigger. If she keeps changing in the next five months as much as she has the past five months, we can only guess what she will be up to next.

Dinner Time

Zeldie has always liked to play with her food bowl. She will often tip it over and push it around. Tonight she did something new with it. We happened to catch it on video. It amused us so we thought we would share it.

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...

Celebrating Two Years

This past weekend we went to San Francisco to celebrate the wedding of Mike McCarvel and Jennie Hoffman. Since it was our second anniversary, we decided to take a few extra days off of work and make a vacation of it. Because our work and school schedules don't align, we hadn't taken vacation together since last Thanksgiving when we went to Honduras. The wedding was beautiful, the weather was fantastic and the city was amazing. Take a look at the slideshow to see a few of the things that we did. We spent a lot of time walking all over the city and covered many of the neighborhoods. Another highlight of the trip was Alcatraz which neither of us had seen before. We would recommend the night tour to anyone who plans to visit the city in the future. But, be sure to buy your tickets well before you arrive in the city, they sell out fast. We enjoyed spending time with each other and couldn't believe how quickly the past two years have passed. We are so happy for Jennie and Mike and wish them much happiness in the years to come as they begin their married life together. As we head into our third year, we continue to be surprised by how much we still enjoy learning about each other and how much it means to us as we watch and help each other grow.

Young Scholars iTouch Summer Program Video

This past summer, I helped implement a program at one of our middle schools that I had designed to develop potential in students from underrepresented populations in advanced academics. The curriculum for the program centered around students being hired as consultants for the DC Board of Tourism to act as consultants to develop a virtual tour of DC. I worked with Destination DC, the official tourist organization for the city, to partner with the schools. The students' final podcasts were linked to their sites so their products were very authentic. To learn more about the project, you can view the video that aired when the program was presented to the school board on September 24, 2009 and is currently being run on Channel 21, FCPS's cable station.
To see the video click on the link below:
http://www.fcps.edu/DIT/streaming/is02_ipod.asx

To see the students' podcasts, go to:
http://www.fcps.edu/SandburgMS/YoungScholars/index.htm

Mac Daddy

We got our MacBook Pro this week. We decided earlier this year, after some doing some extensive research on the macs as a gift for our nephew, Justin, that we wanted one for us. We are really impressed. We have only had it four days, but it is amazing how as soon as it came out of the box it made an almost brand new PC look like a piece of junk to us. We initially decided on the Mac because of its capability for desktop publishing and its seamless integration of applications with web 2.0 tools, but once we started playing around with it, we were impressed with the sheer functionality of it. When you turn it on, it comes on instantly, no more waiting as the machine whirs and boots up. And it works, no freezing and shutting down. Not only all of that but the connection to the wireless is reliable. We were both a little bit worried about transitioning to the Mac system, but above you will see our first attempt at using the iPhoto program. We created a slideshow with our photos from our vacation to Roatan last November. We were both happy to find out how user-friendly the program. Our photos looked so nice in the slideshow, we might just decide we need to take another vacation!