Hana is back in "school" for intermediate obedience. She still gets a little stressed with the other dogs barking and all the humans talking to the dogs, but I learned to use her stress signals to calm her down. It is really cool to have that communication with her and she keeps her eyes glued to me so I know it is working.

On Wed. evening, she had her first long play date with Dude (pictured above). For almost 6 hours she played at Dude's house and made him pretty tired. I think she was pretty good for Jennifer who was so sweet to take her on a warm day for us. The funniest moment we saw came at the end of the night when we were saying good bye and I was trying to get Hana to do her "touch" (where she puts her nose on the back of my hand) and instead she put her paw right on Dude's shoulder! It was too cute.

Last night we took her for her first kayak in the water experience. I think this will be a long process. While she willingly gets in the kayak in the yard, once she had her vest on and we were at the water's edge, she was not interested in being in a floating kayak. It may have something to do with her Frisbee which she prefers to semi-bury when at the beach or the kayak moving and her not being ready to swim. We tried to use the Frisbee to lure her further into the water to no avail. We will post a short video of this trial as soon as we can edit it!

Full Moon Paddle

Did you spend or save your stimulus money? We decided to do our part for the economy and spent it on a new activity that we could do together. We bought a Cobra tandem kayak! It won't be in for a couple of weeks so they let us borrow 2 regular kayaks in the mean time. Last night we went out for our second paddle on Mission Bay- it was a nice sunset and we were supposed to see the full moon (aka Strawberry Moon because it is as close to the earth as the sun is in winter), but there was a bit of a haze on the horizon so we didn't actually get to enjoy it until later.
Still the water was smooth and fairly quiet so we took a nice leisurely paddle out and back at dusk. We can't wait for Hana to go with us once we get her fitted in her life vest, we hope she will enjoy it as much as we do. Yes, she is the primary reason we chose a tandem. Also it will be easier to share with friends when they come to visit (hint hint). No it does not mean we won't move back to KY ever, we hope to use it here and there whenever the time comes.

Hana had spontaneous play dates this morning with both her boys. Hovis and Dude. Of course playing with Hovis only happens because she lies down in his yard and waits for him to cry enough that Chris will let him out. Then she heard Dude going down the alley and hung out with him in the yard for awhile. She is now sleeping it all off. A dog's life is truly good.