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!

Small world

Our good friend Mark was here on Monday for a quick business trip. We took him to the Atoll restaurant at the Catamaran Resort and Spa for dinner. As the waiter comes up to us, Mark notices it says Louisville on his name tag. Mark asks if he is in fact from KY (because yes there are other Louisville even though we think we are the only one!) and when the waiter pronounced it correctly, we knew he was in fact a Louisvillian. What makes this truly remarkable is that not only in a city of almost 3 million people did we find someone from the same city, but I actually graduated high school from the same graduating class! Go BHS Class of '93!
It is always nice to make a connection in a place where you can often feel isolated- people don't have the Southern hospitality or even common courtesy sometimes that you find in other places, like Louisville, KY! :)

Happy Birthday Hillary

Happy Birthday to our sister-in-law, Hillary. She is a great mom, hard working attorney and all around neat person to know. We talk about being the kind of patient and creative parent that she is with the kids.

We are also excited today to have our friend Mark visit us from the right coast and he is just in time for the heat wave here on the left coast. Today still has remnants of June Gloom on the coast but more humid and still which makes it quite warm. Hana has found shade under the tree to snooze in again after I caused her stress by running the loud and scary vacuum cleaner!
It is also restaurant week here in San Diego so we are hoping to take Mark out to a place that we have not been to either. These are the types of events I look forward to because they encourage us to get out of our comfort zone and try some place new.

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.

Hana's first day herding

Hana had her first experience at a farm and to see if she is truly a working dog. We went with our friend "Dude" and his human Jennifer who have been herding for awhile now. Hana at first wanted to play with the other dogs but got interested when Dude went in the pen with three sheep and made them run. By the time Dude was in the big pen with the sheep, Hana was almost whimpering and putting her paws on the fence. Finally it was time for her to have some fun. She went in the small pen with three sheep and I got them started by running after them (G believes we should have video of this but thankfully we do not!). Hana immediately started to chase them and especially the one who would break loose from the pack- although she never did her stare or herding stance that she uses on us and other dogs, she seemed to know she wanted them all to go one direction or another. It was pretty fun to watch and really hot so we quit while it was still interesting to her. We hope to take her out in another month or so and see what happens when she actually has to work and not just play. In the mean time we might try agility and see which she is suited for- agility requires a more hyper dog so we kind of hope she doesn't pick that up! Thanks to the action K9 sports for letting us play today.