Bad news. My computer is dead. Yes the new laptop that I bought less than 2 months ago went on strike a couple days ago. At first it just wanted a few things, but pretty soon its demands grew and it refused to work. This means that I likely just lost everything! Well almost everything, I was luckily able to save most of my pictures to the external hard drive when we were still in the negotiations stage, but all the videos I made of the dogs and ferrets are gone. It's being shipped somewhere and will hopefully be back soon, but I have very little hope of there being any files left when I get it back. At least it's under the manufacturer warranty.
Good news. Vito is becoming ball/tug/any toy obsessed. For the average person this might be annoying, but I am LOVING it! If I'm able to use a toy as a reward it will enable me to get much more drive and excitement out of him for agility, obedience, flyball, whatever. It will also be a ton easier for reward placement in agility if I'm able to throw something in the correct line of travel after he does a sequence. With Lance I've been trying to throw a treat, but it's harder since he can't see it land as easily and it doesn't create the same adrenaline rush as playing with a toy. In Petsmart today Vito came with me as usual on Tuesdays and we played quite a bit of ball. It was fun watching him slide on the floor and run like crazy. Each time he delivered the ball perfectly to my hand and I was able to get him to do some tricks before throwing it again as his reward. However, I bounced a ball in class today as a distraction and Vito went crazy! We definetly have to work on that as he shrieked and whined in a very high pitched voice :P
In other news, we might be comletley upturning our lives in a couple months. Adam's parents called and there is a small boarding kennel for sale in Marshfield, WI where they live. The asking price also includes their 3 bedroom house and 10 acres of land! So we called the sellers to find out more and are intrigued. I have no clue if this is what we are meant to do or not, but is at least exciting for right now! If we were to do this I would also be able to start up my own dog training business! So I've been trying to list some pros and cons in my head, assuming that we would even be able to get a loan; having no income kind've puts a kink into getting a mortgage.
Pros:
- I can invison expanding this into more than just dog boarding, and having my own dog training classes.
- Own a house and a ton of land!
- Close to Adam's parents
- The setup would likely be a very easy job, not very time consuming.
- I can imagine the future and I like it.
Cons:
- Can't travel ever. Boarding is generally a weekend thing
- Far from everything. Even if we did get to go away, it would be far to go for the dog's agility and obedience shows. And far to travel to any big city.
- Risky. We'd be moving, buying a house and a business, for something that only generates 30-40k right now, and who knows in this economy. I feel like we would never be able to make enough to pay off our current loans and then the price of all this too.
- Owning a business with your spouse can lead to a lot of arguments.
- It might turn out to be something that we really don't want to do. Adam doesn't know what his calling is yet and this would be a big investment in something he's not sure of.
- I've been thinking about getting into service dog training instead of behavioral work as my career goal, and this would put an end to that.
So I really don't know. But Adam really really wants to do this. He's getting really stressed in school right now and is seizing upon this as the future. We will just have to wait and see!
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