It’s 7 in the morning and the neighborhood is still asleep. No trucks or cars running by our place. Just the wind whistling through the trees and the birds singing. It is amazing how quiet the neighborhood is throughout the day. One of the neighbors said that our street is one of the most well kept secrets in this Area. I am so in love with this place. It’s beautiful, quiet, just big enough for two people and kept in a very good condition.
On top of it, it’s in the shadow most of the day, so it stays cool, meaning, we don’t need AC and I don’t intend to get one.
Bathroom in Harbor Style
We had to turn the dining room into the living room
because the wall fit the entertainment system perfectly.
A hole had to be drilled through the floor so the cable guys could lay a cable for the TV
The dogs still have not settled in completely, yet. How I can tell? They want to follow me each step I am doing. Usually, once they are outside, they could care less if I am there or not, but over here, even when I put them outside, as soon as I leave, they want to be right there with me. Give them another week or two and they won’t even bother.
The two yards are a god sent. Indra finally got into heat. It’s the first week, so she’s not in standing heat yet. I only keep them together while I am supervising, but once my eyes go off of them, the girl is seperated from the boys. Which means, Yukon and the Puppy are in the back, while Indra and I are in the frontyard. I especially love sitting on the small front porch, leaning on one of the “pillars”, reading a book, while Indra retrieves her ball. She also learned a new command: “pick it up”, is her newest trick.
Usually, when she retrieves, she drops the ball right to my feet. Since I am sitting higher, I don’t want to get up every single time, so I simply point to the ball and tell her to pick it up. Than I grab the string, tell her to out and platz and throw it for her.
I’ve been also working on her hunt drive. Boy, she’s getting better and better. She was already doing great but meanwhile, she’s absolutely amazing.
Due to all the rain, the grass grew so rapidly fast, that you can only see the dogs head, when they are laying down. So I am using the high grass to build her hunt drive. I toss the ball, let her sit next to me, make her focus for ten seconds and then send her off to search for the ball. At one point she searched for good half an hour and did not stop until she found the ball. I actually thought she wouldn’t find it, so I praised her and wanted to break her off from the search and make her come inside, with me. She would sit in front of the door, whining. She knew the ball was out there and she wanted to get it. So I opened the door and around five minutes later she found her ball.
That was one of the most intense hunt-drive-building sessions we’ve had so far.
One thing I really like around here is that everybody has dogs, which means lots of distractions. It’s nice having those kind of distractions around, it is what we’ve been seriously lacking but with all the dogs and all that barking, out of every corner, we have exactly what we need to work around that. Plus the picket fence makes a perfect barrier to work on precise heeling. Yukon has gotten so much better in just one single session, it’s amazing how fast they learn.
Both of the dogs, Indra and Yukon, already left an amazing impression in the neighborhood, People stop by, amazed how good they are, even though it’s just simple obedience.
Whenever a dog is walking by, I put her into a down stay. Most of the time I work on off leash heeling so she’s in the down, off leash. However, I have control over here and that is what is important.
I make her focus on me, the dog walks by and I release her. She’s so focused on me and the ball, it’s crazy.
Indra enjoying her (collected) bones in the sunroom. That is where she is staying during the night as long as she’s not in standing heat.
Don’t you love it when a street is that quiet that you can take your dog, work him off leash, on the street, without having to worry to get run over by a car or truck? It’s what I’ve been seriously missing.
Just having the ability to work out on the street, a quiet street, yet with many distractions, like people walking their yappy little dogs, pedestrians or joggers.
I am seriously in love with this place and just knowing that no landlord or landlady having a say in it whether I work my dogs around the premises or not. Whether I let them run or not. Whether I have a friend coming by working with me or not. Owning your own place gives you so much freedom out here, it’s incredible.
After a couple of people said I should enter her, I entered her with the “best dog trick”, “most unusual dog” and “largest dog”. I didn’t really know what to do with the best dog trick so I asked for a Volunteer and we did some Swissies. I wasn’t sure if she would perform because of all the distractions but she was so darn focused that I was completely blown away. It’s like somebody switched her on button. There were dogs and people in the way, right next to her but she did not care about any of that at all and she won. She earned herself a blue ribbon and placed second in the category “most unusual pet” for being a World Traveler. 
sturmfalken.com 