From Mesopotamia With Love

My dad came to town for a few days this week to check on N's progress. Taking advantage of her natural couch-potato instincts, and concerned that I was letting her education slide now that our class is over, he began her formal schooling with the history of the ancient Near East. (Lucky me was subjected to his thoughts on early versus late Wittgenstein instead.)

We left her at home Thursday night and went to dinner at Marche (I don't know how to put the accent aigu over the "e" and can't be bothered to learn). The decor was ridiculous -- dozens of mismatched umbrellas hanging from the ceiling and it got only crazier as the eye moved down -- and the food was for the most part just so-so, but N made out like a bandit, scoring the bone from my lamb shank. Remembering her manners, she just stared at it completely mesmerized for a good 20 to 30 seconds until I gave her the "Take it" command.

Dad suggested I start ordering more osso buco, as those leftovers would also be very N-friendly, and I was surprised at how reasonable making my restaurant plans around my puppy's likes and dislikes seemed...

In any event, between the history lessons and the tasty treats, N seemed really sad to see him go, and tried to prevent him from doing so by making off with his plane ticket.

Fortunately Matthias came over a couple days later and cheered her right back up. (I, apparently, have gotten old and don't elicit quite the same degree of excitement that guests do. Humph.) Or, maybe she just knows that, with him, any photo has a good chance of ending up on Facebook and contributing still further to her fame...

Dad's going to check back on her in a couple of months in Boston and my mother will be arriving in a few weeks to help with the move, so N should (continue to) get plenty of couch-time with adoring houseguests... *Such* a tough life.

The Graduate

Nikita passed her final exam with flying colors yesterday, acing five of the six components -- sit, sit-stay, down, down-stay, and come -- and doing a respectable job at the other -- a long walk by my side through a glass-walled, distraction-filled room. I was so proud.


Alot of the credit has to go to Rita, the South Loop Petsmart's crack trainer. She had an incredible way with the puppies, and was great with their people too, doing everything from teaching us how to keep their ears clean to debating the merits of Cesar Millan's approach to dog psychology. N and I are sad we won't be around to take her "teenager" class next term...

It was also fun watching the other puppies grow up and (for the most part =) improve. From left in the photo, Sadie the chocolate Lab, Peanut the Beagle mix, and Gambler the American Stratfordshire Terrier, plus Chanel the Boxer and Rocco the black Dachshund mix who weren't able to make it, were all really sweet and cute. The Chinese dude with Tiger the crazy German Shepherd thankfully didn't switch into my class after all, so I was relieved of further translating duties and able to concentrate on actually learning.

To celebrate N's accomplishment, I gave her a treat from the goodie bag we got then put on the magic wrestle-sweatshirt and let her have at me until she wore herself out.

Now I just need to be good about keeping up with her training...