Category Archives: Parenting

Most of this week has been practice, review, doing the same things over and over.  We do an outdoor tracking session every day, followed by time at 4 Paws for lecture, practice, and questions.  Afternoons are either at the mall for practice, questions, and indoor tracking, or else more lecture and review at 4 Paws.  […]

Everybody is tired right now.  All of us parents are tired and venting to each other online (because we’re often too busy with our children and too tired to actually socialize at breakfast and dinner). Our children are tired and acting out, harder to control, having more seizures, running away more, every problem we are […]

I didn’t post last night because it was just a rotten evening.  Everybody was exhausted, and I had some bizarre allergic reaction to I don’t know what that left my eyes crossed and my brain fuzzy, so we just came back to the room and went to bed early.  Friday evening, though, the most amazing […]

This morning Kender got up close and personal with A’Kos again.  He stayed up a little late last night and so was grumpy and sleepy today.  A’Kos became a handy cuddle toy after Kender was done with his breakfast. This morning’s tracking session was wet and rainy, but blessedy not as cold and windy as […]

Today started out with our first tracking session. Fortunately it had stopped raining, although the ground was sopping wet and the first tracking team accidentally went through a puddle.  We got a handout about tracking procedure and behaviors last night, but it was another thing to see it in action.  I didn’t get very many […]

Today it was rainy a good chunk of the day, so instead of going outside Kender had to stay in.  He found his favorite riding toy and did laps with that for most of the day.  He snuck off into the back room a couple of times, and he climbed into empty dog kennel several […]

All of the 4 Paws dogs are wonderfully trained.  The training room is full with nearly 20 families, some of them with more than one child, and we all have our dogs out at the same time.  Our dogs spend most of the time at our feet, and two or three teams will be practicing […]

Today was amazing and exhausting all in one. I spent half the morning fighting back tears and half the afternoon fighting off Kender.  I have more pictures, but because I am posting from my tablet most of them will have to wait until I can get to a real computer that isn’t painfully slow at […]

We had a really nice drive down to Ohio. Most of the way, we were accompanied by an absolutely gorgeous rainbow so bright even Brian could see it. When the rainbow went away, I got a view of the almost-full moon out my window in its place.  I think those are wonderful omens for our […]

This is A’kos’ letter to Kender today: Hello!  Bet you want to know who I am! That is why I am writing to you!  My name is A’kos. My name is special because I am named after a type of Hawk. I am a member of the Hawke Litter. Hawke is a little boy who […]