Day 185 (not that I am counting).

Senator was no help, the office actually made me feel worse and told me to wait until August 2008.

any tricks up your sleeve?

I have no tricks. My super power is rather lame. It only gives me power to rant (but I always secretly habored that power).

Wait... I have one trick I forgot about. Perhaps we will get lucky and they will draw my husband in the DV lottery. Those notices are sent out in May sometime.

Day 187! Hubby is on the plane heading back to Toronto as I type, makes me feel almost ill that we are still living in this purgatory and we spend so much time in airports.

It was a nice (although seemed to fly by) week. He helped me get a manageable diet/exercise program together and trained my dog to run with the bike and now the dog actually walks good on a leash too. (He watches way too much Dog Whisperer, but whatever he does, it works!) Now, I have to start preparing for the kid to move down right after school gets out in Toronto.

how did he train the dog to run with the bike??

and how did he get your dog to walk proper???

Is it just the changing direction thing when you're walking with your pup??

I'm glad you had a great week Delicia! When does your Son get our of school? Will be nice for you to have him there

He is very patient and strict when it comes to dog's behaviors. For walking, we just started using a very short leash (2 ft) and correct the dog when it starts to get ahead by stopping and putting her back into position by pushing her back by her chest. Then she has to stand there and not walk forward until the human starts to walk. For her, using a choke chain and making sure you swing the arm (somewhat exaggeratedly) that is holding her leash seems to help her pace herself correctly.

For the bike, after she got the walk down (just took a couple days) the bike followed naturally. Since there is a pretty fast paced forward only motion, she stays focused on moving forward. We just tied a leash (6 ft) around the cross bar as close to the handle bars as possible and wrapped it around a few times so she really has only about 3-4 ft of leash available. She walks and bikes on the left side, so left turns can be a little tricky and have to be taken pretty slow. We also have a lot of rabbits around which cause problems both walking and biking and if she starts focusing on them, we have to stop completely and make her sit until she is refocused on the walker/biker. She has had a couple 'incidents' where she was out of focus and tried to either get too close to the bike or tried to get ahead of the bike, but one little bump on her side with the bike tire seemed to cure her of that.

One note on dog walking: retractable leashes are silly. I never understood the point. You have no control over the dog whatsoever and they don't learn to walk next to you. They just learn to walk as far ahead of you as they possibly can and stop and sniff whatever whenever.

Kid has his exams in late June in Toronto and school starts here in AZ in August. We are thinking the weekend over July 4 would be a good time to fly up and get him and bring him back. I can't wait... I miss that monkey.

im sorry it is taking so long for everything.......i pray it all gets to the next level very soon so that ur wait is over