Samson is heading to Doggie Boot Camp...Again

Yep. Off we go again to dog training. This time it is Kevin, The Dog Prodigy.The first training was a disaster simply because we used a guy that trains hunting dogs to try and train a family pet. It was a bad fit from the start, but he was a friend and we made a mistake. This guy is expensive, but guarantees his work, will be there for us even after the training and we can drop Samson off for the week of Jenn's wedding for $20 a day. BTW, you can see some of Samson's work on the controller for our sound bar above. He will chew up anything he gets in his mouth.

I was going to say, we have plenty of money to spend now that we don't have kids at home, but I already referenced Jennifer's wedding. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone at the wedding and I can tell you from experience, Vegas in April is awesome. We are set up for our hotel and flights. We fly in Thursday the 19th at 1:00 PM and we are staying at the Aliente in North Las Vegas. Dad, Darryl and Randy will be able to come over to the Aliente and see what the fuss is all about. We think it is probably the nicest casino complex off of the strip in Las Vegas. It is owned by Boyd Gaming. We have the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner on Friday night and the wedding is at 6 PM on Saturday. Jennifer and McKenny fly out to Hawaii at 9 AM on Sunday and Darla and I will bring Sam back to the hotel on Saturday night, hang with her on Sunday and return her to John Sunday night. We then fly home Monday afternoon.

I added a picture from Diamond Oaks. We had a lot of rain this last week and there is now a small waterfall on the 6th hole at Diamond. The area around the course has been built out and the street runoff all runs to the creeks on Diamond and sometimes they back up and the water finds its way to lower ground. The culverts are pretty good, but there are three or four places where the water will go over the creek banks and invade the course. The 6th hole is one of them and it makes a nice babbling brook with the small waterfall as you traverse the sixth.

I mentioned last week the new Taylor Made driver I got from one of my workers. I tried it out on Saturday and had mixed results. The one thing I noticed is that I cannot over swing with the R1 or I will pull the ball left. I had some brilliant drives when I was slow and deliberate with my swing. If  I rushed it at all the ball went left. The Titleist is much more forgiving, but I think if I switch to the R1 I will improve my swing and tempo over time. I shot 42+45=87 and played with John, his son, Jason and his daughter's boyfriend, Justin. John and Jason both shot 88 and Justin had 90. We had a great time, though.

Jason is down with his Dad to visit for the weekend and he has a 7 year old daughter named Payton. John wanted her to meet Samson, so we took him by yesterday afternoon. The girls were at a birthday party so we visited with John and Jason before carrying on with our walk. John called this morning and said they were going to come by and meet Samson and I suggested that we walk him over. He is hyper and I didn't want him to knock her down. They live about a quarter mile away and the walk tires him out. John is great with dogs and gets down to his level and pets him and calms him down. Payton was able to come over and pet him and he was fine.

Kevin, the Dog Prodigy that we are taking Samson to, will have him for two weeks and guarantees that he will have him loose leash walking, not play biting, not jumping up, not reacting to other dogs or the doorbell, stealing food off tables, chewing shoes (and other things like remotes), not bolting away and coming when called. He will also not go crazy with our guests, leave our cats alone, listen from a distance, respond to No, Leave it, Stay, Come and Heel.  If he can correct the leash walking and the biting, jumping up, I'll be thrilled. We will miss our little Samson (he's 65 pounds now), but Kevin will keep in touch with daily texts and videos of Samson's progress. We will have a two hour session with Kevin when we pick him up where we will take him to a dog park and see all of the commands and try them out ourselves. I included a You Tube video of his work. The other trainer simply walked him and shocked him 20 times and sent us on our way. Useless.

Work has been going pretty well, but I may have an issue soon. I have very little control over pay increases, working hours, even promotions, but the one thing I have allowed in my office is for some employees to work remotely once or twice a week. My boss is not a fan of that and thinks people will goof off. Part of the reason I allow it is that I trust my staff and this is one of the things that I can do to affect their quality of work and life. The other is that this is a sales organization and the numbers have to be there to continue the work from home ability. Harvey brought it up on Friday and said he wants to revisit the issue with me. This will be a big issue with me if I'm told to stop this altogether. I don't work from home and don't have any desire to. I did that for ten years and it was fine while it lasted. My employees who travel 60 minutes to work consider this a God send to them and I want to continue it. To his credit, he said that he isn't saying NO, but wants to put some controls on it. He had a bad experience in his office with someone they could never get a hold of. I told him if that was the case in my office, that I would pull the plug on that person's ability to work remotely in a heartbeat. It is a privilege and not a right and I try to catch my remote workers working by calling them routinely and they know it.

I had a bad weekend in terms of small injuries. First, the dog was harassing the younger cat on Saturday morning and she goes into full attack mode and was hissing and clawing at him to the point when he retreated she was still jumping on his back. I tried to separate them and ended up hitting my toe  and splitting it open. Today, when we got back from walking Sam, I was working on the pool and spa and hit my left index finger on a piece of wood and split that wide open with blood running down my hand and onto the ground. I got that patched up and am all bandaged up, walking with a limp and even having some difficulty with typing this.

The football games are starting. We have to leave to drop Samson in the middle of the second game, but I may get a couple of pictures over at his place. He only takes a maximum of 4 boot camp dogs at a time and they are kenneled IN his home. That alone is a huge difference from the concentration camp he was in at his first trainer. Again, this is the difference between a family dog and a hunting dog.

7:30 PM
We are back from dropping our boy off at Kevin's house. He had about 7 dogs in his home. Darla was really nervous and upset. Kevin let us know that he would be using a pinch collar for when he walks Samson. She didn't like that, but I completely understand. The dog WILL NOT pull on the leash when he is wearing a pinch collar because, well, the collar will choke him. I can see from the videos that he trains the dogs in a day not to pull on the leash and now I know why. It makes all the sense in the world. I don't have a problem with it. He won't be hurting himself because he's a smart dog and won't pull on the leash. We will end up with a dog that doesn't pull.

She was still upset after the drop off and concerned for our boy. Then, Kevin sent us a video of Samson meeting the other dogs in the backyard and she was fine. She could see that he was enjoying himself and socializing with other dogs which is one of the things we need him to do.

Here is the video:

Samsons Training Video

That's it for this week. Hope all are well. Not thrilled with the Super Bowl. Sick of the Patriots and really wanted to see the Jaguars vs the Vikings, Oh well. Ciao.