BLK ACRN, and My Poor Pooches!

Had a trip to DMV this morning which went incredibly smoothly. I only waited for about 5 minutes and then had a friendly and competent clerk who took care of my tricky request with no problem. And the exciting part is that I no longer have truck plates and was able to get my BLK ACRN plates back on. Yay!

In more difficult news, we dropped Indie and Ben off today with our trainer, where they will spend the entire week. It's going to be very good for Indie, but very hard on us! The primary purpose of this visit is to let Indie realize that Diane and I are not the only humans in the world he can feel comfortable with. We were going to do this at the end of last summer and had to abort when there was a heat wave. They are scheduled to spent a couple hours outside twice a day (AM and PM), mostly be crated when in the house, and she doesn't have central air conditioning, so this is clearly a springtime or autumn endeavor here in Virginia. The secondary purpose is for Indie and Ben to spend time together on neutral ground and under supervision. We had them together with muzzles last Sunday (I say we, but Diane and I weren't allowed to stay and watch because Indie overreacts if we're present -- if this sounds like a bad thing to do, I can assure you that it's necessary and I feel worse for us than I feel for him, plus Marti was able to stay). The reports from Melissa and Marti were that the did much better than expected and that we'd work up to no muzzles during this week. Well, darned if Melissa didn't get them to muzzleless interaction by the second session today, including a the very beginnings of play behavior and even polite interactions in the house. The great thing is that they'll also both be around some of her other dogs in controlled circumstances, which they both need (Indie for reactivity and Ben for overexuberence). This is going to be so good for those guys.