Bad day, the sequel

The car drama continues, and the dogs continue to have to work on me. Feeling positive, I called the credit union once the dogs and I got out on our walk. I told the woman what my aunt had found with only five minutes' actual work. She said she had not received any emails from or about me (possible lie) but she was going to "head me off at the pass." Because the credit union only uses information from one credit score reporting company, and she had doublechecked whatever she'd done, she would not even look at the credit score I actually possess. The disapproval for the loan still stood, and if I wanted to do anything about it, I'd have to call Experian and fight with them.

Then I got some gobbledegook about how all the different credit score companies can have different information (how this is possible, I don't know). I told her that sounded incredibly stupid. She talked about having a contract with Experian, yadda yadda. Did I understand now? No, in fact, none of it made a jot of sense whatsoever. "Am I not speaking clearly?" she retorted. About to cry, I hung up, then had the meltdown.

I called my aunt, who had me call her friend who'd done the credit check on me yesterday. He agreed that given my credit card (MasterCard, nothing obscure) and the places I'd made purchases (again, not obscure) the idea that none of it would show up on a credit report was completely preposterous. So he called the credit union; the woman said she is not in the business of trusting people but making good loans. He got the same treatment: rude and stonewalled. So we're going to try somewhere else ... trying online at Chase, my parents' bank, led to a rejection within seconds, though. Gotta go in person, I suppose.

Again with the completely hopeless feelings. Not fun. Even less fun: I was giving my mom an update on the situation on my phone and walking the dogs. A grown bloody man stepped in front of Juno, didn't even make eye contact with me, and started freaking GROPING her. I snapped his head off: "You're supposed to ask before you manhandle other people's dogs!" He snapped something back but I wasn't listening. Sometimes, I wish Juno was a less tolerant dog toward strangers ...

Thankfully, training in the afternoon was lovely and made me feel a little better. Kaline did pretty well, participating in big dog heeling with the moving sit, moving down, and moving stand. If none of that makes sense: "moving" means that your dog does the command, while the person continues moving out to the end of the leash or some other point. Moving stand, naturally, was hardest for Kaline, but not terribly difficult. I got him stacked really nicely at one point! Then of course he moved. Ah well.

Juno was a freaking star. She did lovely off leash heeling, then worked on doing sits and downs while not moving out of the heel position (harder than it sounds!). Once she got the hang of it, she was gleeful—"up-down" is one of her absolute favorite games. Then we went in a big field with the other advanced dogs and did really long recalls. The best one was where I left Juno at one end and headed for the other, probably 75-100 yards (but I am not good at guesstimating measurements, so don't quote me!). Periodically I looked back to reinforce the stay; about three quarters of the way to my destination, I looked back and Juno was standing up.

"Sit!" I called. And her butt plopped down. I actually did a little fist pump of glee. Woohoo!

I made it to the end of the field, called her, and she came like a bat out of hell. Such a good dog. She got many treats and a good long belly rub.

After a long nap and cuddle, Kaline and I accompanied Mom to Stanford Shopping Center for a quick training outing. We worked on attention, as always, as well as not pulling (gaaaaah). He settled nicely behind me while we were at counters, if I asked; he also did pretty decent blocking if I asked for that. I had a good time exposing him to the escalators. His reaction was very Kaline—not scared, but utterly fascinated. We hung out there for a while; I gave him treats for looking calmly at the escalators, and for looking at me.

Kaline and the escalator.

We also did a quick stop in at Trader Joe's and went up and down some aisles. Kaline did a lovely sit-stay with great attention while I got cream cheese off a high shelf. I had him do a down-stay and rolled one of these TJ bags on wheels all around him; he was fine until someone rang one of the big brass bells, and then Kaline had pretty much had enough. Ah well, he did fine!

Vet update: Kaline had a pretty big breakout, all of a sudden, of those little bumps last night after the CGC test. They were clustered on his left hock, and definitely itchy. So off we went to the vet; she called them "pyometra" and put Kaline on antibiotics and antihistamines. Woohoo for antihistamines and their knockout properties, hehe. Hopefully this will take care of those. I also started him on Frontline, and Oct. 1 he'll start getting a Heartgard with Juno.