Back on Track

Puppies are gone and I figured it's time to get back on track with life in general as well as dog training. I've been doing some formal training with Mozart for a few weeks now, but I couldn't get to Brandy. I had a great hopes for the past weekend, but the weekend turned out to be another weekend from hell - nice but very very hectic, leaving me more tired by the end of Sunday than I was on Friday morning:-)
Charlotte was neglected because of the puppies and her birthday party was month and a half overdue. She wanted to have a sleepover with her friends so we scheduled it for last Friday night. Well, that was pretty stupid of me, I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I didn't even foreseen all the difficulties. The party was schedule on Friday night due to one girl not being able to make it on Saturday. It was nice of my boss to let me leave a bit early so I could get the house in to somewhat decent shape before people would arrive. So I rushed home, tried to finish my stupid self-eval that was due before the end of the day, pick up the stuff laying around, vacuum etc. Of course that meant that poor Mozart was locked up all day.I took him out briefly but it was not even close to being enough for him. By the time the girls came he was about to explode in his crate with excitement.
Because I Mozart's size and lack on any self control, at this point, he couldn't be allowed in the room with five 7 year old girls. So I ended up juggling between 5 girls and 4 dogs 3 of which were not house broken. I finally ended up telling girls to keep their shoes on in the kitchen as one managed to step into the puddle left by one of the puppies. Although by the midnight I was barely standing girls had a blast. The Saturday morning we spent decorating the gingerbread men, then I had to send the last puppy home, then we were invited to a party where Charlotte petted a hamster and she had a such a horrible allergic reaction to it that it took her 24 hours to recover completely, that included dose of claritin, and benadril on top of that for every 4 hours. I am thinking we should stay away from hamsters in the future:-)
SO FINALLY MONDAY I put my foot down and did some training we Brandy. We did articles in the house. I was debating whether I should start with a full set or small set. I've decided to do a full set and she did great! We also did some gloves in the dark outside.
yesterday I pull out the jumps and did almost complete open run, except the figure 8. She did really well, but we need to work on heeling again. It seems that we always have to work on heeling and it's hardly getting better:-( I am sure the figure 8 that I had forgotten about will look horrendous. Brandy was very proud of herself though! This morning I took articles outside as it was warm and I didn't have to worry about her tong sticking to the metal article:-) I started with the full set and full distance to see where we were. She wasn't even going to the pile but rather going in some bizarre direction, I suspect she was looking for number 1 glove, so I had to shorten the distance to 6 ft. I am sure we will build it back up fairly fast, but I am glad she still did the full set of articles. But reality is that I need to come up with a plan and the biggest part of the plan is to tackle those out of sight stays that gave us so much problem this year, because without the stays nothing else matters, so I'd better get to it fast if I want this CDX ever.