The Insanity Workout

I am feeling loads and loads better today!  The antibiotics seem to be finally kicking in.  The pain from the pleurisy is all gone today.  In fact, I am feeling so good today that I lost my mind decided to give Riley a bath before her nursing home visit tomorrow.  She hadn’t had a bath in forever (a few months at least) and has been delighting in getting dirty and muddy lately.

A quick note about our “fancy pants” retirement community we’re going to start visiting: the activities director called me on Tuesday and said that in all of her excitement about Riley and I coming to start visits, she forgot that I have to fill out paperwork, have a criminal background check, and have a PPD (tuberculosis) test before we can start.  Our first visit was supposed to be today at 2:00, but I went by and filled out the paperwork yesterday and am waiting on a call back about when I can go get the PPD done.  I am actually glad to see that they require all of their volunteers do this–it seems smart to me.  So I don’t mind the delay!  Oh, and I met Luke, the yellow lab that’s a therapy dog there already.  He’s 11 and SUPER mellow…Riley’s gonna seem like the Tasmanian Devil compared to him!  😉

You’ve heard of the Insanity workout program?  Yes?  Good.  Here’s Riley being insane demonstrating that workout right after her bath…

I Regress

First of all, let me say we survived all the weather yesterday.  It hasn’t rained today, it’s still wet outside though.  A few of the golf courses around here were closed today.  It must be serious if they close the golf courses!

Ready to play in the muck!

I have something bad to admit.  Life has gotten so crazy and the weather was so hot and nasty this summer that I haven’t been taking Riley on walks like I should have.  I thought playing in the backyard would meet her energy needs, and it did, but it didn’t meet her training needs.  Riley was in obedience school for about 10 months.  She used to be a fairly good walker on leash (good enough to get her TDI certification), but now she’s regressed.  If she sees a squirrel, she tries to bolt!  I stopped taking her to school after she got her TDI certification because I didn’t like the way some things were being handled in the class.  There was a big dog that would growl throughout the entire class and would mount Riley or jump on her.  She’s already afraid of bigger dogs and that just wasn’t helping.  So we stopped going.

Let me just suffice it to say that we are signing up for a different school because Riley needs some work…  She did fine on her therapy visit to the nursing home today (we haven’t been in about a month), but I know she can do a lot better too.  She seems to know that when we’re in the nursing home she needs to chill out and behave, so that’s good.  I took her on a walk in the neighborhood yesterday and she basically dragged me down the street.  Luckily she doesn’t do that on therapy visits or I wouldn’t let her go on visits.

She also feels the need to jump on visitors at our house.  She doesn’t jump on the residents at the nursing home (again, I think it’s a sixth sense thing) or people out in public, but if you come into our house, she’ll jump on you at least once.  So we’re going back to school to get trained.  I’m also going to see if we can work on the weekends at the school gym and school yard my mom works at.  That’ll be a place with minimal distractions.

Oh, and several people commented on how soft she was!  I guess this new shampoo with conditioner really works!

Bamboo Pet Shower Massager Review

Since I have to give Riley more baths than the typical dog (for her therapy work), I decided to buy a shower sprayer to be able to actually get through to her undercoat and actually rinse off all her shampoo.  I have been having to rinse her with a cup.  We got rid of a shower sprayer right before I got Riley but the hose for it was only like 6 feet long and it wouldn’t reach the back of the tub.  Riley’s coat has two layers and the top layer beads off water and it’s really hard to get water through down to her undercoat.  Also, I was having a really hard time rinsing all the shampoo off of her coat.  In walks (well, I should say, “In gets delivered”) the Bamboo Pet Shower Massager.  Here are some pictures from the manufacturer:

I found this an easy product to install.  I had read that some people had trouble installing it but I don’t really know why.  You just take your regular shower head off, put some Teflon tape (included) around the threads of your shower pipe, screw on the diverter, put more Teflon tape around the threads of the diverter, attach your old shower head, then connect the hose and massager head to the bottom of the diverter.

Riley was okay with the sprayer when it wasn’t on her…  She got really freaked out by the water spraying on her, I guess because she’s never really experienced that before.  She tried to scramble out of the bathtub but I managed to keep her in there.  The poor thing had her tail between her legs until I set the sprayer down to shampoo her.  I was sweet talking her the whole time to keep her in the tub.  Once I shampooed her, I started spraying her again, telling her it was okay.  Lo-and-behold, her tail came out from in between her legs.  I started massaging her with the shower massager and she didn’t seem to mind it then.  And the best things were that I was easily able to wet her undercoat with the sprayer and I was able to completely rinse all the shampoo out of her coat.

Hopefully she won’t be as freaked out next time!!  She’ll be getting used to it.  Treats help out my cause too…