The Education of Allie: The Miraculous World of Clicker Training

So I hadn't really planned on writing anything else today since I didn't really expect much out of our first little training session, but y'all this dog is full of surprises.

I realized now since I've talked about it several times, that some of you may not actually know what a "clicker" is because before getting Allie, the only clicker I'd ever heard of was a TV remote.
This is a clicker:

It's basically just a little plastic box with a piece of metal inside it that clicks when it's pressed. I've read a lot about clicker training and I like that it's a non-intimidating method of getting the results you want through reinforcing the behavior you want the dog (or pretty much any other pet, I've seen some people even use these with horses) to do. When starting clicker training, the first step is to "load the clicker" which definitely kind of threw me off with the name, when I hear that you have to "load" something, I'm thinking put something inside it, but that's not actually what this means. "Loading the clicker" basically means getting the dog used to the sound the clicker makes and getting them to understand that something positive follows hearing that sound. So to load the clicker you just click and treat without having the dog do anything. Just click and then give the dog a treat, most things I read said to do this about 10-20 times, then let the dog get interested in something else and then click again. If they look at you or come over to you, that means they've got it, then you can give them a treat and can actually start using the clicker to train them.

The idea behind clicker training is to help your pet to enjoy learning new things, whether it's obedience type skills or just tricks to show off for friends, because rather than punishing your dog for doing something you didn't want them to do, you're rewarding them for doing what you did want them to do. This is also supposed to make the dog want to listen to you because they do whatever it is you're wanting them to do, you're going to reward them. If they do the behavior you tell them to do, you click as soon as they do it and give them a treat, if they don't do what you told them to do, you simply put them back in the position you wanted them in and they don't get a treat that time. It doesn't take them too long to figure out that they only get a treat if they do whatever it is you're asking them to do.

The first thing (and supposedly the easiest) I wanted to train, was "stay". I read something that I'd never thought of, but makes a lot of sense. This article mentioned how most of us train our dog to sit or lay down, and teach a "stay" cue separately, but that it not only can be confusing to the dog, it's also kind of unnecessary. This article suggested teaching "stay" as a part of "sit" or "lay down", meaning to teach the dog to sit or lay down until you tell them to get up. Wow, why had I never thought of that before? Because when you think about it, that has to be pretty confusing for a dog, "if stay means to stay sitting until I'm told to move, then what do they mean when they tell me to sit?" I mean technically if you tell your dog to sit (meaning for them to stay seated) even if they only sit for 2 seconds, they did do what you told them to do.

The main difficulty I've had with finding training videos online is the ones that make the most sense typically use dogs that are already very well trained so already know how to do everything their owner is trying to demonstrate. I mean come on, having your dog sit perfectly still while you toss an entire package of weenies around your backyard, yeah that's something my dog will be able to do after a single training session, give me a break. But I finally managed to find a really decent step-by-step article on how to teach a "stay". So using steps from that, plus adding in a "release cue" (letting your dog know they can get up) which I learned from another video, here's how the session went.

I started off like the article said, had Allie sit right in front of me, waited 2 seconds, clicked and gave her a treat since she didn't move. I then repeated this (adding one second each time) until I could count to 15 without her trying to get up. Then it was time to start adding distance. I told her to sit, took a step backwards, counted to 10, clicked and gave her a treat. I repeated this taking one more step backwards every time until I could stand 10 steps away from her (per the directions) for 10 seconds without her trying to get up. Then I decided to make it even more interesting and had her sit and walked out of the room, first where she could still see me, but then around corners where she couldn't see where I was, and would count to 15 and she still stayed put.

Now some people are really picky and don't want their dog to move at all, not even shift position, but I don't really care. There were a couple times if I was gone for a while, she'd lay down and watch for me, that doesn't bother me at all, as long as she's in the same spot I left her, I couldn't really care less whether she's sitting or laying down.

I then decided to make it even more interesting. I picked up one of her toys and stood a few steps in front of her. I started out just holding the toy, didn't faze her, she got a click and a treat. Then I started kind of tossing the toy in the air and catching it, didn't faze her, she got another click and treat. Then I laid the toy down at my feet (expecting she'd at least scoot forward to try to get to it), didn't faze her at all, yet another click and treat. Then for the ultimate test, I tossed the toy across the room like I do when we play fetch, didn't even flinch. I was ecstatic.

We've still got a lot to work on, but this first training session was definitely a great confidence builder for both of us. In fact, I filmed our second training session as a semi-abbreviated version of what we went over earlier. I posted it to my YouTube channel, and will include the link here if anyone would like to see her progress.

Allie's Second Training Session

To the two or three of you that keep up with this, let me know if y'all would be interested in more videos and I'll see what I can do. This one wasn't really planned, Mama wanted to see what all she was doing so I videoed our abbreviated run-through to show her. I posted it to my YouTube channel simply because it was too long to send her on Facebook so figured I could just put it on YouTube and send her the link. But if y'all are interested, maybe I can actually learn how to YouTube and make future videos a little fancier. Also, I noticed that for some reason the link's not actually visible on the black background, but if you move your cursor over it you can see it.

As always, until next time, stay awesome.

The Education of Allie: An Introduction

Hey guys, sorry it's been so long since I've written anything, but nothing too earth-shatteringly exciting has happened lately. But never fear, I have an idea. Ok, so that's normally a perfectly logical reason to fear, but let's ignore that shall we?  If you've been keeping up with my life either through this blog or via the wonderful world of Facebook, you are already very well aware that I now have a dog. She was the inspiration behind this new idea.

When I first brought Allie home she was pretty much the perfect dog, extremely quiet, calm, and just generally well-behaved. A lot of that changed after that first dreaded pest control visit. She now is constantly jumping on furniture, chewing on EVERYTHING (she even chewed a hole in the brand new couch cover my mom bought to keep her from ruining the couch not even close to 24 hours after I put it on), and barks, growls, and whines at everything. Now she's not terrible, but it's become apparent that for both mine and her own sanity, she is in desperate need of some obedience training.

Prior to Allie I've never had an indoor dog (the Pomeranian we had when I was little doesn't count since I don't really consider demons to be pets) and aside from teaching Goldie cute little tricks like "shake" and "wave" (these two were basically the same thing, we just didn't grab her paw when we told her to wave), we didn't do any kind of training with her since we had no need to worry about her jumping on the furniture or eating our belongings.

That is the reason behind this new blog series which I've entitled, "The Education of Allie". Because I have no clue what I'm doing, this should be thoroughly entertaining for all of you, and will hopefully not drive me completely over the brink of insanity. So armed with a clicker, plenty of dog treats, an infinity of YouTube videos, and most of my wits intact, I invite you to join me on this journey.

I haven't done much with her today as far as training goes, but I did manage to get her used to the clicker by clicking and giving her a treat while she waited patiently at my feet. I think she liked that little game so we'll see how the rest of the day goes.

Until next time, stay awesome.

Cold Coffee

I haven't even been awake for 2 full hours yet and it's already been "one of those days".  At a little after one o'clock I drug myself out of bed since it was apparent that Allie had had enough of being stuck in her crate and was not going to let me sleep any longer. But it was ok, I told myself I'd spend all day studying for my Visual Basic programming midterm that's tomorrow and would be ready to go to bed early and maybe even get my sleep schedule back on track. I was doing really good about going to bed a decent hour, but that bit the dust when I was up until 6 Friday morning trying to write a program for the previously mentioned Visual Basic class. I was awake and actually kinda sorta motivated to study. As you can probably tell from the fact that I am writing this blog and therefore not studying, that the motivation didn't last very long.

I went through my normal daily routine, brushed my teeth, made the bed, got dressed, let Allie out of her crate, etc. The only thing out of the ordinary that occurred was that the light bulb in my ceiling fan went out, but more on that later. I then took Allie out so she could use the bathroom. Let's pause for a second.

A couple days after bringing Allie home, I made the mistake of walking her all the way to the other side of the complex down a huge hill which I really want to roll down like we used to as kids. Unfortunately now that's the only place she will poop.

Now there's really no other way to word this so I'm just gonna go for it. Y'all, I was really hoping she'd poop. She doesn't usually on our first outing of the day, probably because she normally goes right before we go to bed and she hasn't eaten anything between then and waking up. But since it was only slightly sprinkling at this particular moment I was hoping she'd go so that maybe I could get away with only taking her right around the corner from my apartment to pee until the rain's over later tonight. No such luck.

Anyway, no big problem there, I knew going into it that it was a long shot. Came back inside and decided I should probably do the dishes that I'd been putting off since yesterday afternoon. As I'm finishing up the dishes, Allie starts to whine and paw at the front door which is usually her sign that she really needs to go. I finish up the dishes and chase her around the apartment so I can put her collar and leash on her (it was so much easier when I could just clip the leash to the collar, but now she tries to eat said collar, so it has to come off when she's in the house) and took her outside. Of course the slow sprinkle of just a few minutes earlier had become a pretty steady rain. Keep in mind me and Mama just gave this crazy dog a bath yesterday, so I wasn't too thrilled at the possibility of her deciding to roll around in the mud, or at the least have to smell a wet dog for the rest of the day, but oh well, it comes with the territory. I walk her down the big hill and she refuses to use the bathroom, won't even sniff around for a spot. I keep her outside for probably 10 minutes in the hopes that she'd get over the excitement of being outside in the rain and actually do something, but again, no such luck.

Once we made it back inside I made myself a cup of coffee and decided I should probably change the light bulb in my ceiling fan. Now I'm not the most mechanically inclined individual, but I'm definitely able to change a light bulb in less than five minutes. As with every other light fixture I've ever dealt with, the ceiling fan had 3 screws, the first 2 of which came out without a problem. The third one, not so much. Now I've always heard of people complaining about trying to remove a stripped screw, but I'd never actually dealt with one myself. It was an experience I'll not soon forget. Y'all it took me at least 20 minutes and two 2 different screwdrivers to remove that stubborn screw. It didn't help matters any that Allie spent this entire span of time whining and running between the window and the front door. She picked a pretty awful day to get cabin fever.

My arms were on fire, but I eventually loosened the stupid screw and removed the cover and if wasn't attached to the rest of the fan because of the pull strings I swear I coulda thrown it across the room. Lucky y'all, this blog even has pictures.

Here is the light bulb I have, because I'm too poor and honestly just don't really care about the environment enough to buy the fancy energy saving light bulbs. Also, I'm weird and prefer that my bulbs produce enough light to actually be able to read by.

And here is the light bulb I need...

Because of this, here is how my ceiling fan will remain until I can buy the right light bulbs...

So once this little chore was finally done I took Allie out AGAIN, still with no result, and sat down to write this blog as I sip my unappetizing cup of cold coffee while Allie works at the Kong that I have hopefully stuffed to the point of keeping her occupied for the next hour or so. My goal is now to make a sandwich and actually get some studying done.

Until next time, stay awesome.

Being Broke Sure has Helped me Spend Less Money, and Other Brilliant Things I've Said Today

There are just some days where it seems that nothing I say makes much sense at all, today has been one of them. Because I am of course procrastinating and waiting for the inspiration and the know-how to strike for me to finish the computer program I have to write and turn in by 10 o'clock tomorrow morning, I will tell you all about it. Get excited.

There are really only two of these little sayings, which can truly only be described as pearls of wisdom, that I've uttered today, but seeing as how I've only had an actual face-to-face conversation with one human, that's saying something. My point is that this may not be the novel you've gotten used to getting from me, but I'm not gonna promise anything.

1. "Being broke has really helped me spend less money."
Now personally I think Oprah or whoever the go-to advice person is these days should really adopt this idea and pass it on, because y'all it's truly amazing how little you spend when you have no money. Thankfully Lacey understood where I was going with this, but I'll explain it in case y'all don't quite see the brilliance in this statement. For the last couple years I've been saying I need to be better about spending money, but that's always been so much easier said than done. You see, for the last couple of years I've had a fairly sizable little chunk of change left over from my difference check every semester even after paying rent out of it. I wasn't rich by any stretch of the imagination, but it was definitely easy to justify ordering a $10 pizza if I was too lazy to cook. It also meant that I grocery shopped like a 5 year-old and would end up spending close to $100 for a week's worth of food. I couldn't care less about what brand my clothes are (as long as the jeans are Wrangler's and the boots are Ariats), but my food is a different story. Because it's just a simple fact that Blue Bell is the best ice cream that can possibly be purchased at Walmart, that 3 pound sack of cereal does not taste anything like whatever brand it's trying to imitate, and the Great Value potato chips are just lacking the grease that makes their Lays counterparts so delicious. But after realizing that my financial aid was actually less this year and that I would be paying rent over the summer which was something I'm not used to, I was definitely gonna have to tighten my grip on that debit card.
Adopting Allie has definitely helped in my money saving endeavors. Just in case y'all didn't know, buying a dog is a lot like having a baby, there's just a lot less physical pain involved. Now thankfully my family has been amazing and has helped out with a lot of the expenses, but now I get to pay not only my own rent, but Allie's as well. It's not too bad and I'm definitely not complaining, I wouldn't trade this girl for anything. I said from the get-go I'd eat nothing but Ramen Noodles if that's what I had to do to be able to afford to take care of her. I'm not quite at that point yet, but it's definitely changed the way I spend money. That's also the reason that I'm craving something sweet right now and can find nothing to satisfy that craving since I only bought the essentials rather than filling my buggy with junk food.
My point is this, it's a lot easier to be careful about what you spend your money on when you don't have the extra money to spend than it is when you know you shouldn't spend money, but you also know you do have the money to be able to do it. 

2. "Why does your computer say it's 5:30?" "Because the clock's wrong."
This one you probably just had to be here to see the humor in it. Lacey came over to cook some yummy BLTs for supper tonight and asked if she could use my laptop for a second to check her e-mail. My clock has been 2 hours slow for a couple weeks now even after I set it to the correct time, but since I've always either got my watch on or one of my iDevices close by, I haven't really worried about it. So when she asked why my computer said it was 5:30 when it clearly wasn't, I replied with a simple, yet duh-inducing, "because the clock's wrong". Like I said, you probably just had to be here.
I found this one particularly funny because it reminded me of something that happened on mine and Mama's most recent trip to Disney World. We were laying in our beds in the hotel room one night and she asked, "Why did it get so bright in here all of a sudden?" I said, "I didn't notice it getting brighter." she brilliantly replies, "Oh, I guess it's because I opened my eyes." Yep, it does in fact get brighter in a room when your eyes are open.

Anyway, I guess I should actually finish this computer program so me and Allie can hit the hay. She already got in her crate the last time she followed me into the bedroom, so I think that's her way of telling me she's sleepy.

Until next time, stay awesome.

Anything can Happen on a Sleepless NIght

Today's just been another one of those days that I really wanted to write something. I don't know why, it's been a typical day filled with classes and trying to keep Allie fro jumping on the furniture.  You can also toss in a few instances of trying to decide whether I want to mix up the lasagna to go in the crock pot for supper, or if I just wanna finish off the chips and homemade salsa in the fridge instead.

So as I sit here trying to think of something I could write about, my mind drifts a little and I have this thought. If I'd had this many instances of having such a strong desire to write something, I probably would have been much better about writing stories previous to the week they were due back when I was a Creative Writing major. So I decided to talk about that for a while, not so much the insane procrastination that went into pretty much every short story and poem I had to write for my Creative Writing classes, but just my time as a Creative Writing major in general.

Side Note: I must remember to post some of these stories I wrote, and especially my ridiculous sloth poem which is so horrible that I love it. But that's for another blog, which may or may not be posted right after this one is finished. Keep checking.

There was never a time that I enjoyed school. Before Pre-K even started, I asked my mom for a pair of roller skates so I could fall and break my neck and not have to go to school. After she told me I'd still have to go, they'd just prop me up in my wheelchair in the corner, I decided it wasn't worth it. Fast forward to Senior year of high school and I was the kid who took the school calendar and student planner we were given and kept a daily count of how many days were left until graduation. Everyone always told me I'd miss high school, well guys, it'll be 6 years this May and guess what, if Ed McMahon rang my doorbell at this very instant and offered me one of the infamous great big checks with the only condition being that I had to go back in time and do high school all over again, I'd have to give him a Root Beer and bowl of homemade salsa and send him on his merry way.

I don't know why I hated school so much. I got good grades, I had great friends, I really just couldn't care less about learning stuff that I knew deep down (and have been proven right so far) that I'd never actually need to use. I knew the only way I'd ever have to use physics in a career would be if I were to become a physicist, and guess what, I was terrible at math, so crossed that idea off my list of possible careers a long time ago.

I say that to say this, I LOVE COLLEGE. I don't know why really, but it's so much better than high school. Probably because even on my longest days I'm not stuck in a classroom for 8 hours, and there's also a chance that I'll probably use a lot of this stuff I'm learning later on in life.

Because I love college so much, I hate the fact that I only have 3 semesters left before I graduate. I don't want to get into the real-world. I've been there, I hated it, and that's why I'm back in college. Yes folks, the real-world is for the birds. I also don't like birds, so this saying was even more appropriate than I initially realized. I was laying awake contemplating this one Saturday night not long before the start of last semester (the idea of graduating soon, not the whole bird analogy).

As is becoming pretty common in these things, lets pause for a moment. For you to better understand the following events, I need to give you a better idea of myself. I used to joke about having Insomnia, but the older I get the more I realize that I probably actually do have some sort of sleep disorder. In fact, after learning more about its signs and symptoms, I'm pretty sure that I've gone through at least half of my life sleep deprived. My sleep schedule often ranges anywhere from being close to that of an 80 year-old where I'll go to bed at 9 and get up at dawn. Or closer to that of a raccoon in which I go to bed at dawn and sleep until dusk. Thankfully, Allie has kept me on a pretty normal sleep schedule since I actually have to get up at a reasonable hour to take care of her every day. In fact, the latest I've slept in the last two-and-a-half weeks has been 12:30 and that's insane for me.

Anyway, strange things seem to happen when I can't sleep. They usually fall into one of two categories, online shopping, or contemplating major life decisions. Seriously, most of my ebay-ing is done on nights when I can't seem to fall asleep. I've bought a Carhartt, iPod, and numerous video games on nights when I either can't fall asleep, or wake up in the middle of the night and can't fall back to sleep. But on this night in particular fell in the "contemplating major life decisions" category.

You see, even though I hated school with every fiber of my being, I've always loved to write. I was always the nerdy kid in class that looked forward to writing essays. Because of that, when I decided to go back to college I knew I wanted to major in something that dealt with writing. Well as soon as I found out SFA had a Creative Writing program I was convinced that I'd found my calling.

 When you major in Creative Writing, there's one question that you'll get from pretty much everyone you tell, "what are you going to do with that?" Well, the answer I gave everyone was that from what I'd read, you could do with a Creative Writing degree basically everything that you could do with a degree in Journalism (on the written side of the field anyway), so I figured I'd work for a newspaper or something. On that sleepless night I began to think of just how close I was getting to graduation and what on earth WAS I going to do after finishing school? Did I REALLY see myself working for a newspaper, or was that just something I told people so they wouldn't think I had these grand delusions of becoming some world-renowned author and planned to live in a cabin in the woods and write all day, learning how to hunt and trap wild game to eat and weave the furs into clothing since I wouldn't actually be making any money to afford the finer things in life like food and clothing?

I eventually came to the conclusion that even though I loved my major, the professors, and all the people I'd met through the program, that I needed to get a degree that might could actually get me a job after I graduate. So then came the task of figuring out what this degree would be. Other than writing, I realized there was really only one other thing that I enjoyed that could potentially work as a life-sustaining career. I decided I was going to become a professional video game player and make millions of dollars by playing Halo. Ok, unfortunately that's not true, but how awesome would that be? No, I decided that I should do something that dealt with computers. I figured that was a pretty safe bet since everything is computerized now-a-days, so surely those jobs would be in demand. My first thought was Computer Science, so I hopped on the SFA website and started looking at what was involved in that major. I saw that I'd have to take 4 more math classes and 3 more science classes and quickly determined that Computer Science wasn't for me. So I checked into IT (Information Technology) and saw that I'd pretty much be taking the same classes as I would with Computer Science, but thankfully without the extra maths and sciences. I was sold.

So that's how I went from a Creative Writing major to an IT major. I really only regret it when I have a program to write. I'm still not sure what I actually want to do as a career, but I have determine that programming ain't it, because it's hard. It definitely makes me miss the days when my homework was to write a story.  It is a welcomed change to hear your professors tell you how many job opportunities will be waiting for you once you graduate, rather than how you're gonna have to find somehting else to do for a job because you're not going to make any money writing though, so I guess I'll stick with it.

Until next time, stay awesome.

Math and Myself: A Story of Hatred and Loathing

Today has been one of those days where I feel the need to write something, but nothing too terribly exciting has happened lately. I guess I could tell you about how adorable Allie is as she's laying here at my feet alternating her attention between her new toy duck and trying to get the last piece of Milk Bone out of her Kong, but I'll spare you. I've decided to instead tell you about my moment of exasperation I felt this weekend.

There are some things that pretty much everyone who I'm close to knows about me. One of those is that  the subject of mathematics and I share a relationship filled with mutual hatred and loathing. We are not kind to each other, it tricks me by making me think I actually understand something only to toss in some new piece of evilness that makes me question everything I've ever known, and I call it names such as stupid and useless. It's quite an abusive relationship that I will thankfully be out of (hopefully for real this time) at the end of this semester.

Because of this extreme hatred that we share, after I threw a slight temper tantrum when I discovered that thanks to changing majors I'd have to take Probability and Statistics, I decided that rather than torturing myself and yet another teacher who would have the impossible task of trying to teach me math, I'd take it online instead. Everyone thought I was insane, but let's get real, most everyone already thinks I'm nuts anyway so that's nothing new. They all gave me many reasons to not take the class online, some of which included, "you'll have to teach it to yourself" and "you don't usually actually learn much of anything in an online class". But I ignored those pieces of advice, and so far haven't really regretted it. See, I don't do well in math classrooms. I'll be fine for the first couple weeks, but as soon as we hit something that I don't understand, I get frustrated, stop listening, and spend the rest of the semester drawing spacemen in my notebook and having a self-induced coughing fit so my friend can open the bag of chips she brought for us to snack on, without being noticed. My point is, I usually ended up teaching myself the material the couple nights before exams anyway, so it's really not that different. As for the not learning anything, that's probably really accurate, but because I do not care in the slightest what the probability is of pulling a green marble out of a sack filled with 8 red marbles, 3 green marbles, and 14 yellow marbles, I'm not too worried about that. Also I don't see what any of this has to do with computers, just saying.

Anyway, as with most Fridays, I had two math assignments due at midnight last Friday. Knowing that I was going home for the weekend, and trying my hardest to be a responsible student for once, I decided to break it up and finished the first one Thursday night. I figured I'd have plenty of time to do the second one Friday. After all, my only class on Fridays ends at 10:50, and Mama normally doesn't get here to pick me up until around 4, how could it possibly take 6 hours to do one math assignment? HA! I worked on the same assignment from 11 until Mama got here at around 5, then worked on it at home from about 9 until midnight and still didn't finish.

Let me pause for a second to tell you how this online class works. On each homework assignment we only have to answer enough of the questions correctly to pass and we get a 100, we also get unlimited attempts to do these assignments, so in theory you should never make less than 100 on any of the homework. On each assignment there is a certain number of strikes you get based on how many questions are to be answered. If you use up all your strikes, you have to start over. On this particular assignment I got 3 strikes, so as soon as I missed 4 questions I was done and had to start all over. I really wish I'd kept a count of how many times I only needed to answer one more question correctly to be finished, only to miss it and have to start over since I'd already used up all my strikes.  It also made matters much worse that some of these problems were so long that it might take 45 minutes just to do the formula for a single question.

Even though I'd missed the due date, I knew if I turned it in Saturday I'd still be able to make a decent grade. So I started working on it not long after I got up Saturday afternoon.

Fast forward to slightly before midnight on Saturday night. I'll even set the scene for you. Allie was playing with her duck in the floor between me and Mama. Amazing Grace was being sang on the TV by whoever was on the episode of Country's Family Reunion that we were watching. I am just finishing up the final calculations on the last question of the assignment, I have no strikes left. The heat was on, make it or break it, go big or go home, and any other sports-like cliches you wanna add. The contents of the message box that would pop up when I clicked "submit" would determine whether I closed my laptop and rolled around in the floor with my dog who was trying her best to wait patiently for me to finish, or throw my laptop across the room in anger at the idea of having to start all over..

I took a deep breath, and with a trembling finger clicked the submit button. The split second between the click and the appearance of the message box seemed to take an eternity,  I waited with bated breath as finally the pop up appeared on the screen...

"Well Done!"

It was all I could do not to scream with happiness, I was so thankful to finally be done. But the story doesn't end there.

A few minutes later I decided to look at the progress report and see how much I'd actually gotten taken off for turning it in almost a full 24 hours late. I scrolled down to the assignment in question and read "Dropped" printed beside it's name. I had no idea that the lowest grade or so gets dropped in this class. I know I should've been happy. That means my homework average is still 100% , which may help a little to balance out the not so great grades that are sure to occur on the face-to-face midterm and final exams that I will not be able to Google my way through. Sure, that's great, but think of this. If I'd have known that grade would be dropped, I definitely would not have spent 90% of my weekend working on it.

And that is why I hate math. Even when I think I've won and kicked it in it's teeth, it still has a way of biting me in the butt. It is for that reason that I stick by my position that math is stupid and I hate it.

That is all.

Until next time, stay awesome.

My Newest Procrastination Assistant

Many have asked for it, and I figured after a week and a day, I'd be nice and finally give it to you. Here is the longish-awaited blog about my newest procrastination assistant, also known as my new dog, Allie.

Anyone who knows me very well at all, knows that I love dogs. My family had always had at least one dog running around since I was born. But after Goldie died about 4 years ago, we decided that we would not get another dog until we could build a bigger pen for him or her to run around in. You see, when we got Goldie when I was 7, we hadn't started all the renovations on our house and didn't have a very spacious backyard, so we had to work with what we had. Over the years, trees have been cleared, swing sets have been outgrown, and land has been leveled, resulting in a backyard that's a little bit more spacious than the one we began with. Unfortunately, my mom and I know nothing about building dog pens or clearing brush, this falls under the expertise of my grandpa, and since he's not a dog person at all, he never got into too much of a hurry. So after all these years of wishing I could get another dog, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

Mama and I are always sharing pics of cute dogs at local animal shelters with each other via Facebook message, so one night I sent her a picture of an old dog that was in a shelter in Longview. It appeared to be a classic case of, "everybody wants a puppy" and I felt really bad for this poor dog who seemed to be so sweet, but nobody wanted him. This wasn't Allie by the way, but this is how everything got started. We messaged back and forth and eventually decided that getting this particular dog would probably not be the wisest decision. The post didn't say exactly how old he was, but based on the picture, he was getting on up there, so would probably find climbing the stairs to my apartment pretty difficult, and since the post did mention he did not like being picked up, carrying him up and down the stairs was out of the question. So like many times before, I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever get to have another dog.

Then Friday morning as I was walking home from class, I got a Facebook message from Mama with this picture.

 I was in love. I started looking into ways that I could make this happen. I'm not gonna bore you with all the details, but I eventually came to the conclusion that if I eat nothing more but Ramen Noodles and mac & cheese for the remainder of my college career, I could actually afford to adopt this beautiful dog.

So a while later, I messaged Mama to let her know I had filled out an application and had been approved to adopt a dog from the Lufkin Animal Shelter. This isn't normally my style. I sometimes wonder why even at the ripe old age of 24, I still tend to ask for my mom's permission before doing things like this, but in this case, I figured if it was already a done deal, it'd be hard to say no. And I was right.

Mama and I drove to Lufkin Saturday afternoon to meet her and get everything taken care of. I knew within the first five minutes of playing with her in the "meet and greet room" that she was gonna be perfect. She was super calm, but still liked to play, and never barked, even when all the other dogs in the shelter were going nuts. Unfortunately I was told that since she wasn't spayed, they'd have to get that done before I could take her home, so I didn't actually get to leave the shelter with her, but were told we could pick her up from the vet Monday afternoon.

She is so sweet. Still trying to figure out if she's just really lazy or if she's just got her days and nights mixed up (she was pretty out of it and slept all day Monday because of the anesthesia). I don't know that she actually sleeps at night, but she naps off an on throughout the day. Either way, it kind of works for me, she's quiet in her crate, so doesn't keep me awake at night, and her naps allow me to actually get things done during the day. She's actually napping beside me right now as I type.

Every day it seems she does something new to make me laugh and love her even more. Like how she'll follow me everywhere in my apartment, except into the bathroom (yay for her respect for privacy), how she's always so excited to see me when I let her out of her crate, even if I've only been gone for a couple minutes, how she always crosses her front paws when she lays down, and how she works her way behind the curtains and blinds of the sliding glass doors in my bedroom to look outside. I don't know how anyone could give this girl up. She gets along with everybody (dog and human alike), doesn't try to jump up on furniture, or on people (unless you have a treat), and to this day I've only heard her bark twice. The owners claimed that she wasn't good with cats, but since I've had her she's never acted any differently when she's seen a cat than she does when she sees anything else, so I think that was just an excuse. But their loss is definitely my gain.

If you ever see us out and about, don't be afraid to come say hi, she loves everyone, especially if you'll give her a belly rub. 

I've never had an indoor dog before, aside from Buttons who we had when I was really little, but she was more demon than dog, so that doesn't really count. So this should be a new and exciting adventure for all of us. I'm already learning there are things I won't ever get to do again, like sleep in. The latest I've slept since getting Allie was 11:15. I'm also starting to go through withdrawals since I haven't played Halo or Call of Duty in over a week. Not complaining though, I love this dog and really enjoy spending time playing with her.

I'm going to try to do my best to keep writing these as often as I have been, but if you don't hear from me for a while, just assume that Allie's doing something adorable to pull me away from doing anything that could possibly be classified as productive.

So in the meantime, stay awesome.