Lets lighten this up

After that last post and holding back a few tears, I'll lighten up the blog a minute with some other updates! :)

The GREAT news of the week is that we FINALLY got the legal notice in the mail yesterday regarding the hearing from a week ago.. and the judge did find in favor of Derek basically, so he now qualifies for unemployment benefits! His employer has 30 days to appeal if they choose, but we dont think they will. Considering they did not even call in for the initial hearing, there is no reason to believe they would try to appeal the decision. I keep checking our bank account, we could really use that fat check about now to get caught up on things..

This is a HUGE HUGE relief! Derek now will focus on working with the unemployment office to get some retraining.. not exactly sure what direction yet he will go, but they have counselors he can talk with and pick a field that is growing and not a field that is on the major decline such as his which has experienced a 152% loss in work according to the unemployment office. It feels great after almost 3 months of stress and bullshit worry, to finally be able to have a sigh of relief and know we will be okay.

When we got down to Seattle yesterday, we parked in the garage and were walking down the street, looking for the main entrance... Not an easy thing to find! :) As we were walking, I saw a guy in a wheelchair with a chick, they were outside smoking. What was the harm in looking at the guy?? Well apparently me drifting my eyes his direction prompted him to blurt out "I broke my tweeker!!" WTF!! I just turned my head and kept on walking.. Derek says "this is why you keep your eyes forward and dont make any eye contact Piper!" As we left the hospital, I was sure to keep my damn eyes on nothin but getting the hell out of downtown! I'm such a country girl...

Derek had a minor setback with Cooper a week ago. He took Cooper out to a little more public hunting area and it seemed that Cooper was just determined to have a bad day.. he wasnt listening like he should and it was a lot more battle of heads than expected. Which is OK. Cooper is still a pup after all and Derek realized he's not quite ready for full board hunting trips. Cooper didnt listen as Derek attempted to call him back from an encounter with another dog, and the other dog was not so happy to have this young thing come bouncing up in his face, Cooper almost got his ass in a fight of his own, but as soon as the other dog started to fight him, Cooper cowered and ran like a chicken! Derek was very apologetic to the guy, and the guy was apologetic as well, even though it was not his fault his dog got protective. Cooper was in the wrong!

Cooper also had no interest in picking up birds that day so Derek clipped the wings off some birds he had shot a few days prior, and tied the feathers to his training dummies. He'll now get worked with those until he is comfortable picking them up. He just needs more positive reinforcement to be associated with live birds.. It definately can get frustrating to have a dog that used to love birds to a dog that now is so timid about picking them up but it teaches you to remember patience and understanding when working with Cooper because it's not his fault he has this negative association and if we do this right, we will build a stronger dog that will learn that this is a good thing!!