I'm surprised I'm still conscious, let alone upright.

It's been a very busy couple of days. Work (dog walking/pet sitting) has been very busy and other things keep coming up. My dad is in town from Florida and we've been trying to spend as much time with him as possible, which unfortunately, isn't as much as I'd like. Bradley hasn't had any training sessions in the past 3 days because of the business. I know, shame on me. I get so anxious when we miss valuable training time. Unfortunately, I don't think he'll get much today either, as today is another busy day and I'm exhausted.

My vision has gotten worse with no real reason why so my eye doctor sent me for an MRI. I went for it last night and it wasn't the most fun I've ever had. I actually wasn't too worried about it at first, until I got to the hospital and realized it was much more of an ordeal than I thought it was going to be. I'm not particularly claustrophobic but I do have a slightly high level of anxiety so the MRI machine wasn't a fun place to be in. By the end, I was just about ready to jump ship but luckily as soon as those thoughts started crossing my mind, the technician said it was over. Phew!

Bradley has gone back to playing shoes. He stopped doing that for a while so he earned the privilege to sleep in the bedroom with us, unconfined. So far this morning, he has brought me two full pairs of sneakers. Ugh! :)

I started to build on his "compulsion" to retrieve a little this week. I've been using his toys and other household items that he can easily pick up (like a tv remote, glasses case, etc.) and instructing him to "get" them. The command I plan on using to instruct him to retrieve an item is "get". He does it pretty well but doesn't completely reliably bring the item back to me (he does with some verbal encouragement) and sometimes if he's not ready to part with the item, he'll withhold it as I instruct him to "give" it. I should be able to fix this relatively easily if I remember to keep some treats or another of his toys available for trade :)

During our last training session, he learned to sit in front of me upon recall. For his public access test, he needs to touch me. I need to figure out how to incorporate that into his recall.

On a side note, he's getting big! He's already 51 lbs! He's not tall yet but he's quite solid. We've decided to be proactive about behavior management and put off neutering him until he is full grown. Here's some information why: http://www.caninesports.com/EarlySpayConsiderations.pdf