Feb. 10-16, 2019

Weather | 2/10, 0.03" moisture (snow/sleet) 20°, 31° | 2/11, 0.48" moisture, 25°, 31° | 2/12, 24°, 27° | 2/13 13°, 36° | 2/14, 25°, 53° | 2/15, 10°, 17° | 2/16, 1/2" snow, 8°, 28° |

• Sunday (2/10): Shane asked that I cancel all dog training for Sunday, because we were going to have a skeleton crew at Petco with an expected store inventory starting at closing time, so I canceled all classes the night before. An ice storm in St. Louis canceled Sunday's inventory in our store, because out-of-town inventory workers couldn't make it to Quincy. Molly asked me to do blue dots (ordering). I went through 7 pages of blue dots. A normal session is 3-4 pages. We are really low on product.
• Monday (2/11): Mom texted me that Aunt Lois died 1 day shy of her 82 birthday. It rained most of the day. My 6 PM dog training clients canceled, so I checked with Mary and trees were icing at home with the temperature dropping, so I canceled the 7 PM class, contacted all clients, got Shane to bring Missy in to cover my shift, and went home after 6 PM with no problem. Again, my Cadillac has amazing traction and torque on ice. Shane texted at 9:30 PM that our Quincy store ranked 8th in the nation on percentage increase in services (grooming & dog training) sales from last year's numbers. Mary heard a pack of coyotes howling just NE of the machine shed at noon. We had 1 of the original 6 kittens that were here January 8th show up in our machine shed. I fed it a bowl of Wholehearted cat food and a bowl of water. 
• Most all ice melted on Wednesday (2/13) and Thursday (2/14).
• Both Katie and Bill called on Wednesday (2/13). Katie moved to a new house in the country. She has a roommate, loves her new job. Once she buys the tools she needs, she'll make $15/hour and be a supervisor. Bill is working at training a guy to take over when he takes time off...not going well. We talked for an hour about food, his apartment, his work, movies, things happening here.
• Thursday (2/14) Mary experienced on-foot coyote hunters in the woods west of our property. She monitored them. They stayed off our property..
• Friday (2/15): We cut a load of firewood, loaded it into the woodshed, then split larger logs and loaded another wagon load into the woodshed. We've been hearing a chainsaw running in the timber to the west of our property for several days, so we took a look. They're harvesting trees off of that land. We learned from Ansel Marquette that the land immediately to the west of us was sold to a land dealer. He's tearing down most all of the trees. Nobody likes trees around here. Katie told us she got $850 of power tools from Home Depot for $350. She has more tools to get, but it's a good start. We saw 2 bald eagles and a mated pair of red-tail hawks today. 
• Saturday (2/16): I've had a dizzy woman with a 3-year old corgi who is originally from Minnesota, near Fargo, and is involved with the dairy to the west of us who always cancels. She bought her dog training in mid-October. Today, she and her dog graduated from the first 6-week course, which took 16 weeks to accomplish. Two weeks ago, I bumped her out of the 2 PM, Sunday time slot, since it's a prime time that she held up for months. Of course, last week she canceled. Today, as I was driving to work, she texts asking if she can come in later than we arranged. After getting to work, I responded that she could sit in on my existing 2 PM class, which she did. That class was held while we were having an adoption event with Homeward Bound, a dog rescue entity. Besides my class of 3 dogs, there were about a dozen other dogs in the store. It was messy with dogs. My most recent addition to the class, a German Shepherd/lab mix, left the training area and took the juiciest poop all over the floor. Shane said, "Imagine the consistency of the ice cream machine at McDonalds...that's what I cleaned up." The pet parent accidently stepped in it, too. Obviously, she was embarrassed. My pain-in-the-ass skipper of dog training classes said she had a college class to finish and had to visit her ill mother in Fargo, so she will get back to me the first week of April on starting up the second 6-week dog training course that she bought. When I told Shane, he rolled his eyes and said we'll still be trying to finish her training a year after she bought the classes.