What, the weekend is over?
That went far too fast....

Friday was A&P again. Lecture was a review of the concepts that I'd covered in my previous chem and bio classes, and the refresher was welcome. I hadn't realized til then just how little of the biology concepts I'd truly grasped. It was nice to finally have that "ohhhhh, I get it" feeling, the one I'd been waiting for since the beginning of that god-awful bio112 class.

A&P lab was a rat dissection. The rats had been preserved in a somewhat hap-hazard fashion, and the result was limbs stiffened into some very inconvenient places. My lab group had to do some creative amputation surgery in order to even access the appropriate body cavity, and we were getting a little loopy from the formaldehyde fumes. We managed to find all the necessary body parts (I had no idea rat livers were so large and multi-lobed!) and finished in pretty good time. We were getting a little bored and decided to have a go at some neurosurgery. I understand now why a saw-like instrument is used to cut open the skull, because we really made a mess. The rat looked like it had been attacked by hannibal, and we never did manage to crack the skull.
The prof announced that she'd be keeping the best dissected rats for future use in labs, and my team started laughing. Ours was really not going to be one of those.

Dog training class was after A&P, and I had a blast. I had signed up for Drake, a young (1-2yrs) yellow lab. And oh, is he a lab. We were instructed to take our dogs out and tire them out as much as we could before the lesson, but even after 20 minutes of ball fetching and a couple turns around the parking lot, Drake was practically choking himself on his leash and bouncing around like a rubber ball. Getting his attention for more than a nano-second was almost impossible, and he was practically beside himself with excitement.

I was really impressed with our trainer. She trains guide dogs, and her instructions were fantastic. By the end of the lesson we had Drake consistently sitting, lying down, and coming when called. Better yet, we could get him to look us in the face for a good 10-15 seconds when we called his name. Granted, this was all under the influence of treats (treats that made him highly flatulent by the end of class...oh god), but still great progress. We'll keep working with him this week, and see what we can achieve next Friday.

Of course....I may have to switch dogs. Don't get me wrong, I love Drake, but the new dogs arrived on Friday, and I fell in love. Her name is Molly and she's a one year old Bull Terrier. Shes sweet, friendly, quiet, and everything I love in a dog. Have I mentioned that I can't have a dog? That I shouldn't even be thinking about having a dog? That Molly is sure to find a fantastic home at the end of her 9 months with the program, and that I can't be it!!
Yeah.
Keep telling myself that.