Graduation!

For the past 9 weeks I have been attending puppy training classes with Bre, our one year old blue healer puppy. I decided that it was time we did something with her training wise, so I decided to start with the basics.

In September I had heard about a puppy training course put on by an employee at the local vet office in Le Mars. I contacted them and signed Bre up for the class. We attended 8 classes, every Tuesday and Thursday for 4 weeks. Bre did great! She was the oldest in her class, she out performed basically everyone in her class, and she did great from start to finish.

We learned everything from sit, down, sit-stay, down-stay, wait, heal, come, leave it, etc. It was all basic commands but it was good for Bre for beginning commands. Our next adventure is getting her un-scared of cattle. Then onto the basics with training her to run cattle. We will see how far we get. I know that as time goes on, she will mature and a lot of the time they just naturally pick up on a lot of stuff, but we just have to wait and see on that part. If anyone knows anybody in the NW Iowa area that trains cattle dogs, let me know!!

Bre finally graduated with flying colors and we are onto bigger and better things!

Catch Up

I cannot believe that it has been nearly a year and a half since I was last on here! My life has been a hectic roller coaster for the past 17 months. So many things have happened I don't even know where to start. Our family has changed DRASTICALLY.


In September 2015 we welcomed Sampson into our lives. He's a black and white long haired cat. He is claimed as "Melanie's Cat" even though he has an obsession with Brad.
Shepp died October of 2015. We welcomed Bre, another blue heeler into the family in November.
In January 2016 we found out that we were pregnant with Baby #3. We found out it was a girl in April.
At the end of April we also found out that Brad had a rare type of cancer in the form of a tumor in his hip. He went through chemo and radiation over the course of the summer and in August underwent an 8 hour surgery to remove the tumor. Brad had a rough recovery after the surgery, but he's managing to recover slowly.
In September, only 3 weeks after Brads surgery, Aubrie Jo was born into our family. She arrived via c section at 8:10 am on September 9, 2016. She weighed 7 lbs 13 oz and was 20" long. She's proven to be the total opposite of her big sister so far. So we are in for a joy ride with her!!
I've returned back to work now, and Brad is be-bopping around until he can return to his job.

In short, that's our lives for the past 1.5 years! Lots has been going on, hence the fact that I haven't been updating much! I'm hoping to get back into the groove of things because I'm in need of a place to vent my frustrations like I used to!  😊