First and foremost, Cohen passed his Canine Good Citizen test this evening! You may recall that we first tried to get his CGC certification back in October but he failed the test the first time around. So we did six more weeks of training, mostly consisting of a good half hour every day of practicing walking on a loose leash, and today we took the test again and he passed! Admittedly, we barely passed by the skin of our teeth, but a pass is a pass, right? Not bad for a basset hound who isn't even two years old yet! Now my basset has his first title and is officially Samuel T.I. Cohen, CGC. Sounds fancy, huh? I couldn't be more proud of my little guy:
I still really want to get him fully certified to do therapy work, but at this point I think I'm going to have to wait on that until at least next fall, once I'm (hopefully) settled somewhere else and he's a bit older and calmer. But at least we have the CGC now, which is the first step. In the meantime, I'm thinking of enrolling us in a tracking class this spring. It's a bit pricey but I love taking classes with him and I like giving him a chance to use his brain for something other than wondering what our neighbors are doing outside. Plus I think he'd LOVE tracking since it would give him a chance to really work with his instincts instead of against them. We'll see if I get ambitious enough to try it (the beginners classes are at 8 AM since it's easiest to track early in the morning when there's dew on the ground, apparently--that's the one major deterent).
Anyway, after the test I took my new Canine Good Citizen to meet Chelsea for dinner and then convinced her to come to Zilker Park with me so we could walk the Trail of Lights. It was pretty and fun and festive, and Cohen enjoyed himself, too (although since dogs obviously can't appreciate Christmas lights his experience was less Trail of Lights and more Trail of Discarded Turkey Leg Bones and Popcorn. Oh well!)
The other good news of the day is that I got a 100 on my Backgrounds paper and presentation. You know, the paper where I did nothing but strive for the 65 I needed to get an A in the course? The paper that I opted to read aloud in class instead of creating an actual presentation like most of my classmates because by that point I just didn't care anymore? The paper that I researched, outlined, and wrote all in one twelve hour period that was really more like a seven hour period because I took several breaks and a two-hour nap? Yeah. You'd think I'd be happy about this, and technically it is good news because hey, my lovely GPA is still lovely, but really it just kind of pisses me off. What I wrote was for all intents and purposes a piece of crap. Seriously, it was. I'm not being hard on myself, it was CRAP. It was worthy of more than a 65, true, but it wasn't worthy of more than an 85, and I'd say that's being generous. I have a suspicion that the professor (who was annoying on so many levels and as far as I'm concerned is completely unqualified to be teaching a graduate level class) didn't bother grading our papers at all and gave everyone in the class 100s. And no, that doesn't make me happy AT ALL. It pisses me off, not because I put in any effort (I didn't), but because some people in the class obviously actually did, and it would be completely unfair for us all to get the same grade when some of us (especially me) were such slackers about this project. The thing is, there's really no way for me to find out if my theory is true because I always feel so awkward asking about grades, especially when in return I have to say I got a 100 (which inevitably sounds like bragging). Plus it will just piss me off even more if I find out that I got a 100 and other people didn't. Because I know I'm a decent writer, I know that I'm good at procrastinating successfully, and I know that I'm good at presenting papers most of the time. But I'm not that good. Nobody is that good. Nobody should be allowed to be that good. Grrr.
Oh well, it's over. I got my A, whether or not I actually earned it. And I guess I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Or something.
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