Rawr

It was a rough week back to work and school for all of us. I was so worn out from the trip it was exhausting to make it through 5 work days. Alas, we all survived. Duncan did SO much better at obedience class on Tuesday! The first class I had to hold him ~80% of the time because that was the only way I could get him to stop barking. He's gotten better each time, but Tuesday he only started barking during the final exercise when the dogs were running off leash to their owners. He was much more focused on me and doing what he should be doing. Duncan hates to lie down on command under the calmest circumstances at home, so at class he usually refuses to down. One of the assistants came around with some treats and worked with Duncan for a minute to get him to down. He's not usually very food driven, but he wanted what she had and after about five times asking went into a perfect down. She gave me a superior, victorious look as though she had just effortlessly trained my dog and said "See?" Yes, I see that you're NUTS if you actually think you just trained my dog to down by using a word and hand signal. Sweetie, he doesn't understand English or sign language. Duncan knows down perfectly well, he just usually chooses not to do it. Anyway, he is still one of the worst in the class, but is no longer completely focused on the other dogs. I went to "The Last Lions" movie with some work friends on Wednesday night. I thought it was going to be a documentary on how wild lions are quickly disappearing in Africa. It sort of was, but the creators edited their amazing, beautiful footage into an absurd drama. Instead of focusing on the fact that lion numbers have dropped from 450,000 to 20,000 in a 50 year period and why this happened and what we can do about it, they turned one lions's struggle into a ridiculous story of revenge and more revenge. Mama lion has been widowed when a large group of lions is forced into her territory. She must take her 3 cubs and go into hiding on an island where she learns to overcome her fear of water to successfully hunt water buffalo. One cub is lost to a crocodile. The two remaining cubs are thought to be killed by the buffalo herd. Mama flips out and seeks revenge on the head buffalo. She fails by herself but then somehow defeats and becomes leader of the group of female lions that invaded her original territory. They work together to take out that evil buffalo leader. Then miracle of miracles! The runty male cub just happens to be walking around safe among the rest of the buffalo herd! Such a happy ending. Except they already stated that if the female joined the new group of lions, the males would instinctively kill her cubs. Um... As I said before, the film was beautiful, I just wish they hadn't turned a gorgeous wild animal into an evil human.