Happy Ground Hog Day!

You wouldn't know it by looking outside, but today is the day our little friends across North America-well, at least Canada and the United States-poke their little heads out of their winter burrows to let us hopeful humans know whether spring will come early or not. Judging by the snow drift that is residing outside my back door this morning, I am going to say we probably have six weeks more of winter. If I could hardly get the dogs out to go potty due to all of the snow that was so kindly dumped on us yesterday and last night, then there is no way a ground hog is going to be able to get out of his or her hole. I'm going to bet all ground hogs are snowed in, just like the rest of us.
Now that my little ground hog opinion piece is over: I can't believe it's February already.
This week marks the start of my fifth week of classes and the assignments have already started piling up. In the next week I have a ten page paper, two presentations and a twelve page take home midterm exam to complete. And, of course, I still have to go to placement and be a contributing and non-grumpy citizen.
Sometimes I wonder what I've gotten myself into, but then I remind myself that it's only sixteen months. And, now, it's only ten. That's really not a lot of time.
As for my placement: I am still really enjoying it. I've been doing some work on advocacy stuff for better public transit and I've been put on the state wide ADA 25th anniversary celebration committee. The big shindig is to take place on July 26th, 25 years after Bush Senior signed the ADA (American's with Disabilities Act) into active status. It's pretty exciting stuff.
I've also taken it upon myself to get a program started up to encourage fitness, more specifically running, in this area for people with disabilities. At first, my supervisor wasn't impressed with the program that I suggested as a starting point, but then she reread the website I sent her and my ideas and changed her mind-she missed a pretty integral part. Now that I have the green light I'm not really sure what to do next. However, there's another staff member who is pretty excited about the idea and so I'm hoping she'll help give me some direction.
How might the Fuzzies be?
Otis is Otis. A happy, jolly little bull dozer of a dog whose favorite indoor activity as of late is running Zoomies from our bedroom into our "office" as fast as he can. All by himself, nonetheless.
Nala is still my little worker bee. I think she likes going to placement as much as I do. We're currently taking a door to door bus service because it would appear that no one in this city owns a shovel and hence the sidewalks are never cleared. Once the snow melts off, we'll be taking fixed bus routes because I would enjoy the extra walk, Nala would too and it will be the fraction of the cost.
Hermione is continuing to work on her nose work. Her problem solving skills are coming along and she seems to be able to find a single kibble much faster than before. I can even hear her nose working nine times out of ten now and so I think she is relying more on her sniffer than her eyeballs.
Old Man Roscoe is also learning a new trick.
A few days ago I started training him to walk on my treadmill. We've only practiced three times, but each day he's gotten better. I watched a few more informational videos last night and realized I was doing one step of the process differently than everyone else. From what I watched last night, the dog got on to the treadmill while it was moving on low. I've been putting Roscoe on and then starting it. I'm wondering if it will be less startling to step it on while it is slowly moving than to be standing on a surface and have it shoot out, no matter how slowly, from under your feet. Today I'm going to try walking him on while it's already moving and see how that goes..
The kitties are doing well. Spock has made himself right at home and is one of the chattiest kitties I've ever met. I suspect his last family gave him people food because he becomes a pest when you are eating/cooking. However, he learns fast and is quickly learning that he certainly does not eat pizza/porkchops/roasted chicken Etc. He follows you around yapping away and he's really good at letting you know when he's upset with you. He really likes being a part of the family and makes sure to add himself to the puppy pile. He and Kira have Kitten Olympics every morning, and I think at night too. Once we accidentally shut Kira out of the bedroom when Spock was in with us and Kira made quite the fuss, yelling her head off until we let her in. She went straight to Spock to make sure he was okay.
We had a little scare with Kira a few days back. She was lying on my lap and I happened to rub her back haunch and feel a giant, solid lump. Of course my mind went to the worse thing possible and thought cancer. She didn't like if you pushed on it, but other than the lump itself and her dislike of you pushing on it, she was fine. She was and is still eating fine and using the litter box fine. She plays with Spock without any problems and she is moving fine. She jumps on to and off of high places and gallops around. We've been checking on the lump every day and it seems to be dissipating. All I can figure is that she bruised her muscle tissue. Or, maybe it was a fatty deposit. She gained a lot of weight really fast because we didn't rrealize she was eating Spock's leftovers. I've cut back her portions and stand guard while Spock eats to make sure she's not getting more than she needs. It seems to be working.
So, there you have it. I don't blog for a few weeks and it all comes out in one shot. I'll stop writing now so you can go get a snack because I'm sure you're starving after reading all of that. I know I am after writing all of that.