1/18/06: Storm watch

Today was a wild day for weather. The wind was howling and whipping last night and this morning there were huge white caps and branches down everywhere. I was supposed to leave for the Westchester route at 9 am but a power line was downed across the road so noone could get off, or on, Centre Island. Hoping it was going to be resolved soon, I checked back every hour finally giving up at noon and resigning myself to office work. And hopefully some geese will turn up at the ponds around here so we can get some close range practice. Our goal is to get Ginger close enough that she can see the geese, give her the chase command (whhhoooosh) and have her run to them until they flee into the air.

My first day of business development work. I helped Joe & Jackie setup logos and envelopes then did some research to scope out properties in Westchester that might have a goose problem. My target areas: schools, golf courses, business parks and gated communities, especially those that have ponds on property or nice fields in close proximity to water (the ocean, hudson, freshwater lakes). Google Earth is a great tool for this and I make a lot of discoveries. Fantastic! I also learned that the octagon I'm inhabiting is clearly visible on Google Earth. If you have the application you can copy these coords (exactly) into the search bar and see for yourself: 40 54 18.36n 73 30 31.11w

Excitedly, we also see 2 different sets of geese throughout the day at home: one in the pond and the other in the tidal wetlands. Both will provide great opportunities for us so we take advantage and score good runs at both of them. Ginger goes with Ivy, the raging 3 year old who loves to run but hates to come back. Since Ginger has the recall part pretty well down, they make a solid team and they confirm this by doing good work on both of the flocks. Still, it seems Ginger is more into chasing the other dog down than going for the geese. It is a long run for her though and I don't expect she will be right on yet. More practice will be good.

Team Border Collie get lots of play time and exercise today, despite the nasty weather. We took longs walks on the beach and around the properites and get a couple good goose chases in. It is awesome to see them all run the beach and hang out with each other. Ginger is not shy about being friends with any of them.

Finally! the road is cleared around 4pm, but then we lose power for a couple hours this evening. It's reckless weather but feels exciting to be living by candlelight.

Today is a good day!

I'm going to look at a potential rental tommorrow: a cottage in Armonk (west side of Westchester County in town of IBM headquaters. Oh boy.)