About 30 art students from our local elementary school came by yesterday and sat on the sidewalk and painted watercolors of our Butterfly House. I had thought they had also come to visit Melanie but their 3 teachers had them on a very "tight" schedule and their "job" was to find something on the house they wanted to pait or interpret. So, we didn't get a chance to meet them but they sounded so happy to be able to paint the Butterfly HOuse. They sounded well-mannered and kept to their task.
Today, as in previous days, Melanie and I had lessons. Some she did really well, others like pace and pull were somewhat new. One of my tasks with her now is to keep her from pulling too hard because she wants to run down the rec trail. I keep stopping, using quiet words like "steady" and "gentle". It's not hard for her to do it on the way home because she still wants to stay on the trail, but it is important for me to keep introducing a slower pace. It's also a little more difficult for her to walk on the opposite side of the trail with bikes, people and their dogs coming up behind her. The rule on the path is to walk on the right side. When we return, we do walk on the right side but then it feels right to her. There are things she's picked up really well, like that big tree overhanging a sidewalk that I walked right into because she could walk under it. That was a few months ago and I trained her to stop just before the tree so we could go to the right and avoid hitting it. It's been weeks since we went that way and yesterday seemed like a good day to see if she remembered. It was amazing, as soon as we got within a foot of the tree, she just stopped and looked at me as if to say, "I didn't forget, where' my treat"? Of course, she got her treat and all was well.
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