Graduation Day! ... but now he needs his Masters to practice...

This weekend was a monumental weekend. We learned two important things about Frankie.

On Saturday, we finally tested Frankie to see if these last six months (yes, SIX months!) of Bonding With Mommie have paid off. For those of you following this saga, you'll remember that I've been sleeping in our guest bedroom with Frankie. Just the two of us. Also, I've been the only human member of our family interacting with Frankie. And I've been the only one training Frankie.

Did I mention that I've been sleeping in another room, just me and Frankie, for SIX MONTHS! Long time.

Back to Saturday. This was deemed to be the day we tested Frankie to see if this long bonding process had been successful. Me, the Hubby, and Frankie went shopping.

The test was to see if Frankie would be distracted by the Hubby, if Frankie would maintain his focus on me when the Hubby left us, and if he would still pay attention to me when the Hubby came back to where we were.

Frankie passed with flying colors! Oh, happy day!

This means I can sleep in my own freakin' bed again!

I left the store with a huge smile on my face. Frankie did such a good job and, to be honest, he surpassed even my expectations. I am very proud of him.

So that's the first thing we learned about Frankie, that he has successfully bonded with me and that his training imprint with the Hubby won't interfere with Frankie working for me when the Hubby is with us.

Here's the second thing we learned: he still has one important aspect of his training to complete.

Traveling by plane.

Now, the way I train to prepare for airplane travel is by using the city bus. City busses are much more noisy and turbulent than any plane ride I've ever been on. So they are a good (and cheap, crips ride for free here in Austin!) training method to prepare for airplane travel.

We tried the bus on Sunday.

Unfortunately, Frankie failed this first attempt.

I really wish we had tried the bus when Frankie was younger. But for some reason it slipped our minds. So we're attempting it now with Frankie as a juvenile, and with this attempt I was a bit disappointed. I thought he would do much better.

He was skittish with the mechanical wheelchair ramp as it came out of the bus door with these loud tractor-trailer-backing-up BEEPS, and he was pretty much shivering during the whole, albeit short, trip.

So, we're at square one with the bus. We'll be trying this again, hopefully this week, and we'll keep exposing him to it until he's comfy. If we have to, we'll bring Willie along so that Frankie can see that Willie is unafraid of the bus.

I guess you gotta take the good with the bad. Especially when the GOOD is SLEEPING IN MY OWN DAMN BED!!



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