Well, dumb me and apololgies. I don't normally PM anyone, hate to intrude, and now have totally ignored another that has been so great to interact with. Our "Mr. Stevation" Between jumping forums, threads, posts.....I need a GPS. And yes I wish this site had the ability to edit our posts, along with deleting the ones no one responds to. I'm not having the problems that you have mentioned, the PMs and thread responses do come through. Although I have only sent an email 3 times. But these and the thread responses are dumped into spam, so have to check spam on a regular basis. My email is a secondary one for keeping a primary clean. I do think that the more security features we have, the more site issues crop up and not always specific to GW. Like you have mentioned, there are other sites with far better features, but the people on this forum are "kind". And, here is how I got confused with our "Steves". I was on the tools thread after reading the baby thread and went back to look at the other Steve's link to his site. I was so intrigued with how well the site was done, his beautiful and talented wife, the settings....this person went into past memories mode. After writing him, I used the back page option and landed in the wrong thread. I didn't want to write OT on the baby thread, but wanted to share with him. There was nothing secret, just special memories. For 7 years I lived about 2 miles from him, the pics of the mountains and canyons brought back so many memories. My husband and I were married in the town next to him, in the little church where "Foot Loose" was filmed. We lived up the road from the canal where they had the tractor race and the old flour mill the dance was held in the film. Had acreage right at the base of the same mountains as Steve. I had to write Steve and share how much the pics meant to me. Was curious if he was in high tech (which he is not) as both my husband and I landed in Utah due to small companies located in the area. Was hoping a bit that he may know some of the people we did. Although the area has grown 10 times over and he is the age of my youngest son. So memories flowed, as not long after our move from there my husband died and those pics of Steve's place just got to me. Our home there was priceless. Totally OT, and now I'm rambling which is why I try not to post beyond. But reason for writing him and believe me, he is living in one of the most beautiful places around. Again, my apoliges, I would be glad to write to you Stevation....on a totally different topic.

I had hesitated writing the spam thing. There were two that showed up recently and a few of us got caught by it. I really want to apologize, it just seemed a bit connected with the other experiences. No problem with the link either. As I said, the ad is still bugging me so options are welcome. And, actually, maybe this is a bit humerous considering your user name. Anyhow, forgive me for going a bit overboard and OT.

Thank you all for your comments. I am especially glad to hear of the problems you've had, so I can hopefully avoid them. I think that getting them properly trained is the key to preventing running full-tilt out of the area, so we are working really hard on that. We're on a battery plan, so all 4 collars get free batteries for one year. That will get expensive next year, but well worth it. Part of the fence goes through my front garden, so I will have to be extremely careful about not digging it up. I will never feel confident enough to leave the dogs out unsupervised, due to possibility of being stolen, attacked by other animals, attacking other animals (Tatya is quite the birder, much to my horror) etc. I just want them to be able to play together in the yard with us and be able to run around like mad fools if they wish. K'Ehleyr won't go anywhere without me anyway, she's perfectly fine being off-leash and has been several times pre-fence while I've been gardening and such. I'm not even 100% sure she can hear the beep. She may end up not being on the collar, because if I can't train her it isn't fair for her to be shocked- she wouldn't know what she should be doing. She's our old Rottie, and like our previous Rotties, she's not going inclined to run off. Well, she can't even run anymore, it's more like an amble... I thought Ana (5 year old Husky) was going to be a problem. She HATES correction (we're still on beep and leash only, no shocks yet) and got really scared yesterday. So we changed to pure positive reinforcement with her today, treats for retreating from the fence, and that has worked great. Yesterday when she approached the fence and made it beep, we did the leash correction as instructed but she got so scared that she just sat down and wouldn't move. Ana is really smart and has already figured out not to go near the fence in most cases, so right now we are just reinforcing the safe area with her. We'll see how she does with temptations... I don't think Max has connected the beep with going back into the yard yet. He sometimes does it correctly and loves the praise when he does, but he isn't consistent yet. Max's focus on life is fun, and he doesn't taking learning opportunities very seriously. I have to figure out a way to get him to connect the beep with going back into the yard in such a way that he understands. Of course, getting Max to understand anything is difficult- he's not the brightest bulb in the pack. Tatya (2 year old Husky) is the real reason we got the fence to begin with. She's our super-fast flight-risk Husky. We always worry that she'll slip out the door when people are coming and going. She did in fact slip out at Thanksgiving at my mom's house and had 9 people, 2 dogs, and 2 vehicles chasing her for almost an hour before she was finally caught. Obviously she is not off-leash trained, but that's impossible without some sort of containment, and we don't have dog parks close enough that I could use on a regular basis. She is doing really well with the beep training so far, and I've restarted her other training for reinforcement (sit, stay, come, etc) and she's doing well. I'd LOVE to get her agility equipment- she'd be great at it and we would both love it. But that's for when I'm VERY confident that she is well-trained for the fence and off-leash first. Ana and Tatya played a bit together in the yard today, still on leash of course. They had so much fun, but ended up hopelessly tangled up. They will be so happy to be able to do that without getting tangled. Max has been having fun playing fetch in the yard, but it would be more fun to be able to throw the stick further than the length of the leash. K'Ehleyr probably won't get much use out of the fence really. She'll most likely just follow me around or lay in the sun, which is perfectly fine with me. I am encouraged by how well they are doing for the most part. DH and I have been training them twice daily as instructed. The fence people are coming back next week to turn on the shock correction, once all the dogs are ready for it. We are probably going to put K'Ehleyr on a delay (beep first, wait a second for her to move, then shock if she's still at the fence line) and see if she gets it. If not, then she just won't have the collar. Before I had read about it, I thought the training was all punishment-based, but it is not. The dogs get rewarded for retreating back into the yard when they hear the beep. And I'm glad that they don't start with the shock until they know what they are supposed to do. Gives them a chance to not get shocked. So it's turned out better that what I thought so far. We'll see how it goes once they start getting to off-leash training.

In case anyone is still looking for the patterns, here is the info. Sunshine Pineapple - email Vicki at vickistratton@comcast.net. Baby Honu - www.lisaboyer.com I went back to the shop today and bought a baby turtle print for the backing of the turtle quilt. I can find all the fabrics for the front locally, but I didn't want to chance not finding the turtles. I was so tempted by a pack of half-yards of bright Hawaiian prints, but I resisted. Of course, I'll be here for another 11 days, so you never know what might happen.