Good-bye

Jerry's childhood friend and the best man in our wedding-Blaine Barry- passed away earlier today. For those of you who don't know he had been battling a brain tumor that returned in a much more aggressive form earlier this year. His original tumor was removed seven years ago and despite additional surgery, chemotherapy, and other treatment modalities he lost his fight today. He was a great friend and a wonderful and caring person who loved every minute of his last seven years and his passing brings great pain and sorrow to all who knew him.

We'll miss you Blaine...

Lots more pictures

Here are a lot more pictures a friend took at the specialty. First off is Legend having a great time with the sheep at the instinct test. Yes-she did cause the sheep to pant by the time she was done!





And here is Zodiac showing off his Rally-O prowess with another perfect score and first place!







And finally more pictures of Legend showing off her agility skills!

Mail

Today was a good mail day-we got Legend's first title certificate for her Rally Novice title







And Zodiac's t-shirt!

And here is a cute picture of Oreo so he doesn't feel left out.

Trespasser

I went to the barn last night to get something and found a possum curled up in an old laundry basket we gave the barn cats to sleep in. I ran back to the house to get my camera and was able to get this one picture before he disappeared. Apparently the cats don't hunt possum because one was sleeping in the hay on the other side of the barn like this was totally normal. This gives me the distinct idea that I am feeding a certain possum an unknown quantity of Science Diet cat food-good thing I get a discount!

Fall pictures

These pictures are from this afternoon. I caught Squirt in an unusually photogenic mood, however most of the really good pictures turned out a little blurry so this is what I have. Not bad.







And here are the dogs posing with the agility tunnel.
It turned out good except for whatever

weird thing Oreo is doing with his mouth. Zodiac looked really good so I cropped him out and gave him his own picture. He's been surprisingly photogenic lately-usually he won't put his ears up when I get the camera out.

At last, at last!

Our long awaited sectional has arrived. For those of you who don't know we have been waiting for this since we ordered it in May-apparently there were several delays in the special order fabric. We did have to remove our front door to get in the house but other than that we have enjoyed it very much.

And for anyone who didn't get an email already today-Zodiac's picture was chosen for a t-shirt marketed at Helping Udders. So click on the link in the links section to the right and set yourself up with a great BC t-shirt. If you don't know which border collie is mine he's on the "Fall in love with a Border Collie" shirt.

Tulsa Cluster Results

This weekend Legend and Zodiac competed at the Tulsa Cluster Dog Shows. Legend decided that the obedience ring is a great place to burn off excess energy and tug on her leash so traditional obedience was a wash this weekend-although very entertaining. I think it will be awhile before we try for any CD legs again-clearly we still need to work on some self-control. Rally, however was a big success. Legend showed in Novice on Saturday even though she already has her title because I wanted to avoid having 2 dogs in one class. And clearly she can use the ring experience. She didn't place but scored a very respectable 97/100. Zodiac did his usual super job and scored a 99/100 in Advanced to finish his RA and placed 2nd of twenty-something qualifiers. Both dogs moved up a level for Sunday and Zodiac was great-on his first day of Excellent he scored a perfect 100 yet again and took first place for his first RE leg (again, I think there were like twenty-something qualifiers!) Legend made her first attempt at Advanced which is all off lead and I was fairly nervous about this since by now she had been confined to a hotel and leash walks all weekend! She was pretty concerned at first that the steward took her leash but was OK once we got started. She did however get the "zoomies" halfway through and took a short tour of the ring and checked out the judge. I was able to get her back and working again which was a good training experience for her-I hope. Other than stopping to look at a very large dog outside the ring she finished the course without incident and still managed to score an 87 and get an RA leg. So I'm assuming that without the momentary loss of control she would have had a pretty decent score and I was happy with how the weekend went. The picture is of their ribbons and the prizes Zodiac won for his placements. We have several agility trials coming up so I am sure Legend will be much happier to do that rather than this serious obedience stuff!

Happy Halloween

As promised here are some pictures of our pumpkin. Unfortunately we carved it too soon because now it is just a mushy, moldy mess. It was pretty cool the night we carved it though. Plus we don't get any trick or treaters where we live anyway so I guess it doesn't matter.

And here is a picture of the graveyard cake I made to bring to work. I thought it turned out pretty cute

Bonfire

Here are some pictures from the annual All Creatures Bonfire held last night. Although the fire was significantly smaller than last years (which apparently burned for like 3 days) it was a perfect night and we all had a good time.

We were however a little late to the fire due to the picture below. While I was gone last weekend Jerry decided to replace the globes on the ceiling fan in our bedroom. The new ones looked really good and so he decided he would like to also replace the ones in the dining room chandelier. However they don't make any that fit the dining room light so we either had to do nothing or replace the whole light. By this time we had convinced ourselves that we hated the dining room light and thus purchased the lovely light you see below. We were late to the bonfire specifically because the estimated 30-40 minute assembly time in the instruction manual was a severe underestimation. But we did get it up before dark and it looks great-at least we think so!

More specialty pics

Here are some pictures that friends took at the specialty. Check out Legend running the sheep in the herding instinct test.

Above is Legend having fun in the agility ring and here is Zodiac lounging between agility runs.