Car

Here are some pictures of Jerry's new car-a 2008 Nissan Altima. We picked it up fresh from the dealership this afternoon. And it appears that agility was the overwhelming choice for favorite dog sport but thanks to the disc dog and dock diving fans for voting too!

NADAC Trial

Legend competed for 2 days in the NADAC trial this weekend with good results. Sunday she started out too out of control to qualify in weavers or touch and go but had fun. Then she settled down for Regular and got 2 qualifying runs and her novice title. She then was getting pretty pokey and went around a jump in jumpers. Overall she seemed better than the she was at the last AKC trial but still not herself. Monday she started out under control but not exactly fired up. She did get a novice jumpers and an open reg leg. Her other open regular run was good but had an off course. She also picked up a nov. tunnelers leg. She was kind of draggy by tunnelers but it was a warm weekend and her first time doing 10 runs. In general she was more focused than the last trial but still not running with her usual intensity. Hopefully she is getting over whatever issue she had developed but we will continue to work on obstacle drive and rewarding for speed in practice.

A Good Day

I had a super day off. I got a ton of stuff done-that tends to be the case when I get up before 11 and don't take a nap! I cleaned the house, finished mowing the lawn, worked on laundry, worked the dogs and then played outside with them, got in a run, went to the bank, ran an errand and looked at a car with Jerry. Then I went to his softball game

Zodiac did great on Go-outs/Directed jumping today but acted like signals were just too stressful to perform outside. I guess there is a reason they call it "Futility"! He also did great on "socks" today-was able to pick the correct scented sock out of the pile of six. Legend worked on weave poles as we finally have a functional set again. She is doing pretty well with entrances but about 50% of the time will pop out around poles 10-12.

On a happy note, I think Jerry has decided on a car. We'll know for sure later in the week. Here are just some fun pictures.

Busy

We had a busy weekend here. I worked, we shopped for cars (we have 2002 Corolla for sale if anyone cares!), mowed the yard and went to Silver Dollar City, plus had other misc. projects and chores to do! I'm sure I will be tired tomorrow.

Here are some more flowers we currently have blooming. I have no idea what this red bush is. It's in the back yard, has been there since we moved in. We don't actually pay much attention to it or the other 2 that are there and actually just noticed how pretty it was. Here is one of my irises. They have more blooms on them this year than they have had since we moved here so that's pretty cool.
And if anyone is a country music fan Kenny Chesney just won his 4th consecutive ACM Entertainer of the Year award!

Also Wiggles is still sick. He's not eating well at all the last few days but is taking him medicines like a good boy-not that they seem to be helping :(

Wiggles still seems to be not significantly better or worse so today I took some X-rays. Nothing significant on them. Figures. I started him on an anti-inflammatory medication for lack of anything better to do and am considering adding antibiotics. Why not at this point.

Legend worked on distance at class tonight and that seemed to go pretty well. She does need to work on her weave poles as she had some trouble with them from a distance but she was at least trying.

This is just another random flower picture from my garden.

Poll

Everyone should please vote in my poll-seen near the top of the blog! Also check out my picture in the header-I took that today and it's about as good as you can get of the three of them together. It's hard to get all the ears up and everyone looking forward. Zodiac looks a little worried but other than that I thought it turned out great.

Young dog-Old dog

I took this cute picture of Oreo the other day. I thought that he looked so sweet and so wise with all his gray hairs. Compare that to his goofy, mischievous look in the picture below. I'm not sure how old he was at at that time but probably around a year, not more than two for sure. He was a cute little guy wasn't he! Still is of course, just in a different way.

Wiggles seems to be a little perkier today. He hasn't eaten much so far but is not hiding in his hay box as much and was tossing his food bowl around which is one of his favorite hobbies. Hopefully he will continue to get better and start eating more.

Today I worked with Zodiac on Go-outs and Directed Jumping outside for the first time since last year. We have been working on Go-outs inside all winter and that part went great when transplanted to the outdoors but apparently the Directed Jumping part had left his mind. Hopefully today's practice will jog his memory some. He still has trouble with anticipating the signal exercise or else not paying attention and then just guessing what it was he was asked to do because he knows I probably signaled something to him. Legend worked on speed over the contact obstacles while still hitting and sticking her contact. We also worked on fun chasing and toy exchange games to keep her motivated to catching up to me and driving to obstacles. I'm trying to work on things to improve her confidence, and encourage speed and fun in case it was a stress thing that caused her "emotional collapse" at the last trial.

Poor Wiggles

Just when Spring was getting healed from her spay and I was ready to start letting the two rabbits get to know each other better, Wiggles got sick. Since Friday he has been sort of wobbly when he hops around and Friday night didn't eat at all. He did eat some veggies on saturday but yesterday would only eat baby carrots. Today he ate his carrots and some of his veggies so maybe that means the medicine is working or he is getting a little better. He had lost some weight since Holly died but he has really lost a lot it seems since he has not been feeling well. I got his bloodwork back today and it looked pretty good. We are hoping this is something he can get over, but we don't really know what it is yet.

Here are some pics of Legend working yesterday. She sort of looks like a torpedo coming through the tire, doesn't she? I had a busy day at work but my heart failure dog and my severe bite wound dog both appear to be improving so I was happy about that. We had a nice dinner with my grandparents after work and now are planning on just enjoying the evening before heading back to work tomorrow :( Darn saturday hours. It's supposed to rain tomorrow anyway so maybe I won't feel too bad working another weekend. Hopefully Sunday will be nice, we are thinking of going to Silver Dollar City.

Everything is green

Today turned into a nice day even though it rained all night and is a little muddy. Not enough to keep us inside though. Legend worked on some agility and Zodiac worked on obedience and then we all played and I took some pictures. Check out Barney's "down" on the table!













And here are Moses and Squirt enjoying their first evening out in the full pasture-I have been letting it grow some so they will have nice grass this summer. They really enjoyed being out but would not come in when it was time to eat. I had to chase Moses around until almost dark to get him in!

Rained out

Agility class was rained out again today. Actually it has rained all day-very depressing. Anyway, Jerry is in Chicago for business so I decided to take some of my unexpected free time to get some obedience training done-we have been letting that slide lately. Zodiac has been working on scent discrimination using "sock games" which sounds odd but so far has been working well and since you make a game out of it he loves it. I lock the other dogs up and so it's like a special play time for him. Then we worked on signals-he's pretty good at the signals but he always anticipates what's next. He's actually always done that so Rally was really good for him because you are not always doing the same thing in the same order and he had to learn to really pay attention. I also worked with Legend on reviewing some flatwork for agility since we couldn't go outside and on a little obedience. I'm not really sure what I have planned for her in obedience. She loves to work and picks up on stuff really fast but she has too much enthusiasm to contain herself in the ring sometimes. And I don't want her to focus so much on control and obedience that it lessens her speed and drive for agility. I know there are lots of dogs that do great in both, I just don't know if I have the time to train her to excel in both so we mainly focus on agility for now and try to work on Zodiac in obedience. They are both entered in Rally in June though.

And if anyone is wondering Spring has continued to recover well from her spay-she must have had a good surgeon :) She is back to shredding paper like crazy and stringing her toys all over her pen. She is also doing great on her litter box training. I don't even lock her in her cage anymore.

The picture for today is just a random choice because I don't have anything better to post.

Spay Day

Spring did well with her spay today. She is still groggy but has been hopping around a little and nibbled some hay this afternoon. She has a big bare belly now from being shaved. I had a pretty decent afternoon off, the dogs got to play and I got some chores and errands done. I also planted the rest of my seeds today. This is the first time I am trying to grow anything from seed-we'll see if anything actually comes up.

Enjoy this silly picture of Icy!

Agility Trial Part 2

Ok, so today Legend pretty much acted like she had either never seen or didn't like agility equipment anymore. She was totally not herself, shuffling along and refusing stuff like the dogwalk that she has never had a problem with. She was also acting funny when we stopped at the clinic to do a few things but at home she was fine and has been running around and playing all night, even went right up the dogwalk. So she was either not feeling too hot or has suddenly developed some bizarre issue practically overnight. We shall see soon enough.

Agility Trial Part 1 and The Vacuum

Well, Legend started out great today. Our first class was Novice FAST-first attempt and it turned out to be really fun. I had someone explain it to me before I went into the ring and the basic idea is that each obstacle is worth points and you can do them in any order you want except the "send" which much be done in order and you can't cross the line on the ground when sending your dog. You need to accumulate a certain number of points and do the "send" bonus in the allotted time to qualify. Legend got 66 points (she only needed 50) and we finished with some time left over. She even got first place :) There seem to be a lot of detailed rules about re-attempting obstacles, etc, but for the most part is seemed straightforward. Then we went almost directly to Excellent Jumpers which went very well but she missed the weave pole entrance and then popped out at pole 10 or 11 (still haven't had much weave practice lately). Excellent standard was a complete disaster-she was totally off her game which was a disappointment since we really would like to get our first standard leg and the course seemed very manageable. And we waited like 6 hours to run it after jumpers! Maybe tomorrow.

About the vacuum...
Three years ago when we moved here we decided to get a decent vacuum cleaner since I had destroyed several cheap ones already with all the stuff I end up sucking up in our house. I kind of wanted a Dyson but $500 seemed pretty expensive so we ended up with a $300 vacuum that I have hated virtually since the day we got it home. It was heavy, hard to handle, and I was always messing with the bag or the hose or something that wasn't working right. Lately I have had to unclog the hose like every time I use it and end up making a bigger mess than I started with (granted, this is probably b/c of all the stuff I've sucked up over time but for that much money it needs to do more than just hair!). Last night I never did get it working right and drug it out to the garage in a fit of rage. Now, I still don't really want to spend the money on a Dyson that I'm not sure I will be happy with but we can't go without a vacuum so tonight I bought a Dirt Devil for pets model at Wal-mart. It's light, easy to maneuver and so far has not gotten clogged. I don't expect it to last forever but for $75 it's hard to complain. This is also my first experience with a bagless vacuum which allows you to get up close and personal with the stuff you've picked up-that was both a disturbing and enlightening experience. I'd like to say in the future we won't have so many housepets but that probably isn't true so I guess I'll just be grossed out.

Not a baby anymore...

I came home from work today to find that Spring had taken all the newspaper and hay she could find and arranged it into a nest in her sleeping box, complete with a fur lining and everything. I guess she turned into a teenager overnight. I threw the whole thing out but you can see here she has been busy gathering her fresh hay and bringing it to her box to make another nest. I guess it's good she's scheduled for a spay on Tuesday!

Here are some weird pictures I took the other day when I clearly had nothing better to do. This week however it has been back to work for Legend as we are preparing for the AKC agility trial in Springfield this weekend. We will be trying the FAST class for the first time this weekend. I don't actually know all the rules for that yet so I guess I will be doing some reading up on it tomorrow! We are also entered in a NADAC trial later this month and will be trying some new things there as well.

I also really need to get back to working Zodiac in Utility as we hope to actually enter him in trial this fall (I have been hoping that for a few years now and fall seems to come and go-maybe this year will be the one...)