Secret Santa 2015
We played in the Secret Santa swap this year! Imagine my surprise when the UPS man arrived at my door (delightfully going “ho ho ho!”) with a big box from Chewy. I was confused because I didn’t order anything from Chewy, so I opened the box – and discovered it was our Secret Santa gift!
I closed it up and put it back on the floor and Auggie thought this meant he should stand on it.
No? How about sit on it?
Payton just wants the box open so he can get at what’s inside.
Oh, okay, yeah it’s cool to open the box too.
Payton got these delicious cheese cookies made by Fromm!
And Auggie got a box of peanut butter Buddy Biscuits – his favourite!
Auggie also got a nice new shark toy, and it’s a tough toy so it will withstand any thievery by little brothers, too.
(And it will withstand an Auggie.)
Payton got this long unstuffed gator toy, perfect for tugging.
Auggie also received a Planet Dog basketball with a treat spot so we can stuff those Buddy Biscuits inside.
And Payton got the football!
Posing with all their goodies! The box also contained two bully sticks, but I removed those before we opened them to avoid any angry scuffles where Auggie might try to take both bully sticks and Payton might not find that very fair.
Thank you Secret Santa!
Santa Claus 2015
Christmas is Auggie’s favourite time of the year.
He was born November 15th, which means most of his puppyhood was during Christmastime. I still remember going to pick out which puppy would be mine – I had my choice of two little males who would make great pets with sport potential. Auggie and his little brother (called “Dee” at the time) were ripping around his breeder’s living room, running underneath and behind the Christmas tree. I still believe this is why, when we set up the Christmas tree, Auggie makes a beeline to lie down underneath it. Fond memories of his puppyhood and time spent playing, and maybe occasionally napping, underneath the Christmas tree.
Christmas is my favourite time of the year, too.
We did two Santa trips this year. I brought along the bowtie and tie from our professional Christmas photos. I’m not sure if Auggie and I will get another Christmas together, so I wanted this one to be special.
First, we went to Country Arbors, a nursery nearby. Their Santa setup is really cool, and this year they had a firepit where they were burning pine tree branches. First, we got our Santa photo.
And if you’re wondering why I’m in the photo this year, again, no idea if I’ll ever get another chance with Auggie, so I took advantage of the opportunity before I don’t have it.
Next we went and hung out by the firepit for a while. It was nice and warm and smelled amazing.
After Auggie’s vet appointment, I didn’t really have a lot of cash to pick anything up, although the white birch logs are beautiful and healthy, and really are a great bargain. Maybe next year!
Our next Santa was a couple weeks later. The local humane society always puts on a Santa pet photo event with the Subaru dealership. The Santa is really great and, being humane society folks, everyone working the event is awesome with pets, too. I also love their backdrop – you can’t see it in this year’s photo, but they have this really beautiful old timey looking street light with a big red bow on it, and I just love it.
I got in the photo with Santa here, too, but my favourite happened to be the one of just my two boys and Santa.
May all your Santas be jolly and all their whiskers be real.
First Snow of the Year!
It was pretty pitiful, but we weren’t going to miss the first flakes falling!
Beautiful Auggie with snowflakes.
Silly P with snowflakes!
It amounted to basically no accumulation and was gone the next day… but it was in fact the first time snowflakes fell from the sky for winter 2015. COUNTS.
Auggie Turns 10
Auggie’s birthday is here, and it’s the big 1-0! We’re in to double digits. I decided to throw him a big party and ask friends to come over (especially since hardly anybody had been over to see my house since I renovated almost the entire thing.)
Birthday boys! Georgie came over for the party, too, but she was not involved in this little family photo. I only have two arms.
Auggie got a nice big pirate cake, with a skull centerpiece and ten candles.
Blow out the candles!
But the cake going into his belly is all he really cares about.
NOM THAT CAKE
NOM ALL OF IT
Even the little crumbies left behind.
Some of them are tiny crumbies and you have to lick them up.
Payton gets cake next.
NOM
Halfway through his nom he realized that was impolite and changed to a slightly less impolite nom.
Then he licked his crumbies too.
Georgie next. I broke her cake into pieces so she wouldn’t simply swallow the entire piece whole, as she tends to do.
A nom nom nom nom.
Nom crumbies too. Who licks??
Next, Auggie got his presents.
Reach in that bag old man, see what you get!
Fishing around…
IT’S A TINY SHEEP IT IS THE BEST TINY SHEEP TOY IN THE WORLD
Mom please throw tiny sheep.
No take, only throw.
Payton says “hey wait, there’s something else in here.”
Oh! There is more.
It’s Swabby Shark! Swabby Shark has been waiting since springtime for Auggie’s birthday. A nice big red pirate shark – I don’t think there’s many toys that are more quintessential for Auggie.
Please throw Swabby too mom.
Thank you to all my friends for coming to Auggie’s big birthday party. He is my very special guy and having so many people over to pat him and love on him is a great way for him to spend his birthday. Everybody even sang him the Happy Birthday song.
Happiest of happy birthdays, my very best Auggie.
Happy Fall 2015
Ah, fall. Time for cold weather and lots of leaves littering my yard and hours and hours spent mulching and bagging leaves to be hauled away.
And for photos of my dogs looking stunning.
Auggie, the posing pro.
He might be an old man now, but hes still super handsome.
The most wonderful old man dog.
Brothers!
Now serious brothers.
Payton lays down and I asked Auggie to lay down and he said “mmmmmnope.”
He then came to get a cookie from me. Well okay.
Meanwhile, Payton poses.
I will never stop asking for a head down to get cute pictures now that he can do this.
Because its sooooo cute.
A nice sit.
So many years ago when Payton was a baby, I had this cute photo I set up and took. I tried to set it up again and… this happened.
Just kidding, just kidding, we got it.
Big handsome dogs.
Then Payton ran around bark-screaming while I threw leaves at him and then he flopped down and rolled in the leaf pile and I covered him up and he was super adorable.
SUPER adorable.
Halloween 2015 – The Force Awakens
This year was a bit of a challenge to decide on Halloween costumes. Last year was a huge success with the Justice League. I originally wanted to do The Avengers, but in most iterations, there are more Avengers than I have dogs. If last year is any indication, the comic book geek in me has serious problems with not being able to do something RIGHT… so I took a pass on Avengers. But what should we do, then? I kicked around a few ideas, like Peter Pan, featuring Captain Hook and Tic-Toc Croc, but ultimately wasn’t in love with anything.
It was then I realized, when in doubt, you should always go back to your roots.
And use the Force.
I decided almost immediately I wanted to be Han Solo, which meant Payton was my Chewbacca. Georgie was Leia, being the girl. I then had to convince my mom to be Luke Skywalker, which she tried to get out of multiple times, but I presented her with that fact that you simply cannot show up as a Star Wars posse and not have a Luke. I mean, you just can’t.
Certainly we could have cheated and gone to purchase any of the number of costumes out in the mass market, but we all know that’s not how I roll. NOPE. My sewing machine would have been so disappointed in me.
Han and my best buddy Chewie.
It took us a long time to get the footstall trick down. Many times I almost gave up on Payton ever learning it. And now we’re doing footstalls in costumes.
Big bad Chewbacca back home.
This fur was actually a trick to find. I wanted something just right and went to four places to find it. Lots of short fur and light brown but difficult to snag something that looked really Chewbacca-like.
I did purchase a blaster from the Halloween store – it was pretty close to being accurate and way better than anything I could have cobbled together on my own. But it was white and orange from the store, which is just ridiculous. No worries, though – I took care of that little problem with a can of spray paint and some acrylics to help it looked more used-by-a-space-smuggler and realistic.
Georgie might have preferred we went to buy faux hair buns instead of making some for her, but all the ones on the market were pitiful and WAY too small to be movie accurate, so No Thank You. We made the hair buns also.
The hair buns did not survive multiple costume changes, however. Also, she basically hated them… so I didn’t ask her to wear them more than when for the costume contest.
Auggie did not attend with us this year, but if he had, he would have been Yoda. Once we returned home, I looked at what I had in terms of existing costumes.
Turns out Auggie is not Yoda, he is actually Darth Vader.
Typical.
Georgie’s 4th Birthday!
Payton made it to four and so, too, did Miss Georgie. My mom got some cupcakes and brought them over so we could have a little party for her.
Georgie first. Oh Georgie. Always with the hat malfunctions.
Cuppycaaaaaake.
NOM.
Auggie next who is always so good.
Auggie nom!
Payton isn’t too bad either.
YAS CUPCAKE YAS
Apparently Georgie has “enough” toys already, so no presents for Georgie. What a rip off!
Payton has a WHALE of a birthday
Somehow Payton has made it to four years old. Over four years, he has only managed ONE emergency vet visit (for a ruptured ear drum, probably started by an allergic reaction of some kind), he has NOT broken any bones, torn any muscles, needed any surgeries, and I believe I have only had to induce vomiting on him one time… and that was just a few weeks ago. Compared to Auggie, and compared to the kamikaze dog Payton actually is, this is really a bloody miracle.
We’ve had a lot of ups and downs and I pictured Payton at four very differently, but here we are, and although I would much prefer things to be in a very different place, we still manage to have a lot of fun together. He is an excellent running and hiking buddy. He learned how to do a foot stall, which I never thought he would be able to do. He is very good at cuddling. And he’s pretty cute, too.
I guess I’ll keep him another year.
Group photo! And yes I made these hats. I’m starting to think I have very few reasons to ever get store-bought hats again.
I wasn’t going to make him wear the glasses, I was only joking, but my mom said I had to get them. This is Grandma’s fault then, Payton, not mine.
Want cake. Wait for cake.
Really really want cake.
I took a photo of them together BEFORE Auggie got cake on his face but Payton wasn’t wearing his hat, so I had to do it again after Auggie got his cake.
Thaaank you Auggie.
Auggie is somehow always the star of the show, even when it isn’t his birthday. Because Auggie.
Brother and sister!
Georgie hates having to sit and wait. HATES. What you don’t see is there is cake on the floor in every one of these photos and they are each having to wait for their photo before getting released to the cake. Georgie says this is LITERALLY THE WORST.
Birthday whale toy!! and an icing face.
Posing with his new whale toy… and really wishing I would give him some more cake.
Sheltie Egg Hunt 2015
Getting ready to hunt… Auggie is like I AM 100% FOCUSED LET’S DO THIS THING
Georgie found the easy one I set right by the deck.
Auggie ran straight past it to grab one in the yard.
And then off into the rest of the yard for another.
Georgie is very methodical, snagging the second one right near her first.
Meanwhile Payton grabbed one and started proinking around with it, then dropped it.
OH NOES EGGY
I GOT IT AGAIN
THEN DROPPED IT AGAIN
Auggie meanwhile is all bing-bang-boom findin’ all the eggs
Payton again dropped his first egg and found another.
Georgie is busy trying to snag as many as she can.
Payton lost the yellow egg to Georgie, did a lap, and came back to his pink egg… while Pepper in the front…
…is maybe finally figuring this game out.
Chomp…
Choooomp?
SHE GOT IT!
Then she found another!
LOOK GUYS SHE CAN DO IT.
I MEAN SHE TOTALLY UNDERSTANDS THE GAME. AT LAST. OMG.
She is having a hell of a time actually getting them open though.
Then she found this one, which I was really impressed with because she had to jump up in the wagon to get it.
Georgie came running over to try and steal it. Georgie was VERY good at stealing eggs from the other dogs…
My mom had to help out. “No, this is PEPPER’S egg.”
She kept workin’ on it…
and got it!
Payton accidentally broke one of his egg-balls and discovered the cookie inside so he’s making an attempt here.
LOOK he figured it out.
Okay so I tried to line everybody up for a group photo, and Payton… well… Payton. So here’s the group photo.
Miss Pepper who got THREE eggs this year!! THREE!!
So very proud of herself.
Auggie is all “I’m old and exhausted, this is tough work.”
Auggie got nine eggs this year. He would have had more if I counted every one he grabbed, but his old man teeth were having a bit of trouble chomping them open, and if he couldn’t get it open he just dropped it and buzzed on to the next.
Payton with his THREE! I think this is exactly how many he got last time too…
Georgie is the WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER this year with TEN eggs. She only really won because a) previously mentioned no-counts for Auggie and b) she kept stealing eggs from everybody else.
I cheat, I still win, who cares, haha.
Happy winning baby dog.
A Very Sheltie Christmas 2014
We started at my house, in front of my tree.
My baseboard is actually not installed yet, I just set it there… hence the gap. Yeah…
Oh look Peppy is happy.
Perfect Auggie first.
I really need to teach my dogs how to smile on cue.
Perfection. Best Auggie.
Oh yay! Now he will smile.
Payton next and he looks SO unhappy.
No smiles…
but he’s pretty cute.
Eeeeeeeee.
Then there’s Pepper, who also looks sad, but that’s normal for her.
Whomp.
Oh yay!! It’s Christmastime!
No, whomp again.
Family photo with just ooooone happy dog… perfect Auggie.
Then back to my parent’s house for a +1 family photo.
Happy Pepper again!
Payton knows a Christmas secret… WINK.
Peppy loves her brudder. Auggie is like “if I close my eyes and wish really hard, when I open them, I will be an only dog again…”
“…no… they’re still here.”
JK JK Auggie likes Pepper too. Mostly.
Everybody looks SO SERIOUS.
Miss Georgie. I tried to carefully position her so you cannot see the absolute hack job the vets did to her hair when she was spayed.
Crap you can totally see it here.
Also I wish I had done her feet before these photos… why it’s my responsibility to trim her nails and groom her feet, I do not know, but it is… sigh.
Auggie single!
CHRISTMAS OVER-ACHIEVER
Payton single.
Still no smiles…
but still pretty cute.
MORE CHRISTMAS OVER-ACHIEVER. Practicing for footstalls.
Saaaad Pepper single.
I wasn’t trying to be artsy here, I think I was just falling over. Unfortunately I was not drunk.
Then we opened presents. After clearing out under the tree, Auggie went to his favorite spot.
Best little Christmas dog…
Georgie got to open her present.
Auggie had one of these warthogs when he was younger and it was my dad’s favorite toy to use when they played, so I bought one for Georgie.
I also found this GoDog platypus so I bought her one, hopefully it will hold up to her destruction!
Warthog and platypus! She really didn’t care much for the platypus, the warthog had so many things to chew on.
Then Auggie opens his.
Kong Christmas squeaker balls!
Also this bag of treats is really great.
Pepper… um… well she was afraid of her stuffed toy so she wouldn’t open hers. Poor Drizzle.
Payton was confused. “I can smell the treats, but I can’t SEE the treats… what is this sorcery??”
“Oh there they are.”
Looking positively unexcited about his toy, but I swear he enjoys it. Yesterday he kept grabbing it and running around the room with it while wagging all over.
Then we went to bed until the next day, when we had…
STOCKINGS!
Auggie cared about little else in the stocking except the bully stick.
A lame picture of Pepper getting in her stocking… she actually had gotten sick all over the living room on Christmas Eve so I was trying to NOT let her really get much of the bully stick, but I did want her to be able to snack a teensy bit on it… poor thing.
No bully stick for sick Peppy-drizzles. But she does get a platypus of her own and some dog treats.
Payton also cares about not much but that bully stick.
He got his very own green squishy ball so he can stop stealing Auggie’s.
Festive Driz!
Oh no, a bow on a Payton. Behold the bully stick face.
And Auggie has no such time for this foolishness because he has a bully stick under the tree, thank you very much. I think this must be Auggie’s ultimate happy place actually.
Sheltie Secret Santa 2014
This year my finances were back in order to be able to participate in a Secret Santa swap. We have such fun doing this every year, but this year my Secret Santa did an AMAZING job. Everything is perfect and spot on for all the dogs, which is especially a surprise with Pepper, who is not really much for toys or playing, but absolutely loves her gift-toy so much it really had me tearing up and about to cry with the joy she was displaying over this little crinkly Cuz toy.
ANYWAY, on to the pics!
Obviously boxes are for standing on, Payton says. (I seriously had to shoo him away so I could open the darn thing.)
The pile of goodies!
You must read the card first, it’s rude otherwise.
I was super excited about these treats because I had been wanting to try them but nobody in town had any!
Auggie thinks this must also be more food.
First to open presents is Auggie since he is the oldest. He basically ripped the paper just enough to expose the tennis balls, and then began trying to rip into the netting to get them out.
OPEN IT OPEN IT OPEN IT
He will stop long enough to nom this second package which is most definitely also cookies.
Yummy yummy!
NOW THROW THE BALL
Pepper next. She’s not very good at opening presents, she thought this was it. “Oh this is mine? Okay.”
“Oh you mean there’s more to it?”
“I like it.” We stopped opening presents to play with this thing for about five minutes which Payton HATED because he hadn’t gotten to open his yet.
She likes her cookie treats too.
FINALLY it is Payton’s turn.
Auggie is totally willing to help though if you need it.
It’s a tuggy loofa dog!
Instant tugging.
Seriously Auggie wants in on this.
I couldn’t get Payton to put the toy down long enough to come back for his cookies, but it’s okay, Auggie’s got it.
Auggie models the cool sheltie t-shirt that is for me!
The big haul of doggy goodies.
And this cute puppy.
First Snow of Winter 2014
One of my favorite things about my dogs is how snowflakes fall on their fur… so… yeah. And somehow Pepper became the star of this photo session. Normally she is hiding in the background or directly under my feet so I can’t get any good photos, but this time I managed more of her than the boys.
Just one of Pay to start…
Then my pretty girl showed up.
The poor photographer this weekend kept trying to get Pepper’s ears up and I was like “yeah, that’s just Pepper… it’s… that’s just Pepper.”
Ears up! But head down.
Head up, ears back down, haha. My girly.
Another nice one of P…
Meanwhile Auggie.
I mean Auggie.
Seriously he can kinda be a real jerk.
Okay ONE nice one of Auggie.
Back to the pretty Pepper.
I love her expression in this one, but the snowflakes aren’t in focus how I’d like.
Here the snowflakes are better but her expression is not as good. LOL. Oh well… they’re both rather nice.
I’m sure there will be plenty more snow pics to come. Ugh.
Paytongility 2014
I had no idea this photo was being taken until long after the fact.
It has not been a very good year for us in agility. In an entire year of trialing, Payton has only gotten three Qs. Two are in Novice FAST so they don’t even really count. One Open JWW Q. So many near misses in JWW; most of the time it’s just no weave poles, but if we have weave poles, I get so excited he got his poles I blow it for us, gaining us extra refusals from poor cues or doing something that results in a dropped bar. Standard has just been an overall disaster between the weave poles and contacts.
And yet we train. I sign us up. We go.
And we play.
Everybody loves Payton. Even after a horrible run the peanut gallery always tells me he’s a beautiful dog, he has great structure, he looks amazing. His speed is highly desirable if nothing else is. He loves the game, he is happy, he is excited (yes I know.) Over Halloween a friend who last saw Payton when he was a tiny 14 week old puppy finally got to see him run and came up to me after our run and said “I think you should know, that dog is going to be really good really soon. He’s fast, he’s really incredible. He’s going to be great. He really is.” Many many people who have given me a lot of votes of confidence with him, which helps when we have a bad run and all I want to do is sit down and cry.
But this past weekend is when I actually got the best comment of all.
After a run, which didn’t go as planned, we came back to our crate and Payton was sitting in his chair getting cookies for his stay and whatever else he did that was clever (I always tell him exactly what his cookies are for. One cookie for a stay. One cookie for the weaves. One cookie for that obstacle discrimination. Et cetera.) And the lady crated in front of me said “I really like how you handle your dog.”
Thinking she meant “handle” as in handling on the course, I said “oh, thank you.”
But then she continued.
“He has a lot of drive. And you do a really good job of trying to channel that drive instead of trying to just squash it.”
“Oh,” I said, realizing what she meant. “Well thank you. That actually means a lot, because it honestly doesn’t feel like it.”
“Well, it might not feel like it,” she says, “but I can tell by watching you together. You’re doing a really good job with him. You seem like you really know your dog and you really know your breed. I love watching you with him.”
That is probably the best compliment I have gotten with my dogs. And of all the awesome photos I’ve gotten of Payton doing agility this year, I really do think this one is my favorite.
I would much prefer to be posting brags of his Qs, his ribbons, his placements, his MACH points, how close we are to a championship. Instead we are limping along just trying to get some Open Qs, never mind getting OUT of Open. He is not an easy dog, but he is mine, he’s kinda cute, and I kinda like him. I know in other hands he would be treated an entirely different way. It is a balancing act with him and will probably forever be one. But he is mine and I’m glad he is.
I guess I’ll keep him.
At least until we see how next year goes.
Meanwhile Georgie is over here like HEY GUYS GUESS WHAT I THINK I MIGHT GET A MACH IN A YEAR OR SO
Auggie is 9
Auggie turned 9 on Saturday.
I’m not sure how it happened.
I somehow forgot it was his birthday when I entered the puppies. Had I been thinking, I would have entered him too, just for fun to run on his birthday. But the trial was closed by the time I realized it was his birthday. No way was I leaving him behind though, so away he went with us to the trial. I didn’t want to have to worry about bringing a cake or cupcakes with us, so I stopped at the Wal-Mart near the trial site between runs and oh did I hit the jackpot.
This lovely cake was “best by” that day so it only cost a whopping $4.50. Um, yes please! And it had orange and blue balloons on it – Illini colors for my little Augustine. The lady behind the counter was happy to write on it for me and I was happy to NOT mention it was for my dog…
We had a party in the hotel room.
Oh it is the cake.
Everybody got their own little slices…
Must wait for cakies.
Auggie first since he is the birthday boy.
Payton was really unsure if he was actually allowed to get on the table and eat his cake or not. Which is funny because when we got to the hotel Friday night, the first thing he did was jump up on the table…
Finally I convinced him it was totally allowed.
Georgie, by the way, immediately grabbed her entire piece of cake and jumped onto the floor to try and swallow it whole.
Auggie’s hat never stays in place haha.
Georgie’s empty plate while she tried to eat the cake on the floor hahaha.
Birthday boy!
Then it was present time. I didn’t go all out or anything this year, we have tons and tons of toys anyway, but I decided to order this green squishy ball since I know a few dogs on this forum really love it. (Payton is getting one for Christmas too.)
Oh a squishy.
Squishy tastes like cake.
We then proceeded to play a game of “push the ball off the couch, make mom throw it back on the couch, push the ball of the couch again.”
Aaaand then Drizzy got some cake when we got home.
Nom!
Behold the Payton sitting there like “I want more cake…” (They did actually get some more afterward.)
Happy birthday my Auggie. <3
Sheltie Halloween 2014
So I entered an agility trial over Halloween. They were having a Halloween costume and one of the categories was best duo (or group, in my case.) I decided to go as The Justice League. This lead to many many nights working on costumes for the dogs, myself, and my mom who was attending with Georgie. Lots of looking up comic book covers and artwork and trying to decide “which version of Supergirl do I want to do?” Back and forth to make sure I was creating accurate costumes, even though my mom pointed out “No one will know.” I WILL KNOW.
Auggie, of course, was The Flash.
Auggie first of course.
Because he is the bestest.
I actually have some Flash underwear I bought years ago and I wanted to use that, but I couldn’t find any matching GL underwear so I axed that entire idea. It doesn’t really “go” with the actual Flash costume, anyway.
I went back and forth on Payton a little bit as far as who he would be (technically he is supposed to be Kid Flash because he’s Auggie’s sidekick), but I felt the most logical choice was Green Lantern, since Barry Allen-Flash and Hal Jordan-GL were great friends.
I have to admit that Payton’s is actually my favourite costume. I love the way the mask fits on his face, I love the lantern “ring” on his wrist, I just love how I worked this one out. Way better than anything I could have possibly bought.
The only thing I might have changed is to bring the nose bridge further down his nose, but I think that would have ultimately given it a weird silhouette, so I’m pretty happy with it as I made it.
The mask creeped up while we were in the costume contest and I was like “OH GOD NO, THEY’LL FIND OUT YOUR SECRET IDENTITY.”
Pepper did not go to the show with us, not being a competitor, so she didn’t get a costume of her own. But I didn’t want her let out when we took photos back at home, and I happened to have this Wonder Woman costume that I bought her many years ago, so…
Drizzy is soooo regal.
Oh wait no nevermind
I really need to make a far better lasso of truth for this costume though. That one is pathetic.
I also didn’t make her tiara, I bought that at Target a year or two ago, along with the Flash one for Auggie. It also technically needs wrist bands… (my mom’s costume totally had wrist bands. But I forgot about the lasso of truth. I literally sat in bed after we won the costume contest and went OH MY GOD, I FORGOT THE LASSO OF TRUTH. Obviously nobody else cared but DANG IT)
Miss Georgie next. I could have done a few different things with her, but Wonder Woman didn’t suit her, and I was stealing the Superman slot to be Supergirl – so Georgie got to be Batgirl. Basically we went Slightly Alternate Justice League by swapping a few male characters for female counterparts, but otherwise, pretty solid.
I would have done her bat ears a little differently I think… maybe a bit more upright… but I liked the overall shape and wasn’t sure if I could get the bat ears upright and still have the shape look correct, so I let it go.
I DID make her a cape, but I didn’t like how it turned out, so I ultimately didn’t use it. I really wish it had turned out better, or I’d had more time to work on it and make a better one…
Group photo! I have no idea what’s going on with Georgie’s mask. My mom was having malfunction issues with it trying to put it on her.
My Justice League!
All winners. Except Payton. Payton sucks.
I should note that if I HAD gotten a puppy earlier this year, he would have been Aquaman. Poor guy. So it’s a good thing I didn’t get a puppy. Because who wants Aquaman on their Justice League? I mean really.
THE END and I have no idea how I will ever top this. Avengers???
Pepper’s Sixth Birthday
My Peppy-drizzle turned SIX years old today! Holy wow! She’s a for real big girl now. In one more year I can actually start calling her “old lady.”
Middle-child got her VERY OWN trip to the pet store so we could try to pick out a toy. Pepper isn’t hugely into toys anyway so I wasn’t sure if we would find anything. She was horrified by the sliding door when we got there, had no clue what to make of the piles of dog food surrounding her, was slightly interested in the “self-serve” bar of treats, and kept jumping on me to remind me she was there in case I might accidentally leave her behind. We did actually find a nice little toy I thought would be okay, so we bought it, the cashier gave me a piece of chicken jerky to give her (I told him I doubt he would take it directly from him), and then when we left, she tried to make a mad dash out of the store and ran head-first into the sliding glass door before it opened.
*facepalm*
ANYWAY.
Pepper told me she did not want another princess party, did not want a Disney Princess party (not even Frozen which is all the rage right now), did not want a hot pink zebra-stripe party, but she DID want a unicorn party. OMG why is it so hard to find unicorn horns for kids to put on their heads? So once again I bought scrapbook paper and had to DIY.
Payton’s opinion on this whole unicorn party thing.
JK JK he’s actually okay with it so long as we make with the cupcakes. (Meanwhile now Georgie is giving me a bit of a stink-eye because she tried to lay down and I was like “no we are sitting right now.”)
Happy birthday Pepper!!
Yeah she totally did not wait long enough and nommed her cupcake before I was actually ready. She is my worst behaved little girl…
Then she got frosting on her whiskers.
Then I put more on her nose and made her pose that way because.
Auggie next since he is the oldest non-birthday child. He has cake on his eyebrow here because I had to reposition his unicorn horn. Also FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON’T LOOK AT HIS FEET I SWEAR I GROOM MY DOGS. LOOK AT THE OTHER THREE. SEE? I SWEAR.
Unicorn horns don’t stay on very well for excited cupcake eating.
P next. I unfortunately missed the long string of drool that dripped down from his chin as soon as I set his cupcake down. (You’re welcome.) He’s got a little bit of crazy eye goin’ on here. CAN WAITS.
So he REALLY wanted that cupcake guys. But he made a really good decision to wait for it. Paytons DO have self-control (sometimes.)
Cupcake nommin’!
Miss Georgie did a very nice wait too.
And I actually, for once, got a GOOD photo of her eating a cupcake!
Peppy present!! It’s… A CUPCAKE. I thought it was appropriate, hahaha, and it’s about tennis ball shaped so I thought she might actually play with it.
She likes it when it tastes like cupcake frosting, that’s for sure.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MISS PEPPER!! Sorry I made you go out in public to a pet store and freaked you out for your birthday.
But the cupcakes were good.
Dogs In Hats
So a few weeks ago I had free bucks to spend at Old Navy. My plan was to buy yet another sports bra, but I discovered they’ve CHANGED their sports bras. WHAT. What am I supposed to buy now??
So I found these hats back in the kid’s department.
So that’s what I bought.
I don’t know why but I’m pretty sure Payton needs to wear his bowtie with his hat.
Auggie’s fits SO GOOD. Payton’s is a little big for his head and kept falling off…
OMG I can’t. They’re like two little old men best friends or something…
Auggie’s is very fashionable.
And then there’s Payton.
Seriously, it’s like it was made for his head. HOW ELSE DO YOU EXPLAIN IT FITTING SO WELL??
Payton’s big fat head ruined this one of the perfect Auggie. Oh well. Still pretty good anyway.
Payton’s First Agility Seminar
Yesterday was our Stuart Mah seminar. The day started at 4:30AM; I packed almost everything into the car the night before so I wouldn’t have a lot to mess with in the morning. Roll out of bed, feed the dogs, potty the dogs, get dressed, pack the cooler full of caffeine, put Payton in the car crate, fire up the GPS, and away we go! We left at about 5:15AM and arrived at the seminar location a little bit after 7:40AM. The seminar was small, so we all got plenty of chances to work our dogs.
We started just talking a little about a list on a wipe off board, a list of skills dogs need for agility and a list of skills people need for agility. The list for dogs is obviously much longer, but it was a bit surprising to me how MUCH longer it was. There were definitely skills on the list that Payton doesn’t have. Then we all got the chance to run our dogs on a course Stuart set up. After we ran, he asked us what we thought our dogs needed.
Funny enough, after two weeks of Steak & Weaves, there were NO weave poles in the course. We didn’t see a single weave pole all day. We did, however, see contact equipment, and Payton was spectacular in his judgement of where to jump off in order to precisely clear the yellow completely. Sigh. He also took some great off-courses for me. And barked a lot. Basically, he had a very lovely Payton-esque run, which is what I was hoping for so I could be like “My dog. Let me show him to you.”
So what I said I thought Payton needed was impulse control. Stuart said “that’s part of it.” But more over, what he thinks Payton needs he called “attention to detail.” Payton’s version of agility is to run around the course as fast as he can, taking as many obstacles as he can, often just grabbing whatever he sees in front of him, with very little regard for where I am on the course or what I’m telling him to do. In my description of this, it sounds like a dog who is stressed and is running zoomies around the course – we’ve all seen those dogs. But that’s not quite Payton. Payton instead is so eager to go on, run ahead, and keep trying to take as many obstacles as he can – hit your contact? But there’s a jump right out there. Finish the weave poles? But there’s a tunnel there I would rather do instead. Take THAT jump? But this one is in front of me! The rules just don’t come into play anymore in his eagerness to play the game as fast as possible. In my head I pictured a little kid playing soccer. The kid is so excited he picks up the soccer ball, runs as fast as he can down the field, flings the ball as hard as he can into the goal… then he dives into the goal, grabs the ball, and runs back the other way as fast as he can, flings the ball into THAT goal, repeat. And the whole time he’s doing this he’s screaming at the top of his lungs. And meanwhile all the other kids are standing there going “But dude, that’s not how you play the game!” But he just doesn’t care about how THEY want to play the game, because he has decided he wants to play the game by running as fast as he can and scoring as many goals as possible, not even necessarily for his own team. He doesn’t care that in soccer you’re supposed to move the ball with your feet. He doesn’t care that only the goals scored for YOUR team really matter. He just wants to run fast and score goals and also yell a lot.
That’s Payton playing agility. Except it’s not quite a perfect example, because Payton will generally follow me around a course. He doesn’t run off and start taking jumps at the opposite end of the ring while I’m still standing back by obstacle #3 – but he’s not super concerned if I’m over by jump #5 and he’s on an off-course over that way. In fact the off-course jump might, in Payton’s view of agility, give him bonus points (hint: it doesn’t.)
In some ways, this is good news, but in other ways, it’s bad, because Impulse Control is a Thing that I know, a Thing that I have a concept of how to work on. How to teach my dog attention to detail, I have no idea. I’ve never even heard of that as a Thing.
He also said part of the reason Payton does this is because he doesn’t feel there are any consequences for not playing the game correctly. It’s true; I don’t punish my dog for making mistakes. I try to not even let him know he’s screwed up and I’m unhappy. And it wasn’t until later, while Stuart was talking about something else, that it really occurred to me WHY. Because in my head I think that if I do anything or say anything, I’m going to squash Payton’s enthusiasm and end up with Auggie. A dog who desperately needs the energy to be kept cranked WAY over the top to drive him through a trial, and even then, he might not make course time. So I’ve decided that in exchange for speed and enthusiasm, I give up control. And the end result is we still don’t Q but for entirely different reasons.
I’ve also said before to friends that I feel like Payton and I escalate each other, and definitely some of what Stuart said backs this up. Payton is running fast and loose and loud. I start getting louder. He gets louder (and faster) so I get louder and the cycle just continues. I want Payton to come to me and instead of being calm and quiet, I’m basically shouting PAYTON PAYTON PAYTON at him which is just adding energy and intensity and doesn’t at all signal “chill out” to Payton. Somehow I have to manage to be in enough control of myself and my voice and my tone and volume to communicate better to him. Not exactly a skill I’m good at; my volume level tends to be very reactive… so that will be interesting.
There’s also the issue that I run hard and fast a lot. Payton runs hard and fast so I run hard and fast so Payton runs hard and fast, more of the cycle repeating. Let me drop my psychology degree in here for a second to mention that it’s very self-rewarding for ME TOO to run hard and fast with Payton; excepting the exercise physiological aspects of endorphins and everything from the equation (like the fact that my sport of choice is running and I just plain enjoy it,) which of course comes into play, I have a fast dog who is wildly opposite from my first Molasses Dog and it’s incredibly rewarding in all kinds of ways to run all out with my fast dog. It’s also rewarding to Q though. There has to be a balance there, from me, which might be harder than just training the dog.
Ultimately it almost sounds like it’s going to take more changes in my behavior to force changes in Payton’s behavior, so the onus is really going to primarily be on me. Yes, there will be some extra training going on, but I’m going to have to step up my game and be better about what I do and don’t do with Payton in the ring. Our next trial is over the July 4th weekend, so we shall see if there’s anything to be gained by that point or if I’m just going to continue setting money on fire for a while. All in all, it was a pretty good experience and helpful to have somebody of a high caliber confirm a lot of things I was thinking. I flat out asked about the contacts and weave issues (even though Stuart didn’t see him weave) and he agreed that he feels it’s an overall issue with his lack of attention to detail rather than an obstacle performance issue.
On the positives, Payton was otherwise a delight all day. Sat in his crate quietly even though a major windstorm was brewing outside and the entire building sounded like it was shaking. Let Stuart use him as a demo for his stretching routine. Gained some admirers who asked where I had gotten him because he was a nice, solid dog who rebounded from failures easily and is of course a very cute, enthusiastic boy. In most cases I really believe Payton tries very hard to be a good boy, and while it’s true I was sitting there halfway through the day and thought “I miss Auggie…” it was nice to spend a day with my little baby dog and have some fun. Also, it’s the very first time I’ve ever seen Payton truly tired. He had to use his brain HARD for hours at a time, and even though he was happy to play and wrestle and run around after we got home, when we all finally crawled into bed at night, he lay down right next to me and stayed there, even after Auggie decided it was too hot and jumped off the bed to sleep on the floor. Normally P snuggles for a bit and then moves to the floor, but NOPE… too tired. Can’t even get off the bed. And that alone might have been worth the whole thing.
Steak and Weaves
As part of Payton’s re-training (to rule out any gaps in our training as issues in the ring), I’ve decided to start over with the 2x2s. In order to make them really awesome, I’ve also decided to use steak to train them.
Today was our first session, the “entry” pole not totally wide open, but open enough to make it an obvious entry. I worked the arc, alternating success with entries high on the arc with an easy, straight on, flat out entry. His success rate was quite high although at times when we were high on the arc he’d enter the second set, possibly because they “look” like weave poles and the open entry doesn’t. We’ll go with the former in the name of re-training.
Although it’s funny to even call it re-training, because, as I mentioned to a co-worker, he always knows what weave poles are in the backyard. Is it re-training, or is it supplemental training? Proofing? Desperate attempt to get my dog to Q? What should I technically call it? So I’ve decided, for the fun of it, to call it Steak and Weaves.
We have three nice steaks I picked up cheap at the grocery store last night, so those will be sliced up and grilled and used for our further work. We also have some jump work and more contact proofing to do, so I need to work out a new training schedule for him. We have just under two weeks to get some additional training in before our seminar, so hopefully we’ll be able to make some advancements and rule training gaps out so we can be a little more direct with our seminar adjustments… but in the meantime… STEAK AND WEAVES!
Memorial Day Agility Weekend, and Georgie’s New Title!
This weekend we drove down to Glen Carbon for three days of agility. Whenever I have a day off work for a holiday, I like to try and squeeze in three days of agility, since it gives me an extra chance to snag some Qs without having to take any vacation days. I’ve been hesitant to go down to Glen Carbon for a long time because it’s a bit far and the hotels aren’t very cheap. I hated to make a big, expensive trip out of it and waste all that money on brand new baby dogs who aren’t quite on their game yet, but my friends wanted me to go, so away we went.
I also decided to enter Auggie in one day, just for fun. Auggie and I haven’t really done any practicing since before Louisville, and being semi-retired, I don’t really care what he does, so it was just for the fun of running my old man. He ran both rings on Sunday and actually had some really nice runs. His jumping wasn’t the greatest since we haven’t done any work, and he knocked the final bar on the triple jump in both rings, and he also decided 11 weave poles were plenty, BUT – he was really running quite fast for Auggie runs. If he had Qd in standard he would have gotten about 10 points, and jumpers would have been about 4 or 5, which might not sound like much, but for a dog who had a career plagued by trying to make SCT, it’s a pretty big deal. The other big deal was I did all of this without using any treats at all with him. All of our warm-up and playing before his runs was done with his shark tug. This is a dog who wasn’t really into tugging for many, many, many years, and only really started to tug when he was six years old. Despite NQs it was really pretty awesome for Auggie, and of course, it’s always the best thing in the world to run my big dog.
Payton and I have spent the past two weeks doing self-control work and some more proofing on contacts. We also did some weave pole work, but that’s sort of frustrating for me because I cannot make the dog miss weave poles in the backyard. He’s excellent about it and I felt like I wasn’t really working on what I needed to be working on by flinging him into 12 weave poles from various difficult angles. Perhaps the weaves were really what we needed to work on, because all weekend long, Payton did not complete a single set of 12 weave poles. He made some entries. He also missed some entries. He did a few poles, and also skipped a few (several.)
On the upside, his startline stays were really great all weekend long. I have been hesitant to do a lot of lead outs with Payton because, in the backyard, he will sometimes decide the fastest way to release is to simply go around the jumps rather than actually taking the jumps in front of him. I hate to blow a run just because I’m trying to do a lead out, and given that my sport of choice is running, sprinting to keep up with my dog is well within my physical abilities, so I haven’t done a lot of them. This weekend I decided to try it, wondering if the extra self-control required to not break a stay might help with control on the rest of the course, too. I can tell you it doesn’t bleed over into self-control on the rest of the course, but he did several nice lead outs for me, including one through a tire jump, which it wasn’t too long ago that we had tire issues. His contacts were also pretty nice. The a-frame wasn’t what I wanted, but I wasn’t getting what I wanted from the a-frame in practice either, and I’ve been considering re-training the a-frame with the Rachel Sanders method to a running a-frame and reserving the 2o2o for the dog walk. He wasn’t called on the a-frame all weekend long, so there’s that. This weekend he actually chose to complete the teeter, waiting for it to tip rather than adopting our last agility weekend’s style of running up the teeter, pausing for about a quarter of a second, then diving off the side because it wasn’t tipping fast enough and he needs to GO GO GO GO! His dog walk, however, which is what I’ve really been working on, was rather nice. The first day he held it properly. The second day we had a minor fiasco at the table and I was a little irritated, so I held him on his contact for a LONG time. The third day I admit I was irritated at him because he didn’t get his weave poles and ran past the dog walk, only issuing one “touch” command as I blew far ahead of him, and he cleared off the down plank without getting anywhere near the yellow. Bad trainer for letting my irritation get to me and failing to try and maintain my own criteria.
A contributing factor may also be that this weekend, I tested out giving him multiple “touch” commands. Part of me hates to do this, because part of me really believes I should only need to give my dog one command for him to respond properly. I don’t have to tell my dogs to “sit” multiple times. I do not have to, nor do I, chatter “stay… stay… stay…” to my dogs to get them to stay. I do not have to tell him “jump jump jump!” So why should I have to tell Payton “Touch, touch, touch” on the agility course? One should be enough.
But the reality is that so far, one has NOT been enough. I also will happily tell my dogs “tunnel tunnel tunnel!!” to really drive and send them to a tunnel. The other part of me doesn’t care about this, remembering an article in Clean Run written by Silvia Trkman about how she talks a lot to her dogs and repeats commands like “tunnel tunnel tunnel.” So why, exactly, should “touch” be any different than “tunnel?” If I say “tunnel tunnel tunnel” to encourage them to drive forward into a tunnel, “touch touch touch” should encourage drive down to the contact. And with only a very small amount of data (three days this weekend), it appears multiple commands to Payton WILL get him into his position. It’s not like I’m trying to be on the World Team or anything anyway, I’m just trying to enjoy a sport with my dog, and if giving him multiple commands is the difference between an NQ and frustration and a Q and success, why shouldn’t I?
So that’s where things stand with Payton at the moment. Still work to do on the contacts and some challenges with weave poles. I will fully admit that excepting the weave poles and some weird table issues, most problems from this weekend were 100% my fault (resulting from bad handling position or one time I set him up too close to the start jump), and there were also things that looked really, really good, and should make me very proud of my young baby dog. I am confident we’ll eventually get there as a team, it’s just going to take time. I still haven’t learned that Payton is not Auggie and I cannot run Payton just like Auggie. There’s a lot of physical muscle memory stuff going on that I need to break from four years of running Auggie and less than a year of running Payton. It will happen, and once it does, I believe we will be beautiful. At this point you can cue Georgie Harrison and start singing “It’s gonna take money, a whole lotta spending money, it’s gonna take plenty of money, to do it right child. It’s gonna take time, a whole lotta precious time, it’s gonna take patience and time to do it, to do it, to do it, to do it, to do it, to do it right child.” YEP.
HOWEVER.
The real exciting moment of this weekend is that Georgie had some phenomenal runs of her own. After picking up the first Open Q in jumpers at our last trial, she followed up her performance by snagging a jumpers Q on Saturday, missing one on Sunday by one refusal, and then grabbing her third and final OAJ leg on Monday. So the baby girly has now blown past her best friend Payton and has her OAJ. She also was one refusal away from her first standard leg on Monday. She’s a very good dog and everybody had great things to say about her. A nice, steady dog. In my head I imagine she’s out on the course singing to Payton “Anything you can do, I can do better!” So in honor of the great little girly, here’s the video of all three of her OAJ qualifying legs:
So big congrats to Georgie! Now she gets to start chasing Excellent legs. She really only needs to get a few kinks ironed out with her weave poles and a few other baby dog things, and otherwise I think she’s going to be quite phenomenal.
So that was our long weekend, some ups and downs, plenty of alcohol was had by me, but overall, I remembered that even a bad weekend at agility is better than a good day at work. Fun was had by all. I’m pretty sure bad baby Pay had the most fun of the whole crew.
Payton’s Third Birthday
My little baby dog is no longer little, nor a baby. But he is still a dog. That’s about it. Today he turned three years old. The ideal would have been a nice long hike, just the two of us, and then a swim in the lake, but being Illinois is May, it’s currently about 43 degrees outside and raining, so that is not a thing that was going to happen today. Instead we went out to Pet Supplies Plus to redeem his birthday coupon on a bag of treats, then drove around town for a bit together, came back home where I made chicken thighs and gave him the cartilage and joints I cut off them, then we had PARTY.
But first. Yesterday I went to a few stores in town looking for some suitable party hats. I wanted football ones but couldn’t find any. I continued searching today, even willing to take plain blue ones (P’s colour) or green (I could paint them with some white and make it look like a football field.) NO SUCH LUCK. In my desperation I googled “DIY party hats.”
And this is what the crazy dog lady does for her dog’s birthday.
Not exactly orange and navy blue for perfect Bears colours, but it works.
Huzzah, group photo!
I made the football cupcake pick too, because I was going to buy some at the party store but the line was almost to the door… and I went there twice. WHAT. NO. WHAT ARE YOU ALL BUYING PARTY SUPPLIES FOR. MY DOG IS THREE AND HIS BIRTHDAY IS FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING. GET OUT OF MY WAY. So I left the cupcake picks at the store and just made that.
My mom took a bunch of blurry photos from a weird angle so I told her “Get down at his level.” This is apparently what she thought I meant. *facepalm* I’m going to have to start hiring a photographer for my dog’s birthdays because I can’t maneuver dogs AND take photos at the same time.
Cuppycakey for the birthday boy!!
Auggie is seriously the best boy. He wore his hat patiently, sat nicely, then happily devoured his cupcake.
I had half the cupcake in my hand to give to Pepper… and she chose to first eat the half still in the paper instead of just taking the half I had RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER NOSE. Ohhhh Pepper.
Georgie. My mom says to her “Georgie don’t be a shark. Or a gator. Or a pig. Or whatever.” It all fell on deaf ears.
Frosting face!
I don’t know WHAT happened to Pepper’s hat, it got crushed somehow while still attached to her head. But she looks happy, so!
And then we have Auggie. Oh Auggie. <3
P got a little blue sheep as his present, on top of the treats and the chicken parts and the cupcakes. Because we need more sheep toys in this house.
The end. Happy birthday baby Pay. Here's some baby Payton's in case you forgot:
That’s the bowl I later taught him to pivot on. Yep.
Trial weekend for Baby Dogs
Louisville is in the books, my fourth half-marathon is done, and it’s finally time to start moving forward with more training and other trials. So we did! This weekend we trekked our way to Indianapolis to take another crack at some Open Qs.
On Saturday, Payton’s standard run was rather typical for him as of late, completely blown contacts and apparently having no idea what weave poles are. Georgie came out next and had a better run; she got a refusal on the chute and then popped her weave poles at #10, but otherwise had a really nice run. Jumpers was a challenging course; we watched the Excellent/Masters dogs run first and there was a series of jumps in the middle that were causing a lot of dogs to go off-course. Just our luck, that same series of jumps stayed put for the course change down to Open. Payton got to take a crack at it first, and surprisingly, his only issue was (again) crappy weave pole performance. He otherwise navigated the course nicely without biting on any of the off-courses that were bombing a lot of more advanced, talented dogs. While it was frustrating to know he would have had that course if not for this annoying trial weave issue, I walked away from the course reminding myself he WAS successful in a way many other dogs had not managed to be.
Georgie got to come out next. Georgie is the one who is more likely to take off-courses, so this was a fair concern with her. But she navigated the course just fine! Even better – she got all of her weave poles! Baby Georgie snags the VERY FIRST open Q out of both young dogs. Way to go Georgie!!
Sunday we were a little delayed in getting checked out of our hotel, and as a result we ended up getting to the trial site just a couple minutes too late for my walkthrough. Even worse, Payton was the third dog in the ring for Open Jumpers. I didn’t have much time to do anything except watch a couple people ahead of me run their dogs. I watched a guy I know run his young portie and decided I was going to steal his handling maneuvers, even though it wasn’t how I would have normally handled the course, because I didn’t really have any other options to choose how to handle it at that point in time. So out I went with Payton. Our first challenge was a tunnel where the correct entry was about as likely as the wrong entry – he got the correct entry. Away we went around the rest of the course, looping back to the weave poles… and he got his entry. AND he got all twelve of them. Holy cow! So he DOES know how to weave, right? At that point it was just making sure I didn’t screw up my handling and make him drop a bar or pull off a jump… and he did it. Big Bad Baby Dog got HIS very Open Q.
Miss Georgie didn’t have such a great run, as I let her get out a little to angle her to the correct tunnel entry and she ended up taking the jump ahead of her instead of taking the tunnel. But otherwise she had a nice run and did a good job.
Standard was another mess for Payton; at one point I remember clearly thinking to myself “He is WAY too amped up right now.” He blew all his contacts spectacularly, and the lovely weaves from that morning were non-existent. Well, at least he’s consistently inconsistent.
Georgie’s standard run was pretty identical to Saturday; her contacts were certainly better than Payton’s. She did get a refusal on the tunnel, then a second at the weaves, and then did a peculiar new thing of popping out of the weaves at the last pole rather than skipping the last two as is her normal bad-weaves habit. So no Q for either puppy in the afternoon.
Overall it wasn’t a horrible weekend; some good things happened for both dogs. Georgie went the entire weekend without visiting anyone in the ring. Payton’s Saturday JWW run was quite nice even though he didn’t get his weaves. And both came home with their first Open Qs. My Q rate for the entire weekend was 2/8, but still, good things did happen.
Baby steps with the baby dogs… baby steps. Baby dogs.
I did get video of all the runs, but the only video I’ve bothered editing and uploading is Payton’s clean run Q in JWW. Not the smoothest, given I didn’t have a chance to walk it, but an ugly Q still counts as a Q.
Sheltie Easter 2014
I realize it’s like two weeks late.
I had a horrible migraine that day – not the worst of my life, but the second worst of my life. I was heavily medicated and did pretty much nothing all day long. I forgot my Easter stuff at my house (silly me though last year “surely by next Easter we will be moved in!” and took it all over there, and I meant to bring it back on Saturday when we were done working… but I forgot it in the garage.) so I didn’t have their eggs or baskets either.
My mom ran out to the store to buy some more meds for me and found a pack of eggs for cheap there, so she brought them home so the dogs could still hunt eggs. First, we did a hunt inside where she hid all six eggs, then one at a time we let each dog find the eggs. But the lighting in this house is awful and I was still laying on the couch just watching, so no photos of that. But a few hours later, I was FINALLY feeling better, so we went outside. I didn’t really “hide” them so much as just set them down around the front of the yard, so this is officially The Worst Sheltie Easter Ever.
But I did get pics!
The shelties… one egg.
Payton manages to escape with this one.
Cookie inside!
Auggie and Pepper.
Pepper sorta kinda got into it this year since she had time to find eggs all by herself without the other dogs… but she still was like “I found one!” and then basically just sat there with it hahaha.
She wasn’t even motivated to find other cookies… maybe she thought the egg would spontaneously produce more cookies?
Auggie finding more.
Open, eat the cookie…
…find the next egg.
Auggie doesn’t play around.
Meanwhile this was happening… Payton kept running around with an egg and Georgie trying to steal it from him… NOT THE GAME, PUPPIES.
Pepper, by the way, is in the back not grabbing at an egg, but just grabbing at the ground. Because… Pepper. And meanwhile Auggie is looking around for anything still unopened.
A derp-derp!
Yeah… that’s Payton.
That’s all… not a lot. Better ones next year hopefully!
Payton’s ZUMI Lead
Baby Payton has needed a nice agility lead for a while. Since I named him after Walter Payton, I really wanted an orange & navy blue one. After searching the internet, I couldn’t find one.
Enter ZUMI Leads. Who added an orange and blue rope to their line-up.
It had to happen. It HAD to happen. Since I like martingales on my guys, I e-mailed asking if it would be possible to custom make a martingale. They were happy to make a custom lead for me so Payton could run around agility trials in a martingale.
It arrived earlier this week and I couldn’t be happier.
The lighting tonight makes the blue look lighter than it is in real life. It truly is a nice orange and navy blue. The perfect Chicago Bears lead for my Payton.
This photo actually has more accurate colors:
The rope itself is amazing, it feels so soft. I had to show it off to my mom who was also amazed at how soft it felt. LIKE BUTTER.
Can’t wait to take it to agility to start using! Our first trial of the year is coming up in early March, and then after a short week we’re off to Louisville!
