Cynthia – Page 2

Maybe Puppy Time

Well… perhaps. I’ve been quite saddened lately since we lost Lucy last August, and Angel the May before. And Levi is 12, and he’s going downhill, unfortunately. So I kinda feel like I’m running out of collies.

The original plan was to get another Danish-Swedish Farmdog next year, before or after I retire. But I’ve actually been talking to a quite wonderful collie breeder (who will remain nameless for the time being) who is breeding this year. I’m still looking around a bit, though, so nothing is in stone. But I would love to have a drivey collie to do sports with. Agility and obedience mainly. Tracking, Herding, Flyball, if possible.

I hope the Danish-Swedish Farmdog breeders will still consider me in the future, since I do want another. Probably in 2014 now. I do want to get another DSF while Jet is still young. He loves to play with the small dogs we meet.

So perhaps a collie puppy will join our house this year. I am looking forward to it. It may not work out, but you just never know. My wish would be to get a blue-headed white collie. White collies are beautiful, and very healthy. There are unhealthy white collies but they have two merle genes and can be born deaf and blind. A healthy white collie has two copies of the white gene, which are separate from the merle gene. But I may end up with a blue or a tri. It all depends on what is born and who is right for me. I do want another smooth. I just don’t like all the hair!

So we may get back up to six dogs before we go down to five again. Loosing Levi will hurt very, very much.

Jet is almost three. Tatum is almost six. Muffit is about 7 and Chase is 8.5. So really I’d be okay taking another puppy training on. Chase may have another year left, but perhaps not much more than that. Muffit I don’t train, he’s my husband’s hiking dog. Tatum I train only occasionally. Jet is my main training and competing dog. So adding another dog for competition would be just fine.

I’d show a collie in conformation, too. Why not. Done it before, and I do love that Levi has his championship. So I will need to retire… because I have to much I want to do!

Don’t Hate Me Because I Q

Usually the saying is Don’t Hate Be Because I’m Beautiful… but I really don’t know how well that applies to me. Probably not much. It applies to Jet, though, but then again he’s kinda more cute than beautiful. But anyway, I had a blast at agility last weekend. It was 3 days. The first day I crashed and burned. Got lost on the standard course. Didn’t pull Jet around to where I should have so he took a couple of off courses. But he was great. He did miss his weave entry but I just didn’t set it up right. So it was my fault. He also popped his weaves in that first standard run but he was off because he entered wrong. On the JWW course he also popped his weaves so no Q there either. And of course I tend to get nervous since Levi had such nasty weave problems his whole career.

But Saturday we kicked it into gear and kicked but and got Jet’s 4th Double Q. He also Qualified in Time to Beat which was fun. Sunday again we had a blast and got Jet’s Fifth QQ. And isn’t QQ just fun as heck to type! I think so! 🙂 QQ QQ QQ QQ QQ… Hey I can do that, it’s the first QQs, I’ve ever had IN MY LIFE after 8 years of agility so *happy dances*.

Jet’s first agility trial was February 2011. So to start in Novice then and come out 365 days later with Five Double Qs and 114 Speed Points, I just cannot be happier!

Here’s some of his runs.

I didn’t get them all on video but that’s okay. Getting any at all is just fun. I just adore running him, Q or no Q. He’s not super fast, he took 4th place 3 out of the 4 runs… took 1st place only one run where the super fast dogs didn’t Q. But that’s fine with me. I am not into placements, I’m into QQs!

Here’s one of Tatum’s runs. She did great in her JWW run but this Standard run she kinda pooped out again. She was only entered on Saturday.

Dang now back to work. And it appears theme on my blog broke so I had to rebuild it a little bit but I don’t have time to find a new theme right now, so just doing with this old one for a bit. Maybe to fix my darn blog I need some web conferencing services or something. Dangit I hate it when I log in and it’s just a blank screen. Don’t do that to me!

Pictures from the Park

Just some fun pictures from when we went to the dog park last weekend. I love the park after a fresh snow, when the sky is perfectly blue. I love that color of blue.

Only Tatum and Jet went. I’m still not taking Levi. I don’t know, his park days may be over… we’ll see. But every day he seems a little bit worse. His poor old body just can’t repair itself anymore. Makes me very, very sad.

Why not take Muffit or Chase? Well, Chase isn’t dog friendly at all. He’s actually pretty dog aggressive. And Muffit goes hiking with my husband so much, that I don’t take him out myself. He’s my husband’s hiking companion. 🙂

A Levi Update

Well Levi seems to be doing okay. I watch him like a hawk, I’m sure I’m super paranoid. I haven’t taken him to the park in a couple of weeks. The last time he went, it really went slow, and I think it took him a day or two to recover. He wasn’t in a lot of pain, but he was tired. So we’ve been sticking to walks around the block. He’ll go about 3/4 of a mile before he starts walking behind me and loosing his oomph. I try to take him about three times a week.

He’s going to K9 Nosework Class again at our local training center, Calling All Dogs. He just loves it. I was worried about his first class, wondering if he’d hurt the next day. And if he did, I would have taken Jet or Tatum instead. But no sign of Levi hurting the next day, so I’ll take him back again. He does love it, and I really want to spend time with my old 12 year old boy.

He practically needs a medication cart for all the supplements he’s on. But I think they are helping. And the acupuncture helps too. So he’s rather expensive for us now, but he’s worth every penny. The last three or four days he’s been grumpier at the other dogs. And I think it’s because he’s feeling better. I guess it could be because he’s feeling worse, but usually he’s grumpy when he feels good, so who knows. 🙂

He’s my boy, and I’m glad he’s doing okay.

Going for Non-Reg Obedience

Well, I’m going to do it. We have a three day AKC obedience trial the end of March. I’m not going to do all three days, since I have to work Friday, and I’m taking off most of that week already for a Denise Fenzi seminar in Colorado Springs. But anyway… my obedience instructor reminded me of the new non-reg obedience classes, especially Graduate Open. And so… I entered Chase on Saturday and Sunday. I’m nervous! It’s all like Utility but a bit simplified. I hope he can do it all. His weakest things are signals from far away without verbals (Grad Open allows verbals and is closer). He’s also fairly iffy at go-outs, but the go-outs are from between the jumps, not clear across the ring. I don’t trust his directed jumping yet, he can blow me off like he did in agility, so we’ll see about that. And I’m not sure about his articles… but he’s getting better.

Dang, that’s a lot to be unsure about. LOL. I go back and forth from day to day thinking he’ll get it, to he won’t get it. I guess going in the ring is the test. It’ll be kinda fun, I think. And why the heck not. 🙂

I’m putting Jet in Beginner Novice. Which is all on leash, so I think he’ll be okay. Though I still think he’ll get nervous and I don’t know what to really do about that. I’ve been working on keeping him happy and playing games, but the ring… well, we have an ASCA obedience trial in Feb and I can get him in Rent A Ring again, so hopefully that’ll help. It’s at the same time as agility so that’ll be interesting to see how he does.

So anyway, that’s the plan for March obedience wise. I hope I can relax when I go. Maybe I need to look up the best ebook reader so I can sit and read in between. I love to read, it really does help me relax.