A new face

was given a wonderful gift recently. . a new puppy.

Yeah, I know, i need a new puppy like I need a hole in my head :) but this puppy will fill a hole in my life right now.

I have 6 dogs. . .none of them have any inkling of wanting to be an Obedience/rally/agility dog. .Touchet is too old at 12.5, Dei I will only allow low level agility equipment, but no jumps, because she's 10.5, Grins has a nano second brain and has never learned how to do jumps, he barrels thru them, Secret. .Secret is a princess, she gives orders, she doesn't take them LOL. Ziva is currently a spaz and Bella is a Princess in training. . .I've tried all the younger dogs on the agility equipment, and none of them seemed keen on it, so I was holding out in hopes that a Secret puppy would have the 'zest' and desire to work for me, especially agility.

My friend commented they kept finding one of her puppies on top of a dog house, an adult Borzoi sized dog house, since she was 3 months old. .told her if she was interested in the bunny, I wanted her. I took the lure toy out and put food down, and the pups all mobbed the food bowls, started shaking the bunny, and bam, here comes Ms Goat herself(with her lovely brindle brother on her heels). Yep, she was keen, she wanted the bunny more than she wanted her dinner!

Took her out of the yard, and put her on the dog walk, bounce bounce bounce, happily trotting across the dog walk at 5.5 months old. . yep, I was really thinking of takign this puppy

Bounce working the real dog walk

Took her out with me this weekend to a racemeet, and to my surprise, there was agility equipment set up.. now Dei always got stressed and wouldn't work out for me in strange places, so before we ran I took her over, boing boing boing, over the dog walk, not once, not twice, but three times by the end of the day.

Walk on the way up the teeter

Took her to the teeter. . this she wasn't as sure of, but by the end of the day, I got her to do it, with me holding her harness, twice! I was so pleased. I then took her over to stand at the box, and although she jumped when it opened, she wanted to take off with the salukis, not much bothered by the LVCC's box at all. And everyone loved her. . .a few wanted to steal her :) So, introducing my agility hopeful: Bounce!Have no clue how to start a puppy, but we're goign to have fun!

Tired bounce after the end of a long day

So, introducing my agility hopeful: Bounce!Have no clue how to start a puppy, but we're goign to have fun!
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Hiking with dogs

Yesterday I decided I wanted to go for a nice hike with my dogs. I used to hike all the time in Germany. My best friends & I used to walk everywhere, and I miss it. . so, I grabbed the great bag that was for Meet winners at the LGRA/NOTRA nationals(They had a bunch of extras, so I was given one as the handler of FOcus as well as the one which came home to Bonnie), packed it with 6 20 oz bottles of water(three frozen), and one 33 oz, a water bowl, and some snacks for me, put my Camera in a zip log bag(in case it rained), my license & Iphone in another(IN case something happened!) grabbed Aurora & Secret and left at 8:30.



Our hiking place of choice was the Torrey C Brown Rail Trail Beautiful trail, mostly shaded by trees, lots of neat things to see and watch like the geese above.



As well as beautiful scenery like the gorgeous lily above. I love day lillies, even the tiger lilly, and that picture came out quite well if I may say so myself.



And if you payed really close attention, sometimes you'll find something really neat, like this bird, We THINK it's a Great Blue Heron. I thought at first it was a funny looking log. The tree he's on was across the river, so no way to get really close, so I pulled out the camera and zoomed in and took pictures from three different angles. I love these type of birds(herons, Cranes, etc), so was very pleased to see this on my walk! Unfortunately, tho my camera is a decent one, the quality of pics when I zoom in as much as I did isn't great, but it's still a rather neat photo!



Secret loves hiking in areas like this, she is constantly on hunt for fun things to chase. I would love to be able to take her out OFC because of how keen she is on game. We literally had a squirrely jump out underneath her nose and I had to drag her fuzzy butt away LOL I'm not exactly sure what caught her attention in the woods to bring up the radar ears above. She is my gamiest on live game dog, but so gentle with little dogs and cats, I love it.

The biggest problem were the rude bikers, but most of the bikers were wonderful. We'd be walking and I'd hear "On your left", I'd pull the girls in, and they'd go by, slowly so as not to scare the dogs. THe rude ones would just run up on our butts and zip by. Granted, by the end of the day, the two girls were pretty blaise about it, but at the beginning, Aurora was rather put out by the idiots flying by.



It was a great walk for Aurora, who hadn't seen strollers before. She learned quickly that Strollers meant kids, and she LOVES kids. She met this little boy going up and coming down, and had him giggling licking his face like crazy. She got to the point she'd see a stroller and get all excited, so she was in for a HUGE surprise when the last stroller she saw had a dachshund in it LOL

The weather wasn't horrendous, was 77, but the humidity was decently high that along our 7 mile trek, I stopped 5 times to offer the dogs water. It was pissing me off to see people out biking their dogs, no water on the bike for the dogs, in weather that was making me sweat at a fast walk, let alone if I was forced to trot.I made sure to thank the one walker I saw who had this neat vest contraption on her great dane that carried her dog's water. She agreed with me about the stupidity of people. A very sweet small dane and I really need to find that vest, as I told the dogs they should be carrying their own water instead of me LOL

If you're going to walk with dogs in the summer, you need to take LOTS of water, I carried quite a few lbs on my shoulders, to make sure they were covered.

Lots of wonderful compliments on my girls, even by people who didn't slow down, but were nice enough to tell me how beautiful they were. I'm so glad I didn't wear my headset like I normally do. I wear it to walk in beat with the fast music I have labeled just for our walks, but it was a very nice experience

I had hoped to make it a longer hike, but I am not in shape and my bad knee started aching, thankfully it was just an ache, not a throb. It has been amazingly good recently, and so I took the walk without the brace .. well, I also didnt' want to deal with the disgusting feeling of sweaty knee under that brace! It also was getting a bit too humid. Next time, we'll get up earlier and go, as the girls seemed to enjoy. .we may go back tomorrow(Well, Secret & I, and someone else :)) depending on how I feel. By the time it was all said and done, we hiked 7 miles, not bad, heart rate monitor says that's 1200 calories!

Got about a mile from the car, it started sprinkling, had a small training session with the lady with the dachshund. Her 11 yr old male was the one in the stroller and being good, the younger one was on leash barking, snarling and lunging at my zoi, who were ignoring him. She picked him up and was soothing him, so I gave her some hints on what to do and not to(which includes picking him up and helping his napolean complex). Hopefully it'll help the next time he sees big dogs


So all and all, a nice morning, went shopping at petsmart, picked up some new beds which were already on sale, then I got an additional 15% off, then came home and took a nap :)

A month like a roller coaster: can I get off now?

What a month, good and bad, up and down, just like a roller coaster at 6 Flag. . and one I'd've rather not've gone on

Friday, 5/13, wow, just got that when looking for the date, makes sense for how horrid this weekend started. I took Treasure to a cat specialist vet, who after examination, looking at his xrays, the blood work, and examing him, gave me a totally different diagnosis, and worse than Cancer.




At least with cancer chemo, or surgery can or MAY help, but not with Feline Infectious Peritonitis. .. that's a death sentence. . .incurable, so much unknown about this horrid diseaseshe drew 700cc's of fluid off Treasure's belly and he still was filled with this crap. . .I left him in her hands, with fear, as I lost Pandora last year when I boarded her when she wasn't feeling well. .. and I should've gone with my gut feeling, as he passed away Saturday night. . .if he hadn't been so bright eyed and talking with me Friday, I wouldn't've left him, but I didn't think he'd leave me so quick. . OTOH, not sure I could’ve handled him passing away on me in the hotel room and having had to figure out what to do with his little body or even waking up to him dead on my bed, so not sure which way was better, but it put a huge damper on the entire weekend. . .this new vet was very sweet and tried to comfort me, but nothing comforts me. He was my pillow buddy. He came into my life when I lost my Schatzi, thus his name Treasure the memories. . one of the meanings of Schatzi is treasure. .. and I was so hoping I'd have him at least as long as I had Schatzi(12 yrs), but it was only 8 years ago that I brought him home. And after the finally diagnosis, I was hoping to be able to cuddle him one last day, but it wasn't meant to be.

They just don't live long enough

Boy did this just put a whole barrel of ice water over the weekend. . .first vacation I'd had since last May, and i couldn't even really enjoy it. . .just like my LAST vacation!

But, I'm ahead of myself.

So, after dropping him off I packed the van with 7 dogs: Ziva, Jenny, Nacht, Focus, Wizard & Logan(RR) and then the brat, err secret, cuz I know she'd've driven everyone nuts all weekend. She's not a good house dog if i'm not in the house(paces), and is a PITA in the backyard at my ETA. .. yes, brat. Drove down to the field, staked out an area with my xpen and ez-up, and headed to the hotel.

Little did I know that the hotel I chose, I had to cross a ferry to get to. . .EEKS. . .it's not open all day, it closes sometime in the evening and doesn't open til 5. .but would they cross with just one vehicle on it? Unsure, and not wanting to get stuck there if they wouldn't, I had to map out a new path, chose a different hotel for Saturday, and tried to sleep. Ziva & Secret enjoyed the hotel room rights with both of them being good girls. Was in bed at like 10:30-11.

Couldn't sleep, tossed and turned, looked at the clock so many damn times, afraid of sleeping thru the alarm(roll call was 5:30 for those helping), saw it was 3, knew I had 45 minutes of sleep, and fell back asleep, next time I woke up, I glanced at the clock, it was 4:20, EEKS!!!!!! I had set the alarm for 3:45 pm, not AM. .. slammed everything into the van and took off. Got lost because the GPS kept trying to take me back to the damn ferry. . .not a good way to start the morning.

Got the kids roll called, found the RR's handler for the day, and went back to finish setting up. .

Thankfully they had made sure to put Borzoi 1st in the running order, so we were on almost as soon as we started. I'm so thankful for the extra hands that were around(Sally marciszewski, CHuck Grabosky, Steph Parkers darling hubby, Chuck's father in law, Frances Burnes), since I was running 4 of the 6 opens(my three and Bonnie's girl) and thankfully only one of the 20 FChs!! LOl

The field was a challenging one, definitely showcased the dogs who had enduranced, very hilly, parts that you had to step out further on the field to see if you were short like me :) A number of dogs took tumbles with the 'ditches'. Jenny came back with her blanket wet, so I know she did, but didn't see it because of where she fell. Some amazing runs were ran. Some of the dogs took the scenic route over the hay bales, which was just so neat to watch. Soon as we were done, it was walk the dogs out, and head back to the field to do my huntmastering job for salukis.

Got done there, grabbed something to eat, and went to find friends terri & Susan, watched a few of the greyhound runs, and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

By the end of the day, all the walking made my knee hurt. . .I happened to've parked in BFE. I packed up everything but the EZup and the xpen, and went to move the van closer to awards so I could get on the road ASAP and not walk back and forth

Now, it hadn't rained all day, but the ground was soft. .. and it proved too soft for my cargo sized van, and when I threw the van in reverse, tires started spinning. Damnit.

Turned the wheel and tried to drive ahead a bit and throw it in reverse on fresh turf, same thing. Got out, but unfortunately the people who had parked next to me had really tied their xpen down, so no way I could just pull thru and keep going.

So, I went looking for Dean wright, who rounded up a bunch of men, and with their help pushing it, I backed that SOB up and out, and kept going til I was on asphalt, not wanting to park it anywhere it could get stuck again.

End of day results was Wizard won his flyte of 10, then best FCH(40 points), Jenny, Ziva, Nacht went 2,3,4th,(18, 12, 6 points) with Jenny & Nacht winning breeder stake. Mr Logan placed 4th in open for his mama(think she said there were 7 opens)

Headed back to the hotel, got there, asked for a 1st floor room as close to the parking area as possible because my knee was killng me. In fact, stepped out of the van and it gave out. They set me up, backed my van into a parking spot as close to the room as I could get, and went to my room, and my brain went WTF????

It took me a minute to process that the room was filthy, garbage on the dresser, bed not made, it hadn't been cleaned. Went back up front, walking, cuz I am not comfy backing that thing in and out, and was hoping that they'd set me up close to wehre I'd parked to make life easier on me. They apologized profusely, gave me another room, unfortunately, this one was not as easy to get to, had to traipse quite a bit to it, yeah, on the 1st floor, but the inner courtyard area, with no convenient parking.

Then, the dogs all went on strike, refusing to potty on leash, the youngsters all wanted to play and run: WTH? Didn't they realise they had ran their little butts off earlier???? Fed them, settled them down for the night, took Jenny & Secret back to the hotel room, with visions of a nice, long, hot as I could get it, bath in my head.

My vision was not to be, Jenny nor Secret would settle down and be good beddogs, so crawled into bed after I wasn't able to connect to the internet I paid for, and went to bed.

Up early once again and headed out, parked on a different area, downhill, and with Dean's help, got my Xpen & EZ up over to the van. And then the day began.

This field was challenging in a different way. With a lot of dips and hills, the bunny was out of sight for quite a bit of the course, and if the dogs zigged left and the bunny right, they could easily get unsighted. Numerous dogs throughout the day came back to their handlers after losing sight of the bunny.

After Prelims, I was waiting to huntmaster, when I got the call from the vet, letting me know my little man had passed away over night. Up until that point, it had been a wonderful, fun weekend with great old friends and making new friends.

I tried to put that aside to finish out the day, was hard. . .my animals are my family, and Treasure had a special spot in my heart. .. watching my girls run helped, especially silly Jenny. She started coming in on the bunny hard, sliding in to home, under the line, grabbing the bunny, reminding me in so many ways of her Uncle Obie & Daddy Grins. I was very pleased with my girls runs and Wizard as usual for me, ran really well. When the finals came in, it was Wizard 1st of 19 in FCh, Jenny 1st of 5 in Open, and a lovely bitch named Tory in Veterans. After the dust settled for the BOB runoff, Jenny was the breed winner for the day.

Jenny flying

Tho I didn't think she had a snowball's chance in hell of winning, I ran her for Best in Event. .I don't know if she'll ever get a chance, so WTH right? I was very pleased with her run, but could definitely see she was not in the shape the others were in. Considering she was just two weeks or so post season(Hell, all of them but Ziva were!), I was very happy with her run.

I put her up and watched the rest of the runs, and there were some awesome ones. The basenji Searsha able to keep up with her longer legged running mates, Sammy the black greyhounds beautiful course with his nice running stakemates, and even a really amazing run of Deerhounds.

End of Sunday resulted in Jenny BOB(40 points), Wizard 1st(40) points, Ziva 2nd(15 points), Focus 3rd(10 points), Nacht 4th(5 points), Wizard & FOcus winning Bonnie the breeder stake, and Jenny coming home with the awesome pyrun trophy :)

Didn't make up for a crappy day Sunday, but it made it slightly better.

Went out to dinner with a great group of people including Katie Kaltenborn & Shirri Peake, before heading home to crash.

The fields were gorgeous, the weather almost perfect, the field committee did a great job with the battery operated water sprayer, and the competitors for Borzoi as well as those I huntmastered for were WONDERFUL!! Saw some great runs and was in the perfect position especially Sunday to be able to enjoy them. Got to see some dogs run that I hadn't seen before and it was overall, a nice weekend barring Treasure's loss.

Jenny is getting better and better every run. . .the next time out was LGRA, and she won two meets over Focus, who has only ever been defeated by two dogs: Doro, and Gossip. .she would OCCASIONALLY eek out a race win, but never ever beat Gossip for the meet win, so I really am looking forward to this fall once she & Focus are over their post season slump.

longest 24 hrs ever

I have so many blogs started, just haven't finished them and posted them. .

Last week I endured 24 hrs of HELL. . .the longest 24 hrs ever.

Nacht needed 6 points going into the weekend. .unfortunately there's no other ASFA until the end of June, and I'm hoping she's in Europe by then. . who knows, been hoping she'd be in Europe for awhile. . .unfortunately there was a conflict, with LGRA put on by my friends. I felt obligated to support them, since they were in the front field. . .and was just going to not worry about the ASFA, and hope it was cool enough in June to run and that she'd be here.

A friend said they were going, and after thinking about it a bit, she had liked him and been very outgoing and friendly with him the last time she'd seen him, had let others slip and catch her, I didn't think anything of there being problems when i asked if he minded running her.

Unfortunately when I handed her off, even tho I thought I had packed everything, her brain stayed home. Her teenage hormones were taking up all the brain space. . (she was in season in April)

Now, she ran Saturday at LGRA, was fine with all sorts of people handling her, walking away, boxing her, etc, etc. . .so she MUST'VE had her brain then, but somewhere between Saturday evening and Sunday morning,she misplaced it. Maybe Gibbs borrowed it for the day, but I have never had a bitch become such a complete nincompoop during her 'slump' as Nacht did Sunday. . .and things that hadn't bothered her before then did, tho getting attacked by a basenji probably didn't start her day off(thankfully the bad dog came away with only tail feathers). I don't know exactly what happened, was told she acted spooked that day, and suddenly I had a missing dog. . .

ANd thus starts the worse 24 hrs EVER.

I wasn't there to see what happened after she decided to play keep away coming in for BOB, been told conflicting stories, so not going there. . what all stories agreedupon was she got away thru a gape in the fence.

I got the call on the way there, and that trip, which normally takes about an hour, felt like it took 3. . .when we got there, they showed us where she had disappeared into. A heavy thatch of overgrown woods in the middle of farmland. . not a huge batch of woods, a couple of acres with house and a paddock of whitetail deer. They'd already talked to the landowner, and so I went traipsing thru the woods.

Four hours of here puppy puppy puppy. . .stopping to sit in the AC for a bit and rehydrate and then go out again, my friends drove around, talked to people, gave out numbers, while I walked the woods. Wanted to make sure someone was on the outside in case she went out hte back or sides. . .

Four hours, not a sign of her, mind you, she was wearing her pink blanket, but not a sign, tripping over dead wood, vines, getting attacked by wild rose and berry bush thorns, brushing against who knows what?

Oh yeah, did I mention I was in shorts? I am so glad I started to wear tennies to events since I hurt my knee, more support. . so I at least had them on and not my crocs of last year. . .I left Sunday looking like a survivor of a battle of cats. . .and praying I hadn't walked into poison ivy. Unfortunately, I think I did.

We decided that she probably was collapsed somewhere in that mess. It was somewhere around 90 with high humidity, and she had on a heavy black fur coat. . .needing fliers to hand out, and unable to do much more as walking that area in the dark was a leg breaking opportunity, we headed home.

Got her microchip registered and went to findtoto.com.

This is a WONDERFUL website. You put the zipcode of the area the dog was lost in, and pick an option from 250 calls to 10000 neighbors to call in that area, and an automated phone will call everyone in that area they can get hold of and leave them a message with a description of the dog, your number, and other pertinant information. It is a wonderful tool, ended up being unneeded, but I know it has helped others bring their dogs back home.

Homeagain gives you a flyer and Bonnie ran that to kinkos as I was so exhausted and stressed I was dead on my feet and sick to my stomach. . part of that was probably I hadn't eaten anything since 11 that morning. . tried to sleep, didnt' happen, up early with plans to brush a bunch of dogs, take her bed and a bag of food over with the flyers and seed the area with food and hair into an empty paddock on the land owner's property when we get a call.

She was SPOTTED!! First sign of her since she'd slipped into the woods. Workers at a speedway about half a mile away from the woods, headed back towards the coursing fields, were trying to lure her in with water. I was ready to jump in the AC-less Neon but Jim convinced me to wait a few minutes until he got ready so we could go out in the Prius which has AC, glad I did, as by the end of the day we needed it. Less than 20 mins later on our way there, they called back to say she'd been caught.

When we got there and she saw me, she couldn't stop talking, moan moan moan moan, and then she went to Jim and did the same thing. Not sure if she was saying OMG You came back for me, or OMG, I promise NEVER EVER EVER to do that again. . .

Seems she stayed in the woods as far as we can tell all night Sunday, and then headed across the fields saturday morning. . the workers found her curled up under the ambulance with her coursign blanket tangled around her backlegs. Got her out of that and she took off to hide in the bathrooms which is where she was when my two friends who were at the field for the event got there.

She seems no worse for wear, not even her paws seem sore. She's started on metronidazole for giardia, just in case, and she enjoyed being a house dog for a week, making sure her stools are ok, as we had no idea what she may've eaten. She is now back in with her siblings.

Thank heavens it was really less than 24 hrs, she went missing about 1 pm Sunday, and was caught by 10 Monday. . but it was the longest 21 hours I've ever dealt with. . .other dogs I know of have been missing for anywhere from 4 days to never found again, or if found, dead on road, so I'm glad it was ONLY 21 hrs. . .but it was the most horrendous 21 hrs ever.

Putting her collar and leash on her put her brain back with her, cuz she was back to her normal self when we got out to thank people at the field. Didn't want to leave my side, but back to mooching people she wouldn't let touch her the day before. . evil child

She will not be going running for a few weeks, her coursing was crappy post season anyways, so it'll give her time to get over this slump and cement her brain back into her head.

THe adventure seemed to affect me longer than her, I had stomach upset for a few days, but we're both back to normal. . .silly little Nacht