Blow the girl down...

Yo Hoe, blow the girl down...Yo Hoe...

So we drove down to the dog show today - uneventful trip - until we arrived at the facility. We were meeting Emily and Jason so before we unpacked the stuff Jennifer and I made our way into the building. I led the way and walked to the nearest door. Opened the handle and was hit by hurricane force winds - as I was contemplating what to do next (while the skin on my face blew back to my ears) a trash can from inside the building flew over my head (Poopie diaper, banana peels and all) smacking into Jennifer's shin - like a bowling ball throw by an over-compensating homo sapien male. Fortuneatly she withstood the impact - as trash scattered all over the parking lot and the can itself bounced at cars. If not for Jennifer's very excellent linebacker skills the can surely would have smacked into my truck...my insurance company will be thankful. As this was unfolding in slow motion the gale force wind lifted me up and for a moment I was completely airborne - but only for a moment - crashing down on the pavement next to a spectacularly rotten apple core. I tried to get up but the wind kept puhing me down like a feather-weight against Mike Tyson (without the teeth). Fortuneatly some random site guy appeared and forced the door shut...with the brilliant observation that I could have deflated the building...gee thanks!

p.s. - Jennifer says that she's been through hurricane force winds and they were nothing like that...seriously it was VERY strong winds - no words to describe the force of that escaping air...

The rest of the afternoon and evening was uneventful. Teller remembered his job in the breed ring when Emily practiced with him - and he's all spiffy groomed up and ready to go for tomorrow...oh and I forgot my laptop - But Jennifer is letting me borrow hers :-)

Onward and bedtime...

Life in the deep freeze

It was -25 when I woke up this morning and -22 when I drove to work this morning...That's beyond cold - that's brutal.


The boys are a little bit stir crazy, I'm not far behind. Murphy is a weather wimp - goes outside and starts lifting paws up and making that really sad face. It's pathetic. Teller doesn't seem to mind the cold - never has. When he came home at 8 weeks we had a snap of negative 5 degrees and he blissfully galloped around in the snow. It's been below zero since Wednesday - Thursday was tough - not enough activities for the dogs, tonight - they were READY to go! Off to waggles we went for some obedience practice. Teller worked through an open routine and then a utility routine - one exercise at a time. Val came out too and gave me a lot of help with utility procedural stuff. Things that I was doing to "help" Teller that wasn't helping him - like my hand signal for go-outs - which I faded and he did his go-out anyway :-) When I faded the hand I did a weird chin thing on the go outs...(sigh). Worked out some footwork on the moving stand and signals exercises and worked the directed retrieve for the first time with Teller - Turns out that's not going to be an issue either...

It was nice to get an obedience practice in - we've been doing a lot of agility - and my guys have been having a blast - but it's nice to focus on the obedience stuff in a slightly more deliberate manner.

Week Six of my CGC class tomorrow morning, I'm a little bummed that I'll miss their test next week while we're in Queensbury, but I'll get a full report I'm sure.

Happy Birthday Teller-Woo!

Yesterday was Teller's birthday - we celebrated by playing some agility - One of Teller's very favorite things. He went to Pet Food Warehouse and picked out a toy - his choice was an AKC sea otter...which I thought was pretty random, but it was his birthday and his toy to choose. Today he went in for x-rays, nothing is wrong - he's fine. These were his OFA xrays, we'll send them off tomorrow. Anyhow, he took his otter to the vet with him today, apparently woke up with his otter. It was a good friend to him today...

Teller came home from the vet around noon - still visibly groggy - too wooish to lay down, too tired to sit without swaying...I eventually convinced him to come up on the couch and lay next to me - with the Otter of course...



As we were playing with Otter tonight (we're calling him Otty) I wondered what an otter sounded like - my parents have had otters in their yard, but I never heard one make noise. Apropos, an otter sounds a bit like a pissed off hungry baby woo...

I found the soundbite on the San Diego Zoo website and while I was on my random Internet search kick I read a bit about the average sea otter...when I got to this paragraph (below) it suddenly became clear why Teller picked the otter toy...

Party animals
Otters are very energetic and playful. You might say they love to party! They are intelligent and curious, and they are usually busy hunting, investigating, or playing with something. They like to throw and bounce things, wrestle, twirl, and chase their tails. They also play games of "tag" and chase each other, both in the water and on the ground. River otters seem to like sliding down mud banks or in the snow—they’ll do it over and over again!

From: http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-otter.html

Now if that isn't the epitome of a Woo I don't know what is!

Goals for 2009...

It was hard to write the 2008 review without looking forward...I really wanted to say that we had done X in 2008 and were going to work on Y in 2009. It was important to me to keep these two posts separate - part of it is the thinking process towards coming up with our goals - but the other part was that I just didn't want to taint 2008 with anything other than the cool things we did...But that was yesterday and last year. Now is the time to look forward.

I'd like to get Teller through his CDX this year. I think we'll likely start the season in novice - the collie club and the Hudson Valley show. Really try to perfect what we have there...Then maybe this summer bring him out in open. We've got some polishing to do in a few areas...We'll continue training the utility stuff - a little bit here and there...

This will be Teller's first season out in agility. I'm going to start him in preferred I think - and decide later whether or not to move him out of preferred at a later junction. I'd love to get Murphy's OA this year. I don't think we'll do a lot of trials though - we'll play it by ear. I love the Westfield grounds so we'll probably do some of those...

Tracking...I'd like to get both boys out there tracking. I think Teller will be a natural and I think Murphy will like it.

Hunting. I'd love to get Teller's WC and a JH leg or two this summer - we'll see if we have enough time to get it done...

Conformation: The bottom of my priorities for this year, we'll see what happens and how he does in the shows he's entered in...

Teller would love to do some more commercials and print ads...I'm really not sure how to get connected with reputable agents in this area..but if there's anyone out there that would like a dog to use in their campaigns - we're all ears!

Most of all I hope that we're having as much fun training in 2009 as we are right now! I think if I can achieve that goal the others will fall into place.