Who needs fall...

When you can skip right to winter? I'll take clear skies and snow over grey rain any day.

That's why I was able to get my butt out of bed at 7:00am on Sunday to go climb a mountain. That sounds more impressive than it was since the clocks had turned back that night but still - I climbed a *mountain* before noon.

It was my first time seeing this from the lookout on the way up.

Definitely cold already!


Even though they haven't been blogged about in a long time, nothing has changed with Abby and Ryan (that's probably why I haven't blogged in a long time).

They still go batshit crazy in the snow.

Abby still hates overly hairy dogs.

Ryan's still a sweet,

head-in-a-hole,

snow-eating doofus.

And they're both still total posers.


At ages 4 and 7 they still wrestle like puppies. I'm pretty sure they'll be 17 and 20 and still pulling the same moves on each other (because they'll live to at least 30, of course).


The Portuguese Water Dogs that joined us were smart and stayed out of it at first.

This is a poor choice, PWD, a poor choice.

There are no pictures from directly after this since I was pulling Abby off of said PWD.

In true Abby form she happily redirected onto her punching bag.

I felt bad for sweet RyRy so...

I threw some snow at him. He likes it.

Until he decides to pull the super fancy "180 degree air twist" using his less than accommodating sister as a launch pad.

Once she had told him off sufficiently she demanded to show off her very own fancy snow-catching moves.

Errrrr....

Still a bitch. Still adorable.

It's a Wrap

So you know what I didn't do all summer? Write a blog post, that's what. Or use my camera much. How about a summer summary by phone pictures?

Here we go in no particular order (because who wants a summary in order, right?)

Met Piper, world's cutest puppy (rescued from Oregon)

Made some freakin' amazing pizza from scratch

Took Loic on a boat ride (complete with the claw of safety)

Went surfing in Tofino and the wasp that gave me the gift of miracle thigh that wouldn't stop swelling completed our trip trifecta of concussion and SLR dropped in ocean (each of these wonderful things happened to different people)

It was actually a really fun trip - a bunch of us stayed in a cabin with a hot tub...(this doesn't have to do with either of those things, it's just a cool picture of the sky that I liked)

and Ryan came too! He had 8 willing ball throwers and slept for days when we got home.

Before Tofino we took a family trip to Kaui...but there are no phone pictures of that so it doesn't get an entry in here.

Oh and I turned old this summer and my coworker gave me a shake weight. If you don't know what that is, don't bother looking it up. There is a picture of that on my phone but it's too embarrassing to put on here.

Speaking of turning old, Jess and I learned that we are too old for Whistler bars that cater to Contiki tours and cover you with glow paint. Important summer lesson.

Oh and who could forget the unfortunate "blonde" highlight incident?
Stay away from beauty groupons if you want to learn from my mistake.

Loic and I went on some hikes.

Ryan and Kepler were forced into cuddling.

Abby flirted shamelessly with every intact male she met and they all fell for her (who could resist, really?)

And of course the summer wouldn't have been complete without some beach trips.

You never know

what you're going to get with Spring here.

Sunday was a beautiful, sunny day and we spent most of it (after an hour long awesome run/hike and then a walk to get a smoothie) lying in the yard doing absolutely nothing. It seemed like a good sign for summer weather to come...

I even got slightly sunburnt - and was excited about it!

This morning, though, it was like the sun had never even made an appearance. Back to grey skies and all day rain.

That's ok, though, we made the most of it. We went skijoring!

I borrowed the equipment from a friend, hooked both dogs up and hoped for the best. Not really how you'd go about it if you wanted to actually make a hobby of it but I just wanted to try it out for fun. Unfortunately there aren't any trails around here where you can take dogs and ski so I had to wait until the local mountain had closed for the season.

So you know how Ryan the wonderdog is good at everything I try with him? Well, not so much with skijoring. He was a total washout! 30lb powerhouse Abby was working her butt off pulling as hard as she could while Ryan gaily trotted along behind her with his line completely loose. Turns out that when you train a dog not to pull on leash for his entire life it's a little bit difficult to get him to pull when you want him to. At least he was moving while wearing a harness...usually he freezes and goes bug-eyed and acts like he's in a straight jacket. Next time I go I'm hooking Tyler up with Abby - those two would make an amazing team!

Spring has Sprung

...and so has Ryan.

Only half of Abby has sprung - the half without the brakes.

Fur seals are feeling frisky too in the long lost sun.

Summer's just around the corner - I can't wait!

When Ryan was growing up...

...He ate my gear shift and e brake, pulled my new shirts into his crate and destroyed them, wrecked Abby's brand new bed, pulled up the carpet in a rental suite from inside an xpen that was on tile, screamed like nothing I'd ever heard before if I tried to restrain him or give him a bath, refused to cuddle, ate his way through a bag of kibble until he literally couldn't stand up, among many other things that I've probably blocked from my memory.

I remember saying so many times that even though he was driving me crazy I could tell he would be such a *good dog* when he matured. I'm not sure why I knew that... but I was right.

Happy 4th Birthday Ryan. I couldn't have asked for a happier, more enthusiastic, smarter, sweeter, cuddlier - and of course more handsome - dog.

If you're happy and you know it

and you really want to show it...

bark and bark and bark and bark some more!

Abby video

Ryan video


I've been working a lot on Abby's start line stay but it's still pretty bad at a trial. In class I've been consistent with getting a quiet sit or else I send her away from the start line (simply going back and rewarding her didn't work nearly as well as taking away her access to the equipment all together). I'm glad I only released her at the trial when she was sitting quietly but it still took what seemed like forever to get that! Ohhh crazy little Abby.

That was Ryan running FEO in Masters Standard because we'd just finished his Advanced Standard run in which he blew past 2/3 contacts. Well...I guess he didn't really blow his contacts. He didn't realize it was the teeter and then pushed the end down after he flew off it to get back into 2o2o position. Then he cleared the entire peak and downside of the Aframe and landed, confused, just past it..so he backed up into 2o2o. I couldn't do anything but laugh - he tries *so* hard! I didn't want those to be our only contacts for the weekend though (since he only had jumpers afterwards) so I ran him in the Masters ring where he proved that he does, in fact, understand the contact criteria.

I have to say that I love running my crazy dogs. They are so much fun!

Oh and a short video in which precious wittle princess Abby (ha!) appears to hurt her paw while telling Kepler the teenager off. She was completely fine a few minutes later...(ignore my baby talk to her at the end)

Need some zip

I have very much neglected this blog lately. I think I'm lacking inspiration - photo inspiration, training inspiration.

I have to admit that I haven't done any kind of formal 'training' with my dogs, other than a few 20 min clicker sessions and our weekly agility class, in months. They have been very good dogs though, putting up with my laziness and just relaxing with me. We'll get back into the swing of things when the weather brightens up (it's daylight savings tonight and we'll have that whole extra hour after work). I should be working on improving Ryan's weave entries and Abby's start line stays - trial this weekend but just two runs for each dog.

I'll also have more time for photos with that extra daylight. Maybe I'll follow along with one of the Flickr 365 or weekly challenges. I need a little push to get more creative...can't let my camera be wasted.

Grey skies today and I'm feeling like I need something to get me going again. I'll perk up - I'm a very happy person - but we sure do have long bleh weather periods here in rainy Vancouver.

I was reading this blog today: http://www.hippiedogs.com
She takes some beautiful photos. And her blog is way cooler looking than mine. I like it.

Oh I did something completely crazy the other day. I loaded my dogs into the car (it's a hatchback) without crates (since I'd just been skiing) to go to the park. I obviously did not load my brain into the car since after driving two blocks I looked in the rear view mirror and realized I'd left the trunk completely open. Like, I looked in the mirror and just saw road. Oh and two sets of bulgy doggy eyes. Poor Abby and Ry! I guess I uncovered yet another one of the reasons I train a "stay in the car no matter *what* until I release you". Safety first. Especially handy when you've left your brain behind.

How 'bout some fur seals since I have no dog photos?

Oh and this one of Izzy first since I lurv it.






ETA: Here we go, I found this on Flickr:
Jan 10 Breakfast
Jan 17 Cold
Jan 24 Sleep
Jan 31 Repetition
Feb 07 Body Parts
Feb 14 Romance
Feb 21 A childhood memory
Feb 28 Vegetables
Mar 07 Underneath
Mar 14 green
Mar 21 Planning
Mar 28 in the morning
Apr 04 Excitement
Apr 11 Pet peeve
Apr 18 Growth
Apr 25 landscape
May 02 Mother
May 09 Up
May 16 Anger
May 23 Temptation
May 30 A self portrait
Jun 06 something old
Jun 13 Father
Jun 20 Swing
Jun 27 Light
ul 04 Red, White, Blue
Jul 11 Family
Jul 18 Summer
Jul 25 windows or doors
Aug 01 Water
Aug 08 Shadows
Aug 15 Peace
Aug 22 line from a song
Aug 29 Sunset
Sep 05 black and white
Sep 12 The Kitchen
Sep 19 Autumn/Spring
Sep 26 Tools
Oct 03 Colors
Oct 10 something funny
Oct 17 On The Shelf
Oct 24 Memories
Oct 31 Texture
Nov 07 circle
Nov 14 Music
Nov 21 Gathering
Nov 28 decay
Dec 05 Smiles
Dec 12 After
Dec 19 bokeh
Dec 26 traditions
Jan 2 Resolutions
Jan 9 winter

I'm going to start on Monday with green - my favourite colour should inspire me :)

Barking fools

Some videos from the trial yesterday...

Ryan's second ever snooker run:

It looks like I knew what I was doing but I felt like I almost got lost a couple of times.

Abby's jumpers run - with me trying to get her to stay for the first half of the video. Awesome. She had a refusal at one of the jumps but other than that it was a nice run.

Our Holidays

Were without blogging! Time for a little catch up.

They started off with a trip to Mexico (minus dogs of course) for some horseback riding, ATVing, jetskiing and whale watching. I had never been whale watching before - seeing these giant humpback whales breaching was amazing! This was a baby and it still dwarfs those boats.

After coming home for a week of work there was another week off to do lots of this:

We also did some snowshoeing where Abby's ***BAD ABBY*** side re-emerged. Maybe it was the pre-snowshoe taste of sinew that brought it out in her (or maybe the raw food diet? Everyone knows that feeding dogs raw food turns them into killers).

Whatever the case may be, ***BAD ABBY*** turned as she passed a snowshoer on the trail and snapped in the air next to his hand. He didn't really notice...but I sure did! Abby was back on a leash after that. It's been a long time since she let her inner demon out like that and I was not impressed. At all. It's back to the basics again with that nutty mutt!

At the end of the week we went to celebrate the new year in a small cabin on an island with eight people and nine dogs. Nine dogs is...too many dogs. All I wanted to do was constantly tell them all to go find a spot and just lie down and relax. It was like being in a herd of cattle! I just brought Ryan since being in cramped quarters doesn't stress him out too much. He was happy to do some two hour hikes with a bunch of energetic dogs.

Perfect sized window nose holes to sniff out where we were driving to:

Meanwhile Abby was with Rob and Erika doing some more of this:

She doesn't look like she's suffering *too* much...

So sweet and innocent, right?

Needless to say she got left behind on the next snowshoeing adventure.

Can you spot Ryan?

He's convinced there's something up in the one tree that has no animal-hiding folliage.

He may not always be the brightest, but he's pretty sweet.

Ryan on top of the world.

And a cute Tuku face just 'cause.