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.