Little Shadow

We just got back from our annual camping trip. This year there were no dropped cameras, concussions, ear infections or wasp bites - great success! Ryan has always been the token dog on these trips. As I've noted before, Abby requires a bit more vigilance than Ryan (ie. I need to keep an eye on her at every.single.moment or she will go make her own fun) so she stayed behind with Lucy and my parents.

Much to Ryan's dismay, he wasn't the only dog this year. Brinley the 3.5 month old Berner definitely stole the spotlight - and became Ryan's shadow. He pretended she didn't exist even though she followed him around for 5 days straight.

Ryan was exhausted by the end of the trip! I let him out in the Target parking lot for a pee stop and he stumbled out of the car and into the nearest lap. Very un-Ryan-like!

Gratuitous Abby shot because of my guilt about leaving her behind.

True to my Word

So when I said that I just wanted to have a fun weekend at nationals, no expectations?

Well...it's a good thing Ryan and I still had fun LOSING! 

We didn't just miss the top 10 podium placements, or the top half of the 22" specials placements...

We came DEAD LAST. 

Yay!!! (photo by Kristi O.)

This is me getting lost in our first standard run. Losing all 100 standard points in that run helped to contribute to our grand 154.78 point final score. That's about a third of the points Ryan got to qualify for nationals. 

Photo by Kristi O.

I don't even know what happened, really. I mean, I got lost twice...but there were a few runs that I felt were so close to brilliance if it hadn't been for my slow handling causing off courses. Ryan did manage a 5th place in Gamblers (without doing the main gamble - but doing each mini twice, perfectly). He got all of his contacts (except for a major dog-walk/teeter confusion teeter fly-off), all but one set of weaves perfectly, only knocked a few bars...to sum it up, good dog, BAD handler!!

Oh well, we really did have a fun weekend of agility and camping. Our campsite was right on an estuary and at the end of every day we went for a long walk and a swim. Abby wasn't limping so fingers crossed that we can do some agility soon!

Ready? Set?

GO!!!!

We're heading to Nationals today for Ryan's second shot at Canadian Victory.

Ha! Yeah right. 

We'll just be satisfied with a fun, happy weekend where I get lost a minimal number of times. 

Abby won't be running this year because of that whole cancer-shmancer massive leg surgery thing in January. 

 I'm pretty sure she thinks she's ready for action...

Ryan might prefer to stay behind anyway and eat from the Loic treat-dispenser.

Too late! Ryan and Abby are already in Nanaimo with Emma, 7, Cooper and Odd. She very nicely offered to take them over in her car so that I can walk on to the ferry after work today and sit up in the non-dungeon (aka non-dog) section. 

I definitely need to repay Emma somehow, considering the text I got yesterday at 5:20am:

"7 and Ryan are too happy to sleep. Abby pretends to be annoyed but then starts humping 7's head."

She then missed her ferry reservation by 4 minutes that day and had to sit in her car in the sweltering hot ferry line up for 2.5 hours with 5 dogs. 

Then, she heard Ryan throwing up in his crate and went back to discover that he had thrown up blood. Maybe he cut his mouth on something? We were both pretty worried but apparently he's acting fine today and hasn't thrown up since. 

Oh, and then Emma's tent (which she was sharing with the 5 dogs) turned out to be teensy-tiny and she forgot her pillow. 

Maybe I can repay her by taking Odd off her hands?

I drove down to Washington with Emma a month ago to pick Odd up from a rescue. Her mom looked like some kind of Yorkie mix. Odd is a bit of a (most adorable thing ever!) mystery.

Puppies everywhere...this is Brinley, my friend's new Berner puppy. I puppy-sat for her for the evening a couple of weeks ago. Abby and Ryan were slightly less than impressed.

And Lucy! I can't forget Lucy. My parents and I went to LA at the end of May and picked out an adoptable dog from the South Central shelter (like Erika and I did with Paco last year) to find a home for here. 

The only thing that's different from how things worked with Paco...

...is that my parents still have Lucy. On purpose. They seem to have fallen in love with her and are back in LA on vacation (with Lucy) right now. 

I'm not sure exactly when or how the dynamic switched in the last 15 years from me begging for dogs and my parents saying no...to them telling me all the reasons they want to keep Lucy and me trying to dissuade them. It felt like a strange alternate universe. 

It's not that I don't want them to keep Lucy - it's just that, as adorable and friendly and awesome as she is, she has a slight (huge) tendency towards bratty-ness and I want them to know what they're in for. 

I love her, though, and so do Abby and Ryan. If I wanted a third dog I would keep her for sure. She's energetic and feisty and funny and perfect :)

Good thing I already have my hands full with energetic, feisty, funny and perfect Abby.

Wish us luck this weekend! 

A Rescue Rant

Multiple times lately I've heard the sentiment of, "why would I want a rescue dog? I don't want to deal with someone else's issues" expressed. I've always known that a lot of people feel this way but this time the statements came from friends - and 'animal' people - who I thought knew better. The problem is that I'm so overwhelmed by reasons why this thought is complete crap that I end up sitting there dumbfounded unable to come up with a clear rebuttal. I usually use the quick and easy point of 'you can find a dog or puppy with any temperament that you could possibly want in rescue and usually it's the people who have issues and give up their pet, not the dog'. I'm pretty sure that no matter what I say, the people who think like this about rescuing pets will continue to believe that all "second hand" pets have baggage...especially since my point is usually answered with multiple stories about "my friend 'poopforbrains' who rescued dog 'iamlivingproofthatallrescuedogsareshit'".

I guess the part that I'm missing is the logic behind the thought that a puppy from a breeder is a 'sure thing' (since you can find puppies galore in shelters, the variable here in peoples' heads must be 'known lines' vs 'great big scary unknown', right?). Let's pretend for a second that nurture isn't even on the table and that it all comes down to nature.

*I'll put in the disclaimer that I grudgingly support responsible breeders... While not so secretly screaming in my head 'rescue all dogs dammit!'*

So, this whole thought that puppies from breeders are some kind of magical blank slate with 'perfect future dog' potential comes down mostly to knowing 'lines', right? This is where I'm stumped. Do people not realize how much variability there is in genetics? You can know the temperament of the mother, father, past litters, great grand parents...you can research 'lines' until you're blue in the face..and you STILL aren't guaranteed ANYTHING about the temperament of those puppies. This isn't even taking into account how much of a role nurture played in shaping the temperaments of those parents, past litters, grandparents...so the mother of the puppies is 'outgoing, social with great drive' and the father 'has never met a stranger'. So? How do you know how much of that is a rock solid temperament and how much is good socializing and training? You can't know.

What I understand, and what makes sense scientifically, is the more inbreeding that takes place the less genetic variability you'll have and the more 'certainty' you'll have about the puppies. In what world does this sound like a good idea??? Yeah, if I had a brother who was as charming, funny and good looking as I am I might be tempted to produce some super awesome kids...NOT! And when we find out at age 60 that we both have epilepsy...guess who now has epilepsy too? All of our fantastic little creepy inbred children!

I guess that people who want purebred puppies will just keep getting purebred puppies while sometimes perpetuating the 'rescue dogs are full of issues' myth. To me, temperament is far more important than breed (as in, there is no breed that I love so much that it would make not rescuing worth it for me) and I know that I'll always find my next dog in rescue. I also think that raising and training play a huge role, obviously, in how your dog turns out. I wish people wouldn't see it as 'perfect blank slate' on one side of things and 'messed up full of issues' on the other side...maybe a little more education in genetics is needed?


On another note, here is Ryan's standard run at Regionals a few weeks ago:
The idiot getting lost 23 seconds in is, in fact, not at all inbred (hopefully).

As a good scientist I know that the following has no scientific basis and is purely anecdotal BUT it's interesting in the whole nature/nurture thing: Ryan and his brother Zephyr are both high drive, play and tug with whatever you give them, try any exercise a gazillion times without ever slowing down and getting discouraged (in fact, repeating something seems to make Ryan go even faster..), crazy dogs. None of the other brothers that I've met are like this - they are super low key, barely break a trot doing agility and don't seem to be very interested in toys. Zephyr's owner and I both have other dogs who are also 'high drive', do anything we ask of them at super high speeds kind of dogs. Did we end up with the puppies that were genetically predisposed to be like this? Did we raise them to be like this? Did they feed off of our other dogs? Did we make our other dogs like that or were they also predisposed to be 'high drive'?  Was it a combination of everything? Who knows, but it's interesting! 

Ryan's Gamblers run



Ryan's jumpers run:

Goodbye Peppy

~1992 - April 2012

I can barely remember a time before we had Peppy.

His owners moved away and left him and his toy stuffed monkey in the driveway when he was about a year old. We named him Peppy after Pepe-le-pew for his impressive skunk-like tail.

When we got him he hid under the couch for a long time and didn't let us touch him. It's hard to believe that he was ever shy...

He really was an awesome cat. He owned our house more than any of us did.

When we first brought Sam home I thought it was a great idea to hold Peppy in my arms so he would feel safe. I'll always have the scars on my shoulder and elbow to remember him by...

He never got over his hatred for dogs. He tolerated our dogs - but bring a strange dog into the house and he would go on the war path attacking anything in his way to try and claw that dog's eyes out.

When he met Abby he chased her through the house (with me chasing him through the house) until he cornered her in the kitchen, where she proceeded to pee herself in terror. Only then did he leave her alone.

He made all of my friends growing up afraid to take their shoes off in our house because of his foot fetish. First he would lick your toes to tenderize them...then he would grab on and chomp.

Only a select few people were allowed to scratch him behind his ears and under his chin like he loved.

I'll miss you, Peppy.