On January 1st 2016, I started Kathryn Kerr’s 365 Challenge. The idea was to make a quilt block every day and at the end of the year you would have a quilt top made up of 365 different blocks. Several times I got way behind but I always managed to catch up. I got all the way to December 10th and then I stopped. 21 days from the finish….crazy! I’m sick and tired of those blocks starring back at me so I have challenged myself to finish the quilt top by the end of 2017 (only one year late). I sat down to work on December 10th’s block and then I knew why I gave up on that date. This 6″ block is made up of dozens of 1/2 inch finished half square triangles. That’s crazy. Determined to keep my goal on track, it took me most of the day, but I knuckled down and finished it. It’s quite nice but man I would never make another one. I was just on Kathryn’s website and I see that in 2018 she is repeating the 2016 quilt so if you want to torture yourself, seriously it was a good exercise in patience and piecing many different blocks, there is still time to join up.
365 Challenge
Filed under 365 Challenge
My Scenting Stars
We drove to Red Deer today to participate in a Sporting Detection Dog Association (SDDA) trial. Spirit was entered in the Advanced Working Dog category. I have been introducing Brodie to scent detection, and since he was coming along for the ride, I thought I would enter him in the Started category so that he could get some experience being at a trial. Dogs have to be at least 6 months old to trial so we were lucky that Brodie hit that milestone last week, just in time to participate. It was a bit of a hectic morning because they decided to run the Started and Advanced at the same time. Brodie was 10th to run in the Started Division and Spirit was 8th in Advanced.
Brodie had his Container and Interior Searches first. Just before they called us, Brodie yelped and lunged towards his backend as a wasp bit him. Poor little guy. He kept walking in a circle trying to reach the spot, obviously very upset. The Judges offered to let us take a break and come back later but I decided to just go ahead since this was only a learning experience for him. To my complete shock and amazement it took him only 8 seconds (3 minute time limit) to find the correct container and we got a score of 29/30 (we lost 1 point for having an inconsistent search sequence). The Judges were as shocked as I was. We had a minute to gather our composure and he started the interior component. Again, he found the hide in only 37 seconds (5 minute time limit) with a score of 39/40 (again we lost 1 point for having an inconsistent search sequence). I had to run back to the car, drop off Brodie and grab Spirit for her first run so I didn’t have any time to really digest what had just happened.
Spirit did Containers first. She found the first hide quickly and I got all excited, rewarded her and walked away. The Judges just stood there staring at me. After about a minute of awkward silence they said, did you forget that there is a second hide??? Dummy me, having just completed the Started search that has only has one hide, I completely forgot that Advanced has two hides and a distractor. We got back to searching and Spirit indicated on another container and when I called it the Judge told me she was wrong. Dang it. I messed my girl up. Interesting note, there were 30 dogs in the Advanced category and only 4 found the 2 hides the rest false alerted like Spirit. Makes you wonder if there was some contamination in the search area. Spirit immediately moved on to her Interior search. She found both hides in 1 minute and 7 seconds and we scored a perfect 80/80.
Once again, I ran back to the car, did another quick dog switcharoo and raced backed to do Brodie’s exterior search. Unfortunately we were late and missed our turn so we had to wait and run last. The exterior search was comprised of 3 tractors. The hide was hidden underneath the middle tractor. It took my amazing little boy only 1 minute to find it (5 minute time limit with another amazing score of 29/30 (I lost 1 point for my handling hindering my dog). One of the Judges was the founder of the Search and Rescue Dog Association of Alberta (SARDAA). She was so impressed by him. She told me I have an amazing, young working dog. What a wonderful compliment from a very knowledgeable and experienced handler. I thought Brodie was just going to have a fun play day practicing searching and he ended up get his Started title. Because we got all 3 components at the same trial, we also get an SP designation (special). And the news only gets better, we actually finished 3rd overall and got a big basket of SWAG. Last but not least, because we got an overall score of 97/100, our title will be at the gold level. WOW!!!!! Big thank you to Judge Jane Book and shadow Judge Mary-Ann Warren.
Brodie’s haul: Green ribbon for 3rd place overall, 3 qualifying ribbons for containers, interior and exterior, purple Started Level Title ribbon with the SP designation and his basket of goodies.
We had a long wait before Spirit got to do her exterior search. By then it was very hot and sunny, not good for a big, hairy black dog. She really struggled. Dogs can’t scent when they are panting heavily. We used the whole 5 minutes and she didn’t find the hide. Even when the Judge told us where it was, it took two passes for her to find it and alert on it. No worries. I’m still very proud of my girl. Thank you to Judge Doug Theeft.
Each dog got a ginormous knuckle bone when we got home.
Filed under Brodie, Nosework, SDDA, Spirit, Sporting Detection
What a Difference 4 Months Makes
It always shocks me how quickly a puppy grows and matures. Here is photo proof. The first picture was taken the day I brought Brodie home (2017APR16). The second one was taken 4 months later when we celebrated Brodie turning 6 months old. I wish they could stay small and snuggly a little longer.
Filed under Brodie
The boys are both 16
Little Brodie is 16 weeks old and of course Wally turned 16 years old in April. They may look very different, my old man is a rich copper and the other is a silky, soft, creamy white but they are both gentle, sweet souls…..true Goldens !!!
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Filed under BlogPaws, Brodie, Wally, Wordless Wednesday
Garden helper
Brodie wants to remind every to stop, relax and smell the flowers …. and then eat them!!! I just hope he doesn’t un-plant all my baskets that I just spent hours planting.
Filed under Uncategorized
Advanced Title – It’s Official
We received our official Advanced Title in the mail today. I didn’t realize it but we received a gold level title which means we scored 96% or better in each of the disciplines. Her started titled was a bronze so I guess it means that we are improving as a team….yeah us!!!
Filed under Nosework, Scent Detection, SDDA, Sporting Detection
Puppy class
We had fun at puppy socialization class today. Brodie got a bandage on his paw and he wore the cone of shame with a stethoscope. Nothing seemed to concern him. Good puppy!!!!
Filed under Uncategorized
3 Months Old
Our little golden boy Brodie is 3 months old today. He is growing so fast. He has more than doubled his weight in the month that we’ve had him. No matter how bad he is, I just take one look at that face and my heart melts.
Another Title
We were up bright and early this morning to drive to Red Deer to participate in Nosey Pawtner’s Sporting Detection Dog Association trial. We had a slow start but a great finish with lots of swag.
Spirit got a second place on the interior search component, 2nd place overall and she got her Advanced title today. So proud of my big girl. So now we have to move from the amateur steam and start competing in the working/professional scenting dog stream.
Throughout the photo shoot she had her eye on the cookie and couldn’t wait for permission to gobble it down.
Filed under Nosework, Scent Detection, SDDA, Sporting Detection
Four Legged Cheerleaders
On Sunday morning we participated in the annual First Responders Half Marathon. We have McMullin staying with us again so he and Brodie came out to cheer us on. They were a big hit. Everyone wanted to stop by and say hello to the pair.
As I was approaching the end, Don handed me the “boys” so that they could cross the finish line with me.
Brodie also helped Laura and Heidi cross the finish line.
Filed under Brodie, Hope Heels, Races, Volunteering
Settling In
Our little Brodie is settling in nicely. He is a little afraid of Spirit’s larger than life personality and is very respectful of my beautiful oldie Goldie Wally. Unfortunately he is like an unruly, annoying little brother with poor little Tilly. We have to keep rescuing her from his grip.
I can’t stop taking pictures of his sweet little face. Each image is cuter than the last.
Filed under BlogPaws, Brodie, Wordless Wednesday
Meet Brodie
Yesterday I got up at 3am to head to the airport for a very special trip to Victoria to meet this cute little boy. He is the newest member of our family. He is an English type Golden Retriever and I am in love!!! There were 11 puppies in the litter but by the time I got to the breeder’s home all of them had already been picked up by their new families. There were only 3 left in the house, a little boy and girl that she was keeping for her breeding program and our little boy. We got black boy….also known as “the bruiser”. She picked him for me because he is a very active little boy and needed an experienced family to manage all that energy. Yikes!!!
I got to enjoy the day hanging out with the puppies and then flew back last night. When I got to the Victoria airport all the Westjet ticket agents were swooning over that cute face. They had seen so many puppies leaving in the last two days that they immediately recognized him as another one from the same litter. He was so pooped that he fell asleep on a chair in the departure lounge.
He was wonderful on the flight back to Edmonton….except for one small problem….farting. It was so bad that I thought he may have pooped in his carrier. The women beside me got mad at her husband because she thought he was the culprit. We all had a good giggle when I told her it was Brodie.
I finally got to bed just after midnight. Our first night wasn’t too bad. I only had to take him out once but he was wide awake at 6am. Needless to say, I am wiped today. Here is the whole 4-legged family.
He has already had a busy morning and is now crashed on the kitchen floor…I wish I could join him for a nap.
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Guess who is 16 years old today?
It may be grey and dreary outside but our lives are filled with sunshine today. Our beautiful golden boy is 16 years old today. The average life span for a golden retriever is 12 years…..we are incredibly blessed to have shared our lives with this amazing boy for 16 years. He had a delicious birthday breakfast of fresh ground turkey with pumpkin and fresh berries. Then he got to lick the empty pumpkin can. We have a long standing tradition of using Timbits (Wally’s favourite treat) to celebrate the big moments. On birthdays he would get one Timbit for every year and when his puppies were born he would get one for each baby. When he started getting into double digits we had to start cutting the Timbits in half. Later today he will get his 16 Timbit halves.
We had an early birthday celebration at Patty’s acreage on Thursday. We had a lovely lunch and nice walk on a beautiful, sunny spring day. We even managed to avoid Wally rolling in the horse and cow poop which he loves to do (as you will see below in the picture from his 11th birthday celebration at Patty’s).
Wally, Boomer, Stark, Hope, Spirit and little Tilly
To commemorate the big day I put together a series of images of Wally from 12 weeks to 16 years old.
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Drafting Clinic
We drove to Calgary today to participate in a drafting/carting clinic put on by the Bernese Mountain Dog Club of Canada and the Newfoundland Dog Fanciers of Alberta. We were joined by Coreen & Steve Johnson of Tailspin Bernese (Spirit’s breeders) with their Newfie Ryder and two other Tailspin Berners, brother and sister Gunnar and Felice.
Felice, Gunnar, Ryder and Spirit (L-R)
We started out a little rocky. Spirit has been kicksledding for the last two months so she thought that she was supposed to take off like a rocket and pull the cart. It had to stand in front of her to stop her from racing off (and I have the bruises to prove it). Eventually she caught on and began to walk nicely at my side and even started making some decent left and right turns. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us before we could even consider taking the draft dog test.
Filed under Blogpaws Wordless Wednesday, Carting, Drafting, Pulling
Carting Anyone?
Next week we are going to take a carting clinic and we needed a cart for the class. We are very lucky that Spirit’s breeders Coreen and Steve Johnson from Tailspin Bernese Mountain Dogs generously offered to lend us one of theirs. We went to their acreage on Sunday to fit Spirit with her harness and cart.
Since we have been doing kick sledding I was worried that Spirit would want to take off running with the cart rather than walking in a nice heel beside me. She was a little spooked by the metal supports running along side her body but I think she did ok.
Of course it was freezing cold and windy for us two legged folks but the dogs didn’t mind. Here is a quick video of her first reaction to being attached to the cart and then her first experience pulling.
Filed under Blogpaws Wordless Wednesday, Carting, Drafting, Pulling
Canada 150 Mosaic
On Friday morning I went to the Enjoy Centre to paint my tile for the Canada 150 Mosaic Mural for St. Albert, Alberta. Our group was tasked with painting a tile for the blue background. I decided to use this picture, from our recent trip to Jasper, as my inspiration.
It has been many years since I played around with watercolours but I’ve never used acrylics. There were some very talented artists there so it was a little intimidating to say the least. Here is my finished tile.
I went back this afternoon to see the finished mural. I was amazed to see how it all came together to make this beautiful 8′ x 12′ mural.
I searched and searched but I couldn’t find my tile. I thought to myself oh no….it was so bad that they couldn’t use it. But alas, I finally found my tile. It is 14 rows up and 7 rows in from the bottom right hand corner.
Filed under Uncategorized
Another Hypo Half
On Friday I went to the Running Room to pick up my race kit for today’s Hypothermic Half Marathon only to find out that they had no record of my registration and they were sold out. On one hand, that wasn’t so bad because I had not done any training, but I had friends that were doing the race.
Yesterday Spirit and I spent almost 2 hours kick sledding and I was exhausted…but I still had this nagging voice in my head that said I really should do the half. To make a long story short, I got my butt out of bed at 6:15 this morning and met my friends at the start line. It was a cold and windy day but we toughed it out and finished. Since I was a bandit (non-paying participant) I wasn’t allowed to attend the brunch afterwards but I was more than happy to jump into the car and crank the heated seats to maximum to try and warm up. I hit the closest Timmies on the way home and then had a nice long soak in the hot tub. I’m sure my body will hate me tomorrow morning but I’m glad I did it.
Filed under Races
My Golden Valentine
Now and then……..I can’t image a life without this amazing boy. He is my heart dog!!! (He looks so serious striking a pose in both pictures.)
15 years 10 months old
10 months old
As a thank you to my Golden Valentine we went for a walk (just Mom and her boy) to Tim Hortons to get him his favourite treat. He usually only gets a Timbit but today we went for the whole donut.
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Filed under BlogPaws, Wally, Wordless Wednesday
Kicksledding
Berners were bred to pull milk carts in the Swiss Alps. I thought we should start with something a little easier like pulling a kicksled. We joined a local Meetup group, rented a sled and attended our first outing at the end of January. It went really well. It took Spirit a while to figure out the game but she did a really good job pulling the sled and trying to follow the teams ahead of us. We completed a 4km loop and had a wonderful time.
This past weekend we went out with the group again. I think Spirit was possessed by the “pulling gods”. Oh my goodness she went fast….and full out on the down hill part. We only lasted about 10 minutes and ended up with 2 spectacular crashes and a bent ski on my brand new kicksled. I had my GoPro on my helmet (thank goodness I bought a helmet) so my wipeouts are on record. You can see that the camera was a little askew after the first crash and then it ended up buried in the snow after the second one.
We went out again today to a local provincial park. It was mostly flat with a few gentle hills. It was a lot slower today since the terrain was relatively flat and there were no teams ahead of us to chase. I hope to go out with the Meetup group again this weekend.
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Filed under Blogpaws Wordless Wednesday, kicksledding
The beauty of winter
I can’t say that I am a big fan of winter, but sometimes I just have to stop and appreciate the beauty. We live in the prairies so we normally have very low humidity. For the last several days we have had lots of fog and hoar frost. Each day the frost gets thicker and thicker. Here are just a few pictures I took of the amazing ice crystals:
Diablo Ninebark flower cluster
Hydrangea bloom
Rose hips
Rose hip cluster
Jackmanii clematis bloom
And last but not least, hoar frost on my big girl Spirit during our walk this morning. She looks like she has giant white eyebrows.
Frosty Morning Walk
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Happy New Year
It was a beautiful, sunny New Year’s Day so my big girl and I went for a walk together without any of the other dogs. Spirit has been having trouble getting used to sharing her “Mom” with our foster puppy McMullin. Whenever I try and smooch him she pushes him out of the way and tries to get the attention.
She was spayed 2 weeks ago so she has been very bored hanging out around the house without any physical activity except 2 gentle walks a day. Somehow she still managed to rip her toe nail almost completely off and leave just exposed tissue and bone. I had the unfortunate job of having to trim off the nail. I’m so lucky that we have such a strong bond that she completely trusted and allowed me to slowly and careful trim back the nail close to the base. Poor girl. She has sure had a run of bad luck health wise. Let’s hope that 2017 is a new beginning for her.
Filed under Blogpaws Wordless Wednesday
Resolution Time Again
Before…..
After….
We just finished the annual Running Room Resolution 5km race. We’ve been doing it for about 5 years now. It is a family friendly, non-competitive event that helps us start our new year off with health and fitness in mind. Of course the pancakes and sausages at the end are always a big hit with the skinny guy.
Filed under Uncategorized
Sweet Gentle Soul
McMullin snuggling in the kennel
My beautiful, gentle old man Wally. He is almost 16 years old now. Over those years he has shared our home with more foster puppies and four-legged family members than I can count. Without exception, each one has gone to him to cuddle and seek comfort. He has always obliged. For an intact male he is truly amazing!!!!
Just a few more pictures to tug at your heart strings:
Filed under Foster Puppies, Tango, Tilly, Wally
Bucket List Disappointment
Although I was present at the birth of almost all of the litters that Wally sired, and I saw the puppies almost daily, I never had the opportunity to whelp a litter myself. This has been a bucket list item for me for many years.
When we bought Spirit, we got join ownership with the breeder. The plan was to show her and if all went well, eventually use her as a breeding bitch for Tailspin. Sadly, at 6 months we found out that Spirit had a bad shoulder so that quickly put an end to her breeding career.
In November we were asked if we would be willing to whelp a litter of service dog puppies. Although having a litter during an Alberta winter is not my idea of fun (puppies can never go outside and play) we accepted the challenge. Molly was inseminated in mid November. The sperm was collected from a beautiful English Golden from National Service Dogs with a great track record of producing quality puppies. On Friday Molly went for an ultrasound to confirm if she was pregnant. Sadly she was not. There are a lot of sad and disappointed people….especially me. They are hoping to give it one more try the next time Molly comes into season. On the positive side, it looks like cute little McMullin might be hanging around with us for a few weeks longer.
Filed under Hope Heels
Meet McMullin
We have a short term addition to our fur family. This is McMullin and he is one of the puppies that were donated to Hope Heels to train as a service dog. He is an 8 week old smooth Collie. He will be staying with us until he has a puppy raiser family to go to. He’s only been in the house for a few hours but he seems to have settled in just fine.
Filed under Foster Puppies, Hope Heels, Training, Volunteering
2 Years Young
I can’t believe that she is two years old already. Time is just flying by. She got a huge, delicious dino bone to celebrate.
Anticipation
You can get a perspective on just how huge the bone is when you see it beside her giant 97lb body. One end is the same size as her head. She can barely carry it in her mouth.
Filed under Birthday Pictures, Blogpaws Wordless Wednesday
Workout Buddy
No matter what I am doing, Spirit thinks she should be part of it. I don’t know how she managed to sit her giant body on the narrow incline bench and polish my face.
Filed under Uncategorized
Lumiere Challenge
We did it. We completed the 10km yesterday and the Wine and Dine Half Marathon today. We trained for the distance but we couldn’t train for the heat and humidity. No more getting up at 3am for the race bus. Now we get to enjoy Disney World and the Food and Wine festival tonight at EPCOT.
We got 3 beautiful medals and 3 long sleeved tech shirts.
Our team tutus
Our team t-shirts were a big hit. We had so many comments and people taking pictures of it.
Life In The Dog House 