Unity Quilt-a-long
Bonnie Hunter of Quiltsville.com is generously offering a free mystery sew-in-place quilt-a-long to help unite quilters all around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic and our social isolation. The quilt is called unity and it is made up of 3 colour ways. The author chose red, dark blue and aqua. I am doing mine with pink, black and grey. Every Monday starting March 30th she will release a new clue. You’ve got one week to get the piecing done before the next clue is released. I’ve managed to talk a couple of friends into doing this with me. It helps me feel less isolated as we talk and share pictures of our progress via Messenger. Yesterday I pulled all my fabrics and started cutting pieces and today I started sewing blocks together to make the centre medallion.
Filed under Medallion Quilt, mystery quilt, QAL, Quilt-A-Long, Unity QAL
Brodie Got C-WAGS Mail
So proud of my boy. He earned his C-WAGS Scent Detective Ace title. He had to earn 14 Scent Detective titles to get his ACE.
Filed under Brodie, CW-SD, CW-SDA, CWAGS, CWAGS Title, Nosework, Scent Detection
Tower Garden
My new toy arrived last Friday. It is an aeroponic tower garden that can be used both indoors or outside. My gym has had a couple of them hanging around for a while and I instantly fell in love. I seeded a bunch of greens, chives, tomatoes and peppers Saturday morning. The first sprouts appeared in less than 48 hours. I can’t wait until they are big enough to be moved to the tower.
Filed under Tower Garden
Our World has Changed
On Monday I was over the moon excited when I was informed that one of my art quilts had been juried into the National Quilt Show. Just days later and our world has completely changed in a way that no one could have ever dreamed. Like so many events, there may not be a National show this year. We had almost every weekend booked between now and the end of June with dogs stuff. Sadly, almost everything has been outright cancelled and a few have been tentatively rescheduled. Almost every hour I get a new email from some organization talking about the virus and what they are doing. I’m just feeling sad and overwhelmed.
I woke up this morning feeling more like myself and ready to take on this new reality. Even though it was miserably cold I forced myself to go for a work out.
This is what 8km at -24C looks like. Take that Mother Nature and Coronavirus you aren’t going to win 😉😂
The Dogs are Tricksters Now!
We got a bunch of mail today. Both Spirit and Brodie got their Novice, Intermediate and Advanced Trick Dog titles. We still have to learn a few tricks to get their Excellent titles.
Filed under Brodie, CKC Title, Spirit, Uncategorized
Honouring Sophie
Last summer we learned that Spirit’s Mom Sophie had been diagnosed with Histiocytic Sarcoma, a very aggressive and incurable form of cancer. She put up a brave fight against this horrible disease until she crossed over the rainbow bridge on October 16th just days short of her 8th birthday. Her family posted this picture of her on Facebook and shared with everyone how much a part of their lives Sophie was with her loving personality. She was also the foundation bitch of their kennel. It just touched my heart. When we got home from our vacation at the end of October, I immediately started working on a wall hanging to reproduce this picture. I recently gave this fabric mosaic to Coreen and Steve of Tailspin Bernese Mountain Dogs to honour their beautiful girl Sophie.
GCH Werlwind’s Playing With Fire
Sophie Oct 25/2011- Oct 16/2019
Filed under Mosaic Quilt, Quilting, Spirit, Uncategorized
Wonderful News
Today I was informed that one of my quilts had been juried into Quilt Canada’s National Juried Show. To say I was shocked and over the moon excited would be an understatement. I am not allowed to publicly share a picture of my quilt until the show catalogue is released but they gave me this badge that I can share. The best news is that the show is being held in Edmonton this year so I will get to see it actually hanging.
Filed under CQA, Quilt Canada, Quilting
You VS 2020 February Update
I am pretty happy with my mileage so far. At almost 300km, I am close to 1/3 of the way through the challenge in only 2 months. I’m also shocked to see that I am in the top 6% of the 131K people who have signed up for the challenge.
Filed under Fitness, You VS 2020
Spirit Got Mail
It’s official, Spirit received her SDDA Games Champion title in the mail. Back in December, she was the first Bernese Mountain Dog to earn this title and she is still the only one. So proud of what she has accomplished.
Busy Dog House Weekend
We spent the last 3 days attending Barn Hunt and C-WAGS trials. So proud of both my kids. Between the two of them they earned 3 new titles and 10 Q’s
Brodie got his Barn Hunt Instinct and Novice titles as well as his C-WAGS Level 2 Scent Detective Ace title (RATI RATN CW-SDA). He also got his first Q in Barn Hunt Open and 40 points towards his Barn Hunt Crazy 8’s title. He earned a Q in C-WAGS Scent Ranger Level 1, Scent Detective and Scent Investigator
Spirit is too big for the Barn Hunt tunnels but she Q’d in all 3 of her C-WAGS runs today
Fan Faire BOM January
I just finished my 2 blocks for January. I have now completed 8 of the 12 pieced blocks.
Filed under Block of the Month, BOM, Edmonton Modern Quilt Guild, Fan Faire BOM
Iron Paws Social
Our Edmonton Iron Paws group met for a social in our beautiful river valley this evening. Afterwards I took Spirit to McDonalds for an ice cream cone. I didn’t even get one stink in’ lick before she deep throated the entire cone. I didn’t even have a chance to pull away from the drive thru window before it was gone. She sure entertained the drive thru staff. She is one happy girl….no sharing with Mom 😉😂🐾🐶 I did manage to capture a few pictures of our Cani-cross.
Filed under Iron Paws, Spirit, Uncategorized
You VS 2020 January Update
Well I have completed the first month of Under Armour’s challenge. Even though we had about 10 days straight of bitterly cold weather I still managed to exceed my goal of 100km a month. I was shocked to see that I am in the top 10%.
Filed under Fitness, You VS 2020
Under Armour Challenge
Call me crazy but I have registered for the Under Armour “You VS the Year 2020” challenge. Along with just over 53,000 others, my goal is to log 1022 miles this year. Only 361 days left and 1003.9 miles 😫🤣. On the positive side I am in the top 17%….yikes!
Filed under Fitness
Resolution Run and Iron Paws
We started 2020 off on the right foot by participating in the Running Room’s Resolution 5k. We like to do this run every year as a renewal of our commitment to remain active throughout the year.
The dogs and I also signed up for our 2nd Iron Paws. I have a couple of injuries that will prevent us from doing much kick sledding so I signed us up for the recreational canicross category instead. The Resolution run also counted towards our runs for the 1st week of Iron Paws…..bonus!!
Filed under Canicross, Iron Paws, Kick Sledding, kicksledding, Races, Spirit
Boxing Day Doggy Style
Boxing Day started with giving the dogs a full turkey breakfast with all of the trimmings. Thanks to Auntie Dawn for sending us home with doggy bags.
Instead of going to a mall and fighting with hundreds of stressed out shoppers looking for “the” Boxing Day deal, we went out and played in the snow. I think the dogs were very happy with our decision.
Filed under Brodie
Fan Faire BOM Update
I have been busy working on a very special art quilt so I got behind on our Guild’s Fan Faire Quilt-a-long. I spent the weekend cutting and piecing and now I am all caught up and waiting for our new blocks in January
October blocks
November Blocks
December Blocks
C-WAGS Christmas
We spent today at See Spot Run participating in our last C-WAGS trial for 2019. Brodie earned two Level 2 Q’s. Spirit whipped his butt by not only earning two Level 2’s but also her first Level 4 Q. Thanks to Judges Deb, Christina and Robbi.
Brodie Got CKC Mail
We finally got Brodie’s CKC Sprinter title the he earned back in August. He is now officially known as:
Coppermoon Lightning Bug CGN RI S CAX SDN SD-MACH SD-EL3 SD-GCH SD-GT CW-SI
Filed under Brodie, CKC Sprinters, CKC Title
C-WAGS Mail
Spirit has had a great sniffing week. First she earned her SDDA Games Champion title on Sunday and today we got her C-WAGS Scent Investigator (Level 3) title in the mail.
Filed under CW-SI, CWAGS, CWAGS Title, Nosework, Spirit
More Elite Titles
Brodie and I had an incredible weekend at the Canine Coaching SDDA trial held at the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame. Big thanks to Samantha Freschette and all her wonderful volunteers for putting on another amazing trial and to Judge Richard Hatchman.
On Saturday there were 9 or 10 teams doing elite searches. That is the biggest Elite group we have ever trialed with (normally it is 5 or 6 teams maximum). We ran last so we had lots of time to wait and worry….ok I worried and stressed, Brodie didn’t care. It was so exciting to see each team come out from their searches all excited because they had passed. An incredible 6 teams passed all 3 components to earn an Elite title. For two teams it was their elusive first title. One amazing team (Al and Kerri) reached the ultimate pinnacle in SDDA and earned both their Sporting Detection Elite Champion and Sporting Detection Grand Master Champion. We earned our 2nd elite title, but more importantly we got our first gold score. We also got a first place in containers, 3rd place in interiors and a 3rd place overall.
On Sunday there were 6 elite teams competing and this time we searched first. Only one team titled on Sunday…..and it was us and it was another gold! Since we were the only team to title, we got first place overall and we were the only team to pass the exterior search so we got first in exteriors. I am still in shock. We now have 3 elites, under 2 different judges and the elusive 2 gold scores. We need two more elite titles to earn our Sporting Detection Elite Champion and Sporting Detection Grand Master Champion.
Two days of sniffing is exhausting
Another Games Champion
I just love this big goofy girl. She does not do scent work for the love of the game, she does it because she loves engaging with me and seeing me get so excited when she finds the hide and, well lets be honest here….she has an intense love affair with food. We’ve had more than our fair share of struggles along the way. I used to say that if we could just make it to our championship I would be thrilled. Then it was maybe a Master Champion title was actually possible. With each milestone we reached she showed me she could do it and that I underestimated her. Then came Games. Once again, I sold her short. At best I thought we had a chance of getting our Aerial title but that was it. Yesterday we earned our Games Championship. In so many ways this title means more to me than when her younger “brother’ Brodie became the first dog to earn a SD-GCH. For him it was relatively easy and somewhat expected that he would, at least at some point, get the title. For Spirit this is a real achievement….she actually got 3 Speed Q’s…if you’ve ever watched her search, speedy is not an adjective you would use to describe her style 😉. Moral of the story…..dream big and trust your dog 💜💜💜
She is the first Bernese Mountain Dog to get this title and only the 6th dog of any breed to earn it. If you think about it, that is pretty amazing for a breed that is not associated with scent work. She is now officially known as:
Tailspin’s Winter’s Spirit RI SDIN, SDDA: SD-MACH SD-GCH, C-WAGS: CW-SI
Photo courtesy of Ryan-Ann King
Filed under Nosework, SDDA, SDDA Champion, SDDA Games, SDDA Title, Spirit
We got SDDA Mail Today
Brodie was the first dog ever to earn a SDDA Games Champion Title. So proud of my little Golden sniffer. Spirit is one Q away from getting her Games Championship and hopefully she will earn that Q this weekend.
Mani-pedi Day
What a beautiful late fall day. We are supposed to get up to 11 degrees today. I took this opportunity to give the dogs a good brushing and mani-pedis. They went from polar bear feet to this. We are supposed to get very cold next week 😢😫
This is just a fraction of the fur that I got out of Brodie and Spirit.
Barn Hunt Bounty
Well our first Barn Hunt trial at Prairie Dog Sports has come to an end and we had an amazing time. Great participants, volunteers, judges and hosts. To say that Brodie was absolutely thrilled with barn hunt would be an understatement. He gets to combine his love of scent work with the freedom to run around and hunt for source without the need to follow any pretty pattern. Considering the fact that we just did our introductory seminar a week ago I’m blown away at how well he did. Although we NQ’d in both our instinct runs, mostly my fault, he did so well in Novice and Crazy 8’s. On our first Novice run his dummy human partner forgot to hand her leash to the gate steward before leaving the start box. I was so excited that we had Q’d only to hear the Judge say I’m sorry I have to disqualify you because you still have your leash in you hand. Hard lesson learned but hopefully I won’t make that mistake again 😉. Our second run earned us a 2nd place finish. Our final run was a thing of beauty. He found the gerbil, did a tunnel and jumped up onto a bale in a smoking fast time of just over 11 seconds. He not only got 1st place in the large dog class but he earned a High in Class for all Novice dogs.
We signed up for Crazy 8’s (8 gerbils, 4 litter distractors) just to get practice hunting and doing tunnels. We actually managed to Q in both runs and earn 50 points towards our bronze title.
The icing on the cake was to find out that we were chosen as the Judge’s Choice winner for our great team work and bright future in Barn Hunt. Big thank you to Judge Norm Riley for his very kind words.
Sniffing with Edmonton Police Service
This afternoon we had the amazing opportunity to watch and learn from the Edmonton Police Service how they train their dogs to do scent detection. It was very informative and interesting to see the parallels and differences between their training methods and ours.
Cst. Eastman and his canine partner Evan did a demo search of a locker room for us.
A few of us got the opportunity to run our dogs and get feedback from EPS. Here is Brodie’s search. He did us very proud easily finding the hide in bleachers with slippery concrete floors and lots of distractions in the environment.
Filed under Brodie, Nosework, Sporting Detection
