Resq TailsThe trials and triumphs of rescued dogs

I’m back at the farm again. Well, not right at this moment. LOL Right now I’m back home trying to keep everything running smoothly with the boarding kennel on a holiday weekend, and then I’ll be heading back up to my parents farm again later this afternoon. My parents went to CA for almost a week, so I’m driving up to their place each afternoon and doing chores, then I spend the night up there and do the chores again in the morning and then drive back home to catch up on the goings on here at the kennels. I’m worn out and the weekend hasn’t even really gotten into full swing yet!

Normally going to my parents farm to do chores is a real treat for me. It’s so quiet and peaceful out there and I usually take a dog or two with me and they have fun seeing the livestock that we don’t have here. This weekend is going to be a whole lot more stressful though. My oldest brother and his wife had the idea to paint the inside of my parents house while they are gone, and so it’s turning into a real juggling act. I told them that the painting is their responsibility, I’ll help when I can, but my main concern is caring for the animals up there and the dogs here.

Last night I was the only one at the farm though and so I took Layla with me. It was her first overnight trip to the farm and boy did she love it! She was entralled by the goats and cows, and she thought the chickens were pretty cool too. Here’s a few pictures from this morning.

“Hmmm…how do I get in the goat pen to help my mom with the chores?”

“Maybe I could climb through this way…or if I could just squeeze through this darn gate!”

“Oh, just forget it. It’s hopeless, I give up!”

We stumbled upon this wonderful artist named Leanne Wildermuth’s blog a while back and I’ve been admiring her work. For anyone who enjoys beautiful photographs as well as drawings and paintings you should check out her blog: http://intricateart.com/blog/

To make this long story short, she has a really fun contest where you can submit a picture and story and she chooses a winner each week who will receive a custom 5 X 7 portrait.

If you know me at all, you know that the biggest task for me was trying to narrow my favorite pictures of the dogs down to one. LOL I finally decided that for the fun of it, I’d submit the picture that I took recently of Layla in the grass. Guess what? We won!!!

Isn’t it fantastic?! I think she did a wonderful job of capturing Layla’s mischievious look. Thanks so much Leanne. We love it!

I just love this time of year! Everything is finally turning green again, and I feel like I’m coming to life again after a long winter. So, today we went down to our friends place to train with the dogs. She lives about 1/2 an hour away and the drive is a beautiful one. It’s through a gorgeous canyon with water running through it. It’s one of my favorite drives.

So, we worked on Obedience with Raven, Twist and Layla. We worked outside today, which proved to be a huge distraction for all three dogs. My friend has geese, chickens, horses and a goat all within eye and earshot of where we were training. It was a challenge, but a really nice day. We have alot of work to do at different outdoor locations before the first of June because that obedience trial is outside (Yikes!).

On the way home everything just looked so pretty and green that I couldn’t help but pull off for a minute and take some pictures. Here are my favorites of the day.

A couple of people have asked about how Rogue is doing since we let her go for an evaluation to our friends at Sheltie Rescue of Utah. So, here’s a brief update of what I know.

As of yesterday, she was beginning to settle in to the point that she was beginning to play with another one of the Shelties in the house. That’s good news! She’s being just a little tricky about trying to eat her treat without getting the pill inside, but they are experts at making sure that the dogs are getting their meds, so I’m sure that’s a temporary problem. They tell me that she is being a really good girl, and that she has been easy to have at the house. I guess she’s like a shadow following Barbara around. (I kind of expected that). So, that’s about all I can update you on at this point. I know that she’s in very capable and caring hands!

We are starting into the second week with Rogue gone. The change in the house was noticeable from day one. I know from past experience that when we used to do alot of fostering for CARE, one dog can certainly change the dynamics in the house a great deal. I guess I just didn’t realize how much Rogue was affecting things here.

The biggest change overall is that the rest of the dogs are now so quiet! I feel like I’m in the wrong house sometimes. LOL Feeding times have settled into a much more relaxed routine, instead of a frantic bark fest. Randy can come and go with just a simple happy greeting from the dogs, instead of a barrage of anxious barking, lunging and pacing from Rogue. Zoe is staying out in the living room with us most evenings now instead of retiring to her crate to be by herself. It’s been really interesting…

I’ve been meaning to write about how the Utah Sheltie Specialty went for a couple of days now, but as usual time seems to get the better of me. Anyway, Raven and Twist were both entered in the Obedience portion of the Utah Sheltie Specialty this year.

Raven was trying out the Regular Novice class for the first time and Rally Novice for her second time. I was so proud of her! Raven qualified and took first place in both of her classes, and didn’t seem to get her usual case of ring nerves this time. She had a nice happy expression and wagging tail throughout. Woohoo!

Twist did really well, although he didn’t qualify. He still is not quite 100% confident about all the new exercises in Open, but I thought that he did a really nice job for his first time. We’re going to keep training on the broadjump and do some polishing up on a couple other little things and then I think he’ll be ready next time.

One of the really cool things about the Utah Sheltie Specialty is that our friend is usually in charge of organizing things and she always makes sure that there are lots of fun “special prizes” so that no one goes home empty handed. Alot of us will donate baskets full of fun things, and other prizes, and it’s always a highlight to see what everyone donated. This year Twist won the prize for highest scoring rescue Sheltie. I think she said that it was a crate pad or a bed or something. The only bummer was that we weren’t able to stay for the rest of the week and our prize wasn’t going to make it to the showsite till the next day. LOL Anyway, we had a really nice time