Resq TailsThe trials and triumphs of rescued dogs

Just thought I’d share some of the pictures that we took over the weekend. This was one day after the trial. There is a pretty big grassy area close by and we let the dogs play and chase the frisbee. It is so nice to see grass again. It’s supposed to storm here at home for the next three days, but I’m hoping it won’t add up to anything. It’s just finally starting to warm up a tiny bit.

I’m not sure what we did before digital cameras. I think we must have taken over a hundred pictures. It’s just so nice to be able to take as many as you like and then just see them immediately on the computer and find a few that turn out. I think I’d go into withdrawals if I had to go back to my old film camera. LOL It’s so nice with the puppies too, because I have so much better record of them growing up than I do of my older dogs. Anyway…here’s some of the pictures. Enjoy!

I am just exhausted tonight. I think I’m still dragging a bit from the 3 day agility trial, followed by a trip to Cedar City the next morning to get our taxes done, and then today I took on a housecleaning job. I haven’t done housecleaning for years now, but considering the fact that my husband’s not working, I’m doing just about anything that still gives me the freedom to take care of the kennel and spend time with the dogs. Anyway, I am totally out of shape for housecleaning apparently. LOL The five hour job has just wiped me out. Course after I finished the job, I had to come home and clean all the empty kennels from the boarders that had been picked up too and I don’t think that helped anything. As I sit here typing I have to wonder if some modern office furniture would be more comfortable. That or maybe I just need to settle on the couch with the laptop. That’s always comfy. Dangerous though, since I won’t want to get back up again.

Now that we’ve finally caught up on the agility part of the past weekend, we can share the other bit of good news. Dare passed her CGC test. I know it’s nothing ground shattering, but it was fun, and I’m glad we did it! She’s such a good girl and I think she’s got so much potential for doing great things in both obedience and agility. I don’t think we need any stainless steel drums to store all her titles and ribbons in just yet, but I bet we will one of these days…

Day 3 of the ASCA came and went as fast as the first two days. I don’t think I’ve been to a trial this small in ages, and to be done running by early afternoon was just great. Anyway, Zoe finished off the trial with another Regular run Q and another Jumpers Q. So, she had a total of 3.5 Regular for the weekend, (she dropped a bar in one run, so it was just a half q), and 4 Q’s in Jumpers. Not bad! Here is her Regular run from round 2 yesterday. Sorry, again I didn’t get any course maps, so I don’t have any to post.

Another great day of agility! Today we had two Jumpers runs, two regular runs and one gamblers. Zoe ended up Qing in four of the five classes today. Of course the one that we didn’t qualify in was gamblers. Always has been our worst class. I only got video of one of the regular runs today though, but here it is. She did fine, but I was really late on the front cross before the A-frame and almost sent her to an off course jump. Fortunately, she called off and there aren’t any refusals, so we were fine.

We are at the ASCA trial this weekend. It’s usually a smaller venue than AKC, but this trial is really, really small. Almost more like funmatch size. Anyway, Zoe is having a great time! She is totally full of herself though. She ran around like a wild banshee in the first gamblers run, blowing her contact on both the A-frame and the dogwalk. Fortunately by the Standard, or regular runs, she was running nicely. She qualified in one of those and then q’d again in Elite Jumpers. The Elite Jumpers run is the only one I got on video today. It’s just part of the run, sorry. You’ll just have to trust us that it was nice. I’ll try to post tomorrow if I get done early enough again.

So, this morning we’re packing up the rest of what we’ll need for a three day ASCA agility trial in Farmington. Zoe is the only one I have entered this time. I had originally planned on entering both Zoe and Layla, but on re-reading the rules for eligibility for ASCA, Layla isn’t old enough to compete yet. In hindsight it was a blessing all the way around really. I thought her first AKC trial went fine, but it definintely showed me some spots that need training and more experience before we enter another trial, and when I entered Zoe in this trial my husband was still working…so money wasn’t quite as tight as it is now. So, all in all, for once it seems that things turned out just as they should have.

Anyway, I am just taking Zoe and Dare with me this time. Dare is going to be trying to get her CGC this weekend, and I also still needed to get her microchipped. So we’re making a stop at our friends with Sheltie Rescue of Utah and chipping her this afternoon, and then we’ll head on up to the trial. I’ll try to get video of whatever I can throughout the weekend, but no promises that I’ll get it posted before I get home Monday night. No promises for Tues either, since after I get home from the trial I have to turn around and drive to Cedar City for an appointment with our accoutant to get the taxes done.

Anyway…I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

So, the bright side of my husband being unemployed is that he finally has some time to finish projects he’s started around here. Last month we were supposed to finish off the office/laundry room. As usual, I didn’t get pictures before we really started the project, I only seem to remember about half way through. So, the room really bears no resemblance to what it did originally. In the 13 years we’ve been here, we’ve changed all kinds of things.

Originally, this room was a second bedroom. The problem was that even though my grandparents managed just fine without having a washer and dryer in the house, (they went to the laundromat once a week which I find incredible), I could not manage that way. I had to have my own washer and dryer. LOL So, since the house is so small, that second bedroom was the only real option for the hook-ups for the washer, dryer and water heater. Once we put that stuff in there, you couldn’t have fit a bed if you tried. LOL So, we decided that it would suffice as an office/laundry room for us. We’ve replaced the carpets with wood floors, replaced the windows and eventually found an elusive leak in the roof and repaired it. That brings us to the more recent remodeling last month.

I’m always looking for better ways to make use of the small space that we have in our house, and so my husband designed some wonderful cabinets to make this room more functional. Then we replaced the drywall on the ceiling and I got to texture and paint. He finally did the last of the finish work on the trim and handles this week. Here are a few of pictures that I did remember to take.

Mid-way through the project…

And now that it’s finished…

One of my favorite parts of this room now is the extra shelving now for the fleece for the toys I make for Sheltie Rescue of Utah. I love having it all organized and easy to access. This used to be a plain old closet (back when this was a bedroom).

The cabinets around the washer and dryer are awesome too! I can’t wait till we can finish the doors on these cabinets. They are still just the extra laminate doors, not the real wood doors like the rest of the room, but it’s still so nice to have everything behind doors now.

Now that my husband is finished with this project, my parents want him to come up and install some laminate flooring that my older brother bought for them last year. I’m really curious to see how it stands up over time with their dogs. I keep thinking that when we have to replace the floors here…waaay down the road, I’d like to go with a new sustainable floorslike bamboo. Of course, I think that we’ll probably be waiting a while before we do any more remodeling here. But in the meantime, I’m thrilled that my husband had the time to finish this room!

So, I keep hearing about how important a good warm-up routine can be for agility. I have to say that I’ve never really concentrated much on it with Zoe. But with Layla and Dare I don’t want to take anything for granted and I want to help them anyway I can. I especially worry about Layla. Ever since she came up lame for no reason that I could see, I’ve been worried about her injuring herself again. I was intrigued by Diana and Miley’s trip to see Debbie Gross Sanders and to attend her seminar. I would love to know more about what kind of warm-up routine she recommended, but I do know that one thing that Diana mentioned was having Miley weave through her legs. So…with a little help from Ricky we were able to find a video to help me figure out how to train that behavior.

Anyway, this is just a silly short video of different skills Dare has been working on, including weaving through my legs. I don’t know if any of them would work into a good warm-up routine or not, but I figure it can’t hurt to teach all these different things anyway, and if we don’t end up having a use for them, oh well!

I just hate cutting back on things. I’m not a big shopper in general, but I do splurge on my dogs. Right now though, I’m fluctuating between resigning myself to the fact that I need to change our plans for trialing the next little while…and then fighting to figure out a way to still do some of the trials, even though it’s not really very realistic. So, I’m looking for any other areas that I can cut back that don’t affect my dog stuff. LOL

Tuesday my husband went in and filed for unemployment, while I sat at home and went through the bills trying to figure out where we could cut back. It’s funny his gut reaction is to buy stuff when we don’t have extra money, and mine is the opposite…well, except for the dog stuff, I think I already mentioned that. LOL I’m ready to start looking at all the free online coupons out there to see if I can save money. Meanwhile, I keep watching to see if he’s going to get on Ebay or Amazon or something and buy some little electronic thing because it makes him feel better. I’m going to have to hide the Best Buys coupons from him.

I don’t think that we’ll be needing any restaurant coupons anytime soon. I did notice when I went over our expenses that one of the places we tend to waste money is on eating out. Not at fancy nice places, but just grabbing junk fast food on the run. We’ve been doing better since we’ve been trying to get back on track with eating better, but still it seems to really be a place I think we could cut back. Anyway, enough boring talk about cutting back, I promise to post something more interesting about training with the dogs later today!