9 months

I realize it's summer (not according to Mother Nature, but the calender says so), and I should have galaxies worth of photos to show you, but I don't. The last time I brought out my SLR for a photo shoot was at the end of May. Horrible. Disgraceful. Especially when I have a handsome growing puppy.

At 9 months Reckon is a handful. Clocking in at 59.3 pounds, he's a big handful. He's not a bad dog, he's just exuberant. At 59.3 pound. I've also noticed he's going through a bit of a fear stage. Men are a bit scary. And when in the car he barks at people, dogs, inanimate objects. For the most part he's in a kennel, but if he's tired I'll leave him loose. I also toss cookies when he's loose and sees stuff and doesn't bark. His barking in the house hasn't decreased much. Yayyyy teenagers!

We're still going for 2 hikes a day and I try to do a bit of training with him everyday.
Saturdays we have French Ring Training with Chrystal in Chilliwack. She hasn't seen him since our initial "meeting' back in April. Well, she is impressed. His bite is deep and calm, and gaining confidence! I got him a larger tug to practice with (and save my hands) and he's getting better and better at tugging. I don't expect to get anything trophies or titles, but it gets us out training, and keeps him busy and my sanity in check.

I've also noticed for at least the past month he's started to lose the hair on his nose. At first I thought it was due to him rubbing himself on his kennel or x-pen, but that quickly got nixed. Now if you look at his profile, there is a slight raised bump under where his hair is thinning. Hmmmm. Needless to say tomorrow he is coming into work with me so we can get a skin scrapping sample. He will be knocked out with some good drugs. He's a wiggly happy boy, and won't stay still for a razor blade to the nose. Can't say I blame him...

Now to look at some handsome photos.







Quite a few people have mentioned that his color is darkening too. I see him everyday, so it's hard for me to tell. I'll post some pictures of a few months ago and recently to compare.






From these photos it sure looks like it! I like his black overlay. Hope it sticks around:)

2011 BC/Yukon Regional Championships

This past long weekend the annual BC/Yukon Regional championships took place in glorious Matsqui. It was the first year that I haven't entered Amigo, and it was quite the change.
Who knew running Beezer with a cut pad and no weave poles would be so less stressful?!
Yup, that's right. Instead of entering no one this year, I decided to throw in 20 month old Beezer and see how he did.
Not only did he have a cut pad, no experience with 12 weave poles, but he had also never run outside. On grass. In the rain.

Well, if that little dud puppy doesn't surprise me. He blew me away!!
Our first day was very good. I messed him up in his Standard and put him into the wrong tunnel, but he did all his contacts and had NO problems with 12 weaves:)
His Gamblers was good too, racked up 28 points or so in the opening, but didn't quite get the main gamble. However his Jumpers was uber hard and I didn't think we had a hope in hell. Nailed it! Second place for my boy. Couldn't have been more proud.

Sunday was pouring rain all morning, he had a great Jumpers and Standard run, except for a few boo boos(my fault of course).
Gamblers was good, racked up about 29 points in the opening, but there was no way we would get the main gamble. A starters dog on a 4 obstacle masters gamble? Yeah, well, he got that too. 1.97 over time, but baby dog did it!!!

He also held all his start line stays all weekend. Overall I am more than impressed with Beezer. Except now that I know he can do so well, the pressure is on....





P.S. We were off from qualifying by 45 points or so. We got 313.44 points and you need 350 to qualify for Nationals.

My, my what a huge...

...Post!

A lot has happened this past April. So I'm going to cram it into 1 blog post.

Even though I spend the beginning of April travelling to Vegas for my birthday and onto Scottsdale for a wedding


The dogs and I were up to a lot of stuff too.

On April 2nd, the Beezer was entered into his second agility trial. Even though he didn't have 6 weave poles yet, I entered him into Standard anyways. Regionals is coming up and it never hurts to practice. I also entered him into a Jumpers and Gamblers. Well, my boy is amazing!

Even though he has never seen 6 poles before, he did them anyways! It wasn't all that pretty, but it was enough for a first place and a "Q!"

Jumpers was absolutely beautiful, I was very impressed:) It earned us another first and "Q"


Gamblers was a bit of a gong show, but we still managed to pull it together to get our third First place ribbon and a "Q"

Such a superstar!!


After Vegas, Jess, Jody and I took Ryan, Reckon, Kepler, and Reckon sheep herding.
We went to the same guy we saw before, John. I've decided he's not the guy for us. Beezer is very nervous of the guy, and Reckon is not an easy dog. I was mainly trying to keep him from pulling me off my feet the whole time!





I let John take him for our second round, and although he did warm me he would have to be "firm" with Reckon, he certainly didn't mention hauling him around by his tail!




So between the fact that Beezer is too nervous around John to come towards me, and spends most of his time torn between coming and going, plus the fact that even Reckon was a little nervous of him (and can you blame him?), and even I don't even know what John wants half the time, I've decided to take the boys elsewhere when we herd the woolies again.





Amigo is doing great on Metacam every 3 days. She hasn't been sore at all, even doing her regular hikes!


Reckon isn't putting on weight as fast as I would like, but maybe that's because he's full of my MacBook charger that he chewed. Little F*@$er. That isn't cheap to replace!
April 19th he clocked in at 43.5 lbs. Yesterday he was only at 43.8 lbs.

I've also started to put some cream in his eyes, because they are getting super gunky, green and droopy. Just a few applications and they have improved a ton!

The next few weekend will be busy too. I've managed to talk with 3 people regarding French Ring/Schutzhund. This weekend we meet with a woman who is with the West Coast French Ring Club, and next weekend we meet with Ray Underwood. Both are just going to meet Reckon and see if he has any FR/SchH potential. I'm nervous!

I know he'll win everyone over with his good looks and charm.



Or he'll just run them over.



And finally, Heather and I got the boys together for a play date. Reckon really liked Rudy, but Rudy was a little unsure. So we put them on the couch together where Reckon was a little less intimidating. Cuteness ensued:)






And last but not least, our first family portrait

Is everyone sitting down?

Because I have tremendous news! As of April 20th 2011, exactly 2 months after Reckon came into our family, Beezer and him PLAYED!!!
I have been waiting and anticipating this day since I first thought of bringing a puppy home. Beezer, though I love him very much, is a wee bit special. He is handsome, and smart, yes, but very insecure. I wasn't shocked to see that he wasn't thrilled with the addition of Reckon to the family. He tried very hard, but sometimes puppies get into his personal space, and he can't handle that. And Beezer takes his messages too far.
Anyways, after many stressed encounters and constant supervision, I went to my mom's place to pick up the dogs when I noticed Reckon's neck was soaking wet.
Hmmm,I pondered, water bottle perhaps? (he gets a little over the top when he finds a cat).
So I asked my mom "Did Reckon get sprayed with the water bottle?"

Mom: "no, why?"

Me: "Because his neck is soaking wet"

Mom: "Oh, that must be from when he and Beezer were playing."

Me: *puzzled look* "I'm sorry, I must have misheard that. Come again?"

Mom: "Beezer and Reckon were playing outside."

Me: "You mean Reckon and Amigo"

Mom: "No, Beezer."

Me: "Seriously? But how? When? DETAILS!!!!"

Mom: (not in the least bit aware how big this was): "We were all in the backyard together (after Beezer's second hike) and Beezer was doing his zoomies (a daily occurrence), Reckon would give chase. B would play bow, and Reckon would just stand there, dumbfounded. So B took off running again. More playbows, more dumbfounded looks from Reckon. After their third loop, Reckon playbowed first, Beezer followed and EPIPHANY! B ran towards R, who flipped on his back (he's not stupid) and Beezer proceeds to lay across his chest while chewing on his neck."

I found this hard to believe. I would interupt my mom's story with questions and shocked noises and squealing. I could hardly believe my ears! If only she got it on film.
This was the start of a wonderful thing, and I couldn't have asked for a better belated birthday present.

I bent down to give B a big hug and tell him what a good boy he is, when Reckon wandered over, and Beezer growled at him. Oh well. It's a start!

I later took the gang to my softball game, and was reward by seeing the boys play with my own eyes!

Here's the first video I got of them playing. Amigo is playing with Fritz. She loves him, even though he is 12 years younger than her:) It's cute watching the the brown dogs play and the black dogs play.

May this day go down in history...

...as the first day Reckon lifted his leg to pee!! It was quite an unexpected, but great surprise.

At approximately 9:45pm after agility class, I let the dogs have a pee before getting into the car. The place we do agility is in an industrial building set high up. Therefore, we park below the facility, right next to a large cement wall.

Reckon immediately started to pee when we reached the lower parking level, he was quite close to the cement wall, and I guess that's all it took. Up his left leg went!! He was a little unsteady, but held it for the entire pee. What a big boy!!!

So of course I ran inside to announce his big leg lifting debut. Nobody seemed to be that impressed. I'm curious to see if it continues tomorrow, or if it was a fluke incident.

Sorry, no pictures. Although that would be very impressive if I did have some...

P.S. Beezer was a superstar in class too. His weaves (2 sets of 2) are soooo close to being in a straight line. I don't think he'll be ready for 6 poles this weekend at the trial, but I'm hoping he can have them by Regionals!

training is hard...

...I'm trying to be a good puppy owner. I'm trying to take at least 5 minutes every day and teach Reckon something new, or at least practice some obedience, or fun games. But it's HARD! I get overwhelmed too easily. I know this is supposed to be fun, but there's so much stuff to teach him!! Plus, I'm still working on Beezer's 2by2's, which is going well, except that I may be pushing him a wee bit too far too fast. My head feels like exploding whenever I think about training, so I just don't. Baaaddd momma!

Forget it. I'll just not do anything with anybody. I can unleash fat, out of control, under trained, never reaching their full potential, furry creatures into the civilized world. Don't panic. We'll blend in just fine...


First Amigo is going to suck you into her cookie vortex




Then rip your children to shred. Especially if said children looks like water logged sticks.




But wait!



Here comes Beezer.


He's going to knock you off your feet with his log a la Bam Bam style


Hmmm, maybe not. 'Cause he's a little afraid he may not get it back...




Anyways, here's some videos of Reckon doing some training! His beach pictures suck. He's either barking at someone, or running in circles. In this video we are trying Susan Garrett's game "it's yer choice"

Downtown

Auntie Susan finally got to meet Reckon, and it was love at first sight for both of them!


She got to try walking him around the bustling choas of Denman street. Which basically means she was dragged from person to person, dog to dog...


Awwww.


What's that?? A bird, airplane, a waving hand...??


Maybe a ....Squirrel?


A cold but fun day out on the town.