Easy Rider

Every Thursday evening, Jazz and Sammie go to class together. Tess usually stays home with Jim. Yesterday, Jim was in Philadelphia for work, and since I didn't want to leave Tess at home all evening after being home all day while I was at work, she went to spend the evening with her "Uncle Jim." Tess got to go walking in the park with Jim, and since we take my car to class, she got to ride in Jim's van in Rocky's special seat, wearing Rocky's seatbelt harness! I'm sure Tess just loved sitting in the passenger seat facing forward to look out the windshield. She usually rides in the back of my car with a view only of where we've been, not where we're going!

I'm not sure how Rocky's going to feel once he realizes that a silly spotted girl was riding in HIS seat and wearing HIS harness. Rocky is 14 years old, and while his trips to the park to walk may be over, he is still about the coolest dog in the world, which is why I nicknamed him John Wayne! He is wonderfully calm and confident, and both my girls are very respectful of Rocky. Thanks, buddy, for allowing Tess to ride in your seat and spend the evening with your Dad at the park. Thanks, too, to Uncle Jim for taking Tess to the park so she didn't have to spend the evening home alone!

Tess - MX! ** Jazz - NAJ!

We had a wonderful titling weekend at the Westmoreland County Obedience Training Club agility trial! On Saturday, Tess started out with a 4th place Q in FAST. Then she went on to qualify in Excellent B Standard to earn her Master Agility Excellent (MX) title!! Woo-hoo, Tess!

After working so hard to earn that MX title, Tess took a well-deserved mental vacation and didn't qualify the rest of the weekend. She needs two more legs for her MXJ title, so we're hopeful that she'll finish that before the end of the year.

Jazz had a great weekend, too. On Saturday, she qualified in Novice FAST and got a 1st place qualifying score in Novice JWW! Then on Sunday, she got a 3rd place Q in Novice FAST. Today, she got another 1st place Q in Novice JWW, earning her Novice Agility Jumpers title with three 1st place legs! Jazz also got a 1st place Q in Novice Standard today, with just one more leg to go for her NA title. Not bad for a baby dog!!

Of course, the girls had a fun time visiting with all their friends this weekend. A few of our buddies have puppies, and both Tess and Jazz enjoyed a little puppy play time, especially with Katie, our friend Linda's adorable little Cocker Spaniel pup. While we're sorry to see summer go, we had an enjoyable Labor Day weekend at the trial.

Ohiopyle

Since most of the summer has been hot and humid and today was predicted to be a sunny day in the mid to upper 70s, Jim and I decided to take the day off of work and take Tess and Jazz to Ohiopyle State Park.

Here are the girls in the falls area of Ohiopyle. You can see part of the falls behind them to the left.

Tess and Jazz enjoyed a fair amount of frolicking in the water below the falls.



Tess and Jazz on one of the large rocks near the water.




One of the big treasures of the day was this large stick that the girls played with. Amazing how a floating piece of debris can be so much fun!!




Tess would even swim out and retrieve the stick!



Jazz with some of the local flora.

After the girls romped in the water, we enjoyed a picnic lunch and headed out to hike on the trails. Here's one of the two large bridges we crossed on the trail. These bridges are actually former railroad bridges converted for hiking and biking on a portion of trail that connects the Pittsburgh area with the Washington, DC, area (we didn't hike quite that far)!

Here's the view of the river from the bridge where we were hiking. We had a most enjoyable day with Tess and Jazz at Ohiopyle. The weather was perfect and the girls enjoyed playing in the water and hiking in the woods. Sure beats going to work!!

Tess' Perfect Weekend

Tess and Jim had a perfect weekend in CPE agility at the Splash 'n Dash K9 Sports trial over the weekend. Tess had 9 qualifying runs over two days and is now just 3 runs away from her C-ATCH, which is the championship in CPE. Jazz also did well, qualifying in 7 out of 9 runs over the weekend.

To make the weekend even more special, our friend Leslie and her Keeshond Kiwi earned their C-ATCH. Leslie and Kiwi are the first team from Splash 'n Dash, our training club, to get a C-ATCH, and it was so cool that they did it at our trial. Congratulations, Leslie and Kiwi!!

There's a Storm a Brewin'

Meet JLS Storm a Brewin', "Twister," our friend Susan's 3-1/2-month-old Dal puppy! We were at USDAA agility this weekend and finally got to meet this sweet, handsome liver baby.

Here's Twister stretched out in the cool grass.

Jazz was completely enthralled with little Twister. At first, she was a bit jealous that I was paying attention to him, but she quickly found out that he's lots of fun to play with!


There was lots of play bowing and chewing on each other.


I was really pleased with how well Jazz did with Twister. Although we have no puppy plans, it's nice to know that Jazz would accept a puppy and have fun, too!




While Jazz and Twister were getting to know each other, Tess and Twister's big brother Ripley were running agility at a USDAA Dog Agility Masters Tournament. It's a team competition, and our original team was supposed to be Tess, Ripley, and our adopted Border Collie Sammie. The team name was "Dalmatian Sammich" (two Dalmatians with Sammie sandwiched in between). Well, Ripley's owner had a knee injury a few weeks ago, but she was going to work hard in physical therapy and tape her knee so she could run on the team. Unfortunately, Sammie's owner fell the week of the tournament and broke her wrist in two places, so she couldn't run Sammie on the team. Then the day after she broke her wrist, I ended up in the emergency room with kidney stones! We were a medical disaster!!




Fortunately for our team, a friend with another Border Collie named Seeker stepped in to fill Sammie's place on the team. Since Jan is an EMT and we had had so many medical emergencies, we changed the team name to "Rescue 911"! Susan managed to hobble through the courses with Ripley, who ran incredibly well for having an injured handler, and Tess and Seeker ran nicely and "Rescue 911" came in third place in the team competition, earning a very nice bronze medal.



As for me, I spent the two days at the trial drinking gallons of water, visiting the ladies room, and playing with the puppy :)

Splash 'n Dash Luau

This past Sunday, our training club, Splash 'n Dash, held a summer luau. We enjoyed beautiful weather and had lots of fun with our friends and their dogs!

Here's Tess in her Hawaiian shirt and Jazz in her grass skirt

Rocky, Tess, Jazz, and Sammie enjoying the sunshine

Everybody in the pool!

Obedience Class Today

Jazz's Misty Pines obedience class met at Wexford Plaza Shopping Center today for some real-world obedience training.

We practiced heeling with all the distractions of an outdoor shopping plaza, as well as sits and downs. Here's Jazz in a sit-stay at the flower shop. All the dogs wound their way through the flower shop past all the plants, which was probably more of a challenge for the boys than the girls :)


Then it was off to the pet store, where we had to leave the dogs in down-stays in the aisles while we shopped!


Here's the whole lineup of dogs from our class at the plaza.

We ended our class with down-stays at Starbuck's. All the dogs stayed in a down outside while our instructor treated us to a drink at Starbuck's. Jazz did very well with all the distractions and the other dogs and I'd say she passed Shopping 101 with flying colors! It was a great experience to take our training on the road and practice in a different environment. I hope we have the opportunity to do it again soon!