it's a fuzzy fuzzy world…

posts from the heartland, about dogs, cats, fire departments, and gaming

Nick, Debbie and Pete

Posts Tagged ‘dogs’

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Toller Backyard Classic Results — Best Wet Dog Contest

Backyard Classic Inaugural Wet Dog Contest was a big hit with the spectators! Dogs were entertainingly frustrated by being able to see their compatriots playing in the lake while they were in the ring. It was a very vocal group! 🙂

Full (unofficial!) results are as follows:

Dogs, 0 to 6 Months
1st — Bruiser — Left Field Bleacher Bum Beekauz
2nd — Jinx — Curse of the Goat Beekauz

Dogs, 6 Months to Under 2 Years
1st — Chief — Rebel Yell Beekauz
2nd — Danger — Vermilion’s Critical Level WC RA BN

Dogs, 2 Years to 7 Years (tough class with 11 entries!)
1st — Ryno — GCH Javahill Vermilion Sky Beekauz
2nd — William — CH Shamrock’s Braveheart
3rd — Chester — Springvale Chester Bruce Almighty
4th — London — Shamrock’s London MH WCX

Dogs, 7 Years Plus
1st — Striker — Redwyn’s All Fired Up

Bitches, 0 to 6 Months
1st — Cheers — Vermilion’s Ring in the New of TNT
2nd — Cara — JBS Splash of Ivy Beekauz
3rd — Hope — Wait Til Next Year Beekauz

Bitches, 6 Months to Under 2 Years
1st — Tazer — GB’s Red Hot Electric Shock
2nd — Kata — Lakota’s On Fire
3rd — Jade — Roaneden’s CDN Gem O’Fourwinds

Bitches, 2 Years to Under 7 Years
1st — Avery — CH Beinnbhreaghs Beautiful Disaster
2nd — Angelina — Shamrock’s Evangeline
3rd — Ali — Keepsake’s Brave Trip
4th — Trinidad — Seastar’s Island Dream 4 Duckpin NAJ NA RE BN

Bitches, 7 Years Plus
1st — Splash — Springvale Mt. Moriah Whitecap
2nd — Daphanie — Penny Slots from Nova’s Power
3rd — Ginger — CH Vermilion’s High Roller WCI CD RN

BEST WET TOLLER
Cheers — Vermilion’s Ring in the New of TNT

BEST OF OPPOSITE
Ryno — GCH Javahill Vermilion Sky Beekauz

Thanks to Sue Dorscheid for marking my book for me and Kristina Curren for checking my work once I got it all typed out. 🙂

Toller Backyard Classic Results — Friday field tests

Unofficial BYC results (I think I got ’em right, but I’m just a spectator! :-))

Backyard Classic Working Certificate Excellent had three qualifiers out of five entries:

London — Shamrock’s London MH WCX, handled by Jason Cyr
Kilo — CH Springvale’s A Ton of Fun MH, handled by Kelly Barry
Cash — CH Keepsake’s Not Left to Chance JH WCX, handled by Kelly or Rusty Lannin (sorry, I don’t remember which!)

WCI had nine qualifiers out of 13 dogs who ran:

Vermililion’s Z Ties One on W Lakota — handled by Paul Kartes
Seven — Redwyn’s Pleiades Bright Star, handled by Bev Keith
Jarvi — Urania’s Heart of Gold Jarvi, handled by Corinne Williams
Striker — Redwyn’s All Fired Up, handled by Bev Keith
Cruz — Lakota’s Southern Cross, handled by Paul Kartes
Vermilion’s XSP Red Dog Juneau, handled by Kevin Pozzi
Hollis — Rock Ridge’s Chilkoot Hollis WC, handled by Tony Grabski
Scandal — Redwyn’s Talk of the Town, handled by Sue Miller
Grizzly — Hunts Points Grizzly Rock, handled by Ben Mott

WC had eight qualifiers out of 18 entries:

Seven — Springvale’s Riding Shotgun, handled by Sue Dorscheid
Avery — CH Beinnbhreagh’s Beautiful Disaster, handled by Kelly Schur
Angelina — Shamrock’s Evangeline, handled by Jean Gilroy
Trinidad — Seastar’s Island Dream 4 Duckpin NAJ NA RE BN, handled by Amanda Kaiser
Candra — Vermilion’s Celestial Candra, handled by Mark or Lisa Blau or Paul Kartes
Shaun — Urania’s Double McTwist to Gold, handled by Corinne Williams
Libby — CH Vermilion’s Shower of Shamrocks, handled by Jean Gilroy
Vermilion’s Absolute Brilliance, handled by Kathy Koebensky-Como

BRT had two qualifiers (5-mo-old littermates) out of nine entries:

Cheers — Vermilion’s Ring in the New of TNT, handled by Kathy Koebensky-Como
Zoe — Vermilion’s Zorochat Chasama of TNT, handled by Kathy Koebensky-Como

Dogs in snow…

We finally got enough snow to take pictures, instead of just the little dustings we had earlier in the winter. Since this was Petey’s first real snow, I naturally had to take pictures. The shot of Petey play-bowing at a stick may be one of my favorite pics of him so far… it completely captures his personality and his boundless enthusiasm for play.

Oh dear…

So I’m spending some quality time with Petey this evening, where he’s the only dog loose in the main part of the house with me, and I discovered some interesting things.

First… he’s firmly convinced, from months of playing fetch with Nick, that fetch should be a contact sport, in which I’m the quarterback, Nick is the wide receiver who goes out for the long pass, and Petey is the defensive tackle who body blocks Nick, causes a fumble and steals the ball. The first time I threw his hedgehog for him tonight, he just stared at Nick (who was in the crate) and looked thoroughly confused about not having a receiver to block. He did get the hang of it pretty quickly, but it’s clear that I need to do a lot more one-on-one work w/ Mr. Pete on retrieving.

Second… he’s really used to having a playmate to keep him occupied. That can be me, or it can be Nick, and in the absence of either of us, he creates his own fun. I came up from downstairs just in time to see Petey vault onto the dining room table (which is bar-height… so substantially taller than your average table), where he proceeded to come nose-to-nose with a very startled Fiddler, who quickly gave way to allow Petey unimpeded access to the cat food*.

Good grief.

This is going to require a whole new level of puppy-proofing!

* Yes, the cat food is on the dining room table. I usually eat in the living room. The cats’ food bowl is on the dining room table to keep it out of reach (until now) of the dogs.

Belated introductions… Petey and Nick

Wow… has it really been 10 months since my last post here? Oops. A lot has happened in that time… I got involved with my local volunteer fire department back in May, which has taken up a lot of my time. Trevor (foster dog from previous post) was with me ’til September, when he moved to another foster home after I broke my leg. He’s now been adopted and has his very own forever family, and I’m out of the fostering game for a little while, because (bringing us neatly to the reason for this post) I added a new puppy to the pack in August, and his dad is also living with me for awhile.

Petey at MuseCon

Petey thought the comfy dog bed provided by the MuseCon hotel was an excellent place for a puppy nap.

I hadn’t really planned on getting a puppy “right now,” but when one of my favorite Toller males was bred and I had a shot at the “most Nick-like” puppy in the litter, I really couldn’t resist. I drove up north of Toronto to spend some time with the litter and promptly fell in love. I never name puppies ’til I meet them, but I’d been thinking about possible names before I went to Canada… and while I was there… and on the way home. I kept trying out possibilities and finally it all came together.

See, the naming of dogs is an interesting game. Frequently, the breeder wants their kennel name in the registered name. And sometimes there’s a theme. In this case, both applied, so I knew I needed a name that related in some way to Newfoundland (where the breeder, Kristina’s, grandmother was from) and I needed to include “Florence Grove” (the kennel name). I don’t have a kennel name, since I don’t breed, but I’ve used “SwampWater” in all my boys’ names, so I was hoping to continue that trend. Of course, AKC only allows 30 letters, and I was using up most of them with Florence Grove and SwampWater. Hmmm… and I still needed to tie all this to Newfoundland.

So I did my homework on Newfoundland, looking for things that could tie into a swampy name, and that were short, since I was almost out of letters. Somewhere along the way, I encountered pirates and started looking at pirate names, then my friend Amy pointed out that pirates hang out in coves, and everything fell together. The registered name became “Florence Grove SwampWater Cove” (there’d’ve been an “‘s” after “Grove” if I hadn’t been out of space) and the working idea for a call name was something related to famous Newfoundland pirate turned folk hero, Peter Easton. “Easton” was my original choice, but after I hung out with him for awhile, it was clear that Easton was entirely too serious for this puppy, so he became “Pete” or, more often, “Petey.”

Nick at MuseCon

Papa Nick really preferred my bed over the dog bed.

Along the way, we decided that papa Nick was going to come visit the States for awhile in search of his AKC championship (he has his Canadian championship, and a five-point major in the AKC from before he moved to Canada), so when I headed home, I had little fluffball Pete and his dad. We spent exactly three days at home before loading up in the car again and heading off to MuseCon, a small sci-fi convention in Chicago, focused on music and art and other forms of creativity. What better place to do some puppy socialization, right? A dog-friendly hotel, and a convention full of people who I knew and knew were puppy-safe. So we piled me, Petey in his crate, my friend Jen, her daughter Maddie (in a car seat) and Nick (sharing the back seat with Maddie) all in my Beetle and we headed off to Chicago. It was quite possibly the best puppy adventure ever. Petey had a grand time, being passed from person to person, dancing on marble floors with little girls, and utterly charming the burly off-duty Chicago cop who was working security for the hotel when we went out for our 2 a.m. potty break. The dogs even got convention badges of their very own, which they wore any time we were out-and-about in the hotel.

Nick & tiny puppy Petey

Petey was so little when he first came home...

After a couple of weeks at home, Petey was settling in and learning house manners and general puppy stuff, and Nick was being the calm voice of doggy reason (and, I might add, an excellent role model). We’d made our first trip to meet my vet, visited the office (where he sprawled on the cool tile floor in the Mac Lab and accepted adulation from everybody who came in to visit) and then life took an unexpected turn… I went to a fire department training day, had a bit of an altercation with a firehose, and found myself with a broken ankle. Four days later, I was scheduled for surgery and all the dogs (my permanent three, visiting Nick, and foster Trevor) where whisked off to board with a friend who raises German Shorthaired Pointers. For most of the next six weeks, the dogs were in boarding and I was non-weight-bearing. I’m extremely thankful for the fact that Christy was able to take the dogs (there was no way I could deal with stairs and bouncy dogs on just one foot) and that she kept Petey well socialized. As much as I hated missing those weeks of his puppyhood, he came home a well adjusted, happy, snuggly boy, apparently none the worse for wear after his unexpected trip to camp. 🙂

And now, because this has gotten long and is threatening to turn into a novel-length post, I’ll stop. We’ll continue the saga in a later post!