it's a fuzzy fuzzy world…

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

Nick, Debbie and Pete

Posts Tagged ‘nova scotia duck tolling retrievers’

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.

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!

Foster-dog Trevor learns about life

Tomorrow marks the end of Trevor’s second week here at Reddog Central, and he’s come a long way in a very short time! Big improvements in housebreaking, crate training, knowing his name and the meaning of “No!” and, best of all, being able to play outside with both of my dogs! He’s been on doxycycline for eight days now, so three weeks more ’til he can start his heartworm treatment.

Trevor enjoys the run of the yard

Except for the very first day, he hasn’t tried to mark in the house, but he was tethered to me for all of the first week, so he had very little opportunity. I’ve now received Belly Bands that fit him, so he can have more freedom without me having to worry about the furniture, but I’m not sure they were necessary. He seems to have quickly realized that marking is Not Allowed in the house. He’s had no accidents in his crate after the first couple of days, either, which makes me very happy.

[lj-cut text=”This week’s milestones…”]If he knew his name was Ponzi at the shelter, he certainly doesn’t seem to have been confused by the name change. He didn’t respond much to his name (or any words) for the first few days, seeming to hear everything I said as Charlie Brown’s Teacher-style gibberish… “Wah wah, wah wah, wah wah wah.” “Outside” and “inside” were the first things he started to reliably respond to, and I suspect that something-side just means “go through the nearest door” to him at this point. It works, so I’ll take it. He’s pretending that “kennel up” isn’t in his vocabulary yet, but “Do you want dinner? Kennel up!” pretty reliably gets a response (though he’ll come right back out if his food bowl doesn’t appear immediately). He’s responding to “Good boy!” now, which certainly makes the rest of the training easier. Now we just need to work on leash manners, which should be easier since the snow is gone (again), making the street safe for walking.

Best of all, though, this morning was his first opportunity to interact with Drummer with them both loose out in the yard. The background here is that Drummer is an intact male and fully convinced that he is the alpha critter at my house. Trevor is intact and won’t be neutered until after he goes through heartworm treatment, and he outweighs Drummer by about 10 pounds. Trevor has shown all the signs of being happy to not be alpha, but I like to take my time and manage the introduction carefully, so I let them get used to each other for the first two weeks without actually being loose together, and I’ve been waiting for a good opportunity to make that all-important first real introduction.

Today, I was home from work for the morning dealing with the remnants of water in my basement after Sunday night’s epic rain-and-thaw cycle. It was a lovely day out… sunny, cold enough that the ground was frozen again instead of soggy, and it was a weekday, which meant that if there was an altercation, I wouldn’t be paying emergency vet prices if somebody needed stitches. So I let Thunder and Trevor out first, and they started their normal morning circuit of marking every tree, shrub and fencepost, then I went back in and got Drummer and his Flying Squirrel, draped a couple of my favorite slip leads around my neck Just In Case, and out we went into the sunshine.

Thunder and Trevor were down in the far end of the yard, still making the rounds, and Drummer was totally focused on the Flying Squirrel. I saw him notice that Trevor was outside, but the desire to investigate the new guy was far outweighed by the excitement of waiting for me to “Throw it, Mom! Nownownow… what are you _waiting_ for?!?!?” and we got in several good returns before the other boys came up to investigate. I kept the game going, and watched as Trevor started following along, chasing Drummer as he chased the toy. So far, so good!

Then I made the crucial mistake. One bad toss put Drummer’s favorite toy right at Trevor’s feet. Oops. Trevor reached for the Flying Squirrel. Drummer came zooming up and barreled right into him while making a tunnel-visioned grab for the toy. They looked at each other from opposite sides of 10 inches of orange and blue toy. There was very brief (and very normal!) snark that signified “Hey, new guy, that’s mine!” and it was over. Trevor happily backed off, ceding possession to the fuzzy redhead. And that was it. All my worry about how their first meeting would go and there was just a growl, an acquiescence, and then they continued to play. That couldn’t have gone better!

The boys play in the yard for the first time


With no drama, they come running back to me.

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Next steps… leash manners, “sit,” “wait” and taking treats gently (those last two are related… to each other and to my bruised finger).