Obama's new dog

Well it sounds like they have made a decision. Great news for puppy sales for the breeders as I'm sure they will become quite popular. BUT.............bad news for Ryan. He won't be able to visit the White House as we all know that three times a charm. Even when it comes to getting bit by Portugese Water Dogs. :)

The Day of the Neuter

The big day has come, Happy went in for his "operation". I have mixed feelings on this but the main thing is it is an operation and I was quite uneasy with him going "under". Alas, he's out and, although very groggy, doing well. Here's a chronicle of our last 24 hours:

The night before we all hung out and played & ate:

In the morning we took a nice little "walkie" and loaded Happy into the car. Oz was sad he didn't get to go... ohhhhh if only he knew.

Mom comes to get me:

At home with my loving family:

Tom sat and watched Happy for

a good 10 minutes, just watching. Then.... the big question that only a brother could ask an ailing sibling:

We're all good now. Happy is resting comfortably, Tom is up on Davids bed waiting for a pet-fest and Oz is getting everything cuz Happy isn't there to play with him or tattle.

My website

This is a totally unashamed plug for my new website and training business, Westhill Kennels.

The website is:
www.westhilldogtraining.com

I am still updating text, finding more pictures, trying to make breederoo.com (the sitebuilding and hosting service) recognize my photos, and updating links to my friend's pages (some of my friend's dogs already appear there, or will soon!), so keep checking back. More importantly, spread it far and wide, I am now attempting to step into this full-time and would like to have 1-2 board and train dogs all the time, along with having a regular set of home-visit training clients.

The nice thing-

about caring for a dog wearing an E collar is that he can't destroy anything.

I usually have to have foam dog beds covered securely (zipped into a bed cover) to avoid them being chewed on. I wouldn't normally leave Rain on the type of stringy ground mat we use at shows unsupervised, lest he decide to unravel it. I usually have the kennel gate barred off with an ex-pen lid so that he can't stand on his hind legs and open it with his nose.

Tonight will be the first time I've left him since his surgery Sunday night- I have to go to a meeting and there is no way to take him. All week he's been staying in a 6x4 kennel at work while I'm there, and a 4x4 expen while I'm home. Each time I go outside to feed the horses, he pushes the ex-pen across my room, and once he got out of it (I'm assuming, hoping, that I hadn't locked the sides together that time...).
So for this evening, I have set up the indoor portion of his indoor/outdoor kennel for him. It's chain-link and walls, 8x6 feet. I blocked the dogdoor to the outside with a board and a cinder block- normally he'd use his nose to move that, but now he doesn't have a functioning muzzle. I cleaned and swept the matted floor, worried about dust irritating his eye, then realized that I can lay my ground cover on the floor because he won't be able to grab it. I don't have to worry about him opening the gate- again, no working muzzle.
Other than that he can't have any chewies (if they fall into the collar he can't get them out and freaks out going backwards and upside down- THAT was a fun repair of the ex-pen), I feel really good about leaving him alone in this situation.

So good, in fact, that perhaps I'll use the E collar after he's healed when I want to leave him home alone and loose. I may have just stumbled upon a wonderful training tool....

Oliver daughter a new AKC Champion

Here is CHAMPION Calypso Ladybank as a baby at home in Sonoma County.
Congratulations to our dear friends Lorin and Otis on their first home bred champion. Greta won Best of Winners last Saturday at the Northern California Cairn Terrier Specialty for a 4 point major and the last points she needed to become a champion.
I am so glad I got to be there to see her finish!

Update on THE Rain... of Northern California

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_11719386?source=rss

Pat and I drove down to San Jose last Thursday for the Northern California Cairn Terrier Club specialty. We were looking forward to the lovely balmy Bay Area weather. What we got was quite different! While we were there, they got more rain fall than anytime in the last 30 months! The good news was that the rain did not dampen our joy at being with our friends and our little puppies did a very good job in the show ring. They were the youngest entered and I knew there was that likelyhood, but who could pass up the chance of some California sunshine?

Update on Rain

A picture is worth how many words?



It was worse than we thought when they put him under last night, they called to say they put dye on his eyeball and it came out in his mouth. Kinda cool, huh? Except there really shouldn't be a pathway from eyeball to mouth. So the long part is a drain for that puncture and the top part is the stitches.

At least this gave me a great reason to leave work early today.... he was sitting in a kennel in the boarding room while I was working and they were trying to find someone to come in for me, and a new client wanted a tour of the facility, so the manager said, "well, it's going to look a little like a vet's office back here, just don't look at this dog if it grosses you out..." immediatly after that they sent us home.

Country living-

is not all it's cracked up to be.

Rain's at the emergency vet right now getting stitches underneath his eyelid (eww, right?) because the neighbor's dogs broke INTO MY FENCE and fought with him. Yes. Into my fence. They made a hole in the garden fence, got into there, harassed my chickens, then slipped through the garden gate into my yard. Where they fought with Rain and guess who ends up at the hospital? The dog who NEVER LEFT HIS OWN YARD.

All this was about 30 minutes after Rain got home, since I spent last week travelling and he spent it driving my parents nuts.... I heard the dogfight and went to the door, when I yelled the two blue heelers jumped off Rain, scurried back through the garden gate and out a new hole on the other side, putting them back out on my driveway where they could run the 1/4 mile to their house.

I called the neighbor at that point and she offered to both pay a vet bill and send her husband over to fix the fence. I told her I didn't think he needed a vet and went off to a meeting. When I came home, his eye was swollen shut and there were puddles of leaking fluid on his crate pad. I put him in the car and called the neighbor to say that I'd stop at her house so she could see him before we went to the vet, and she said that she'd come over right after I called the first time, that my roommates let her in and she took a picture of Rain, and she didn't think he needed a vet. I said she should see him now and see if she still felt that way, and she went on and on about "abrasions" and "look bloody but nothing a vet can fix."

By the time we got to the vet he couldn't see enough to jump out of the car or avoid being hit by the door. Two hours of waiting at the vet, a four-minute exam by the vet, and they said I could either wait and try to sleep in the waiting room, or come pick him up in the morning. They know they need to put him under to stitch part of his eyelid, and they have to put drops in his eye to tell if the eyeball itself is damaged. The low estimate, just the surgery with no damage to eyeball, is $550.

Tomorrow he will have to come to work with me and sit in a crate with a cone on his head. I asked for Ace, lots of it, and the vet said, "of course. I wouldn't send a Malinois home without it."

Hooray for Smarty Marty!

Smarty Marty, alias Joywood's Back to the Future at Kinloch, alias Jimmy, Kinloch's High Hope's BFF, was named BOB today...February 14 at the Albany Show!
Congrats to Barb and Vicki!!
Love, Zoe and Cindi

Not again!

We woke up to snow this morning. Not much, but more than was forcast. Delayed school, snarled traffic....Ah, the Northwest at it's best!

Wow, look at these numbers....

From 28 November 2008 until 9 February 2009
There is a counter that tells how many visits and what countries...
United States (US)895
Thailand (TH)4
United Kingdom (GB)2
Canada (CA)2
Japan (JP)2
Switzerland (CH)1
Poland (PL)1
India (IN)1
Singapore (SG)1
Malaysia (MY)1
Dominican Republic (DO)1
Brazil (BR)1
Israel (IL)1
This blog has had over 6000 visits since we started it! Wow!

Puppy Love

We had to share these photos of Zoe's cousin Sadie, the designer dog, with my niece, Maren.

Another good surgery

Kula had her second ACL surgery today.

The doctor said that everything went really well. The ACL was completely gone and there was a little damage to the miniscus which he cleaned up, then recreated the ligament for her left knee. The final test which was to make sure the nerves were all functioning was successful. The vet called me tonight at about 7:00 to let me know the good news. If all goes as it should from here, she may be training in agility again in July or August!