It's That Time of Year Again

Despite the wet weather we have been having (how easy it is to forget the odd really nice day we get once in a while, when that day is overshadowed by the more frequent wet ones) the strawberries are actually ripening.  The strawberry season here in B.C. is pretty brief, so you have to get 'em while you can.

So today I brought home 40 lbs.  I'll need to get another 80 to 100 lbs to have enough to get me through until next year's strawberry season.

This year's would have tasted better if they had had more sun though.  But despite the rain, they didn't look too bad.

They are washed, hulled and bagged and into the freezer they go.

The gooseberries are ripe too.  There are 10 lbs in this flat. 

Just about every gooseberry has a stem and a dried up blossom that has to be removed.  It takes a long time to go through all those berries, and it's especially onerous with the little ones.  It makes a great jam though.  I'll probably get another 20 or 30 lbs.  The gooseberries and still waiting to be topped and tailed.  Any volunteers?

The weather certainly isn't helping a lot of the garden, but some

things are finally getting to the edible stage.  We have had a couple of meals of new potatoes and broccoli.

New potatoes, a little butter, some salt and pepper, mmmmmm.........

Regional Wrap-up

Here's some shots from the top of the grandstands of the 6 agility rings.  It was a lunch break, so there wasn't much action.  I so wished I had taken these photos yesterday when it was a beautiful day, and the white peak of Mt. Baker in Washington State dominated the background of the second picture. 

Today started and ended quite nice, weather wise, but we had some rain in between.

Today things kind of fell apart.  In our first class, it was all going great, including Jake going over the teeter with no problems.  I wasn't even thinking about it, and he hit the dog walk and bailed off half way up the up plank.  Put him back on, did the same thing, 5 times in total, and who knows how much longer it would have gone if I hadn't elected to take the 20 fault 'non completion' penalty and move on.  That was right before a tricky bit, and I was a bit flustered at this point, so then messed up the tricky bit and he got a 20 point 'off course'.  Add to that the amount we were over time and he got about 75 penalty points on that run, leaving us with 25 points.  Yuk.  Compare that to the 115 points he got on the same type of run yesterday.

The next class was jumpers, so there are no dog walks or teeters in there to worry about.  I had meant to put my cleats on, but forgot, and when I did remember, didn't think I had enough time.  I wasn't too worried though, as I had been fine in the first class, and the grass was still dry at this point.  So what do I do but slip, and right at the tricky bit while I was doing a front cross.  I am laid on my side on the grass, and can see Jake on the other side of a jump.  I tell him to jump, which he does (good boy Jake!) and I manage to scramble to my feet and we continue on and finish clean and under time.  Yay!  84 points to the good on that one.

The last class was gamblers, with a tricky gamble that was tight for time.  He did great in the opening, getting three and a half (we ran out of time) mini gambles.  We were close to the start of the final gamble when the buzzer went, but he decided to take another tunnel.  So valuable time wasted, and then he took the second obstacle of the gamble wrong, so we were whistled off.  I don't think we had enough time at that point to get it finished anyway, as one of the obstacles was the teeter, and he isn't terribly fast on that.

There were 32 dogs in his division, and yesterday he finished 2nd in jumpers and 5th in the standard and gamblers runs.  At the end Saturday he was third overall in his division.

Today he was fourth in his jumpers run.  At the end of the weekend he finished 8th overall in his division, 2 placings off the podium.  Darn, he would have looked good up there!

Last year he finished in third place:)  Anyway, he ended up with about 428 points, so not too bad, and easily qualified for Nationals which are being held at Spruce Meadows (Calgary) in August.  I think we are going!

Those Shelties make good lap warmers

It was mostly sunny at that point.  Jake kept working their way so he could lay in the shade.  He was one tired dog.

We were watching the finalists in Steeplechase. That was a fun class added with a $500 prize to the winner. It was exciting to watch.  There were some amazingly fast dogs.

A seat with more of a view, at the closing ceremonies.

And with his Nationals Qualifying ribbon 

And with buddy Kozmo

But those ribbons are really meant to be toys, aren't they?

Regionals - Day 2

It went really well today, I'm almost afraid to say anything in case I jinx us for tomorrow.  You are required to get 350 points to qualify for Nationals, and Jake has approx. 280 already, and we are only half way through.

It was a bit of a rocky start with our first class and first obstacle.  It was a Gamblers class, and I started with the dogwalk which was worth 5 points.  I purposely started him at an angle to it, as he has reoccurring teeter issues, and I was hoping that he would be able to see enough of it to realize it wasn't the teeter (even though I call it something else).  Anyway, I raced to the other end, obviously NOT keeping my eye on my dog.  I heard the spectators gasp, and he had bailed off the up plank of the dogwalk.  That kind of threw me for a loop, but we continued on and it went well for the most part after that, with him doing an awesome gamble. 

The next class was Standard, and I thought I was really going to have to baby him over the teeter and dog walk, but he was okay with them.  A clear round and 14 seconds under time, so we got 14 bonus points.

Jumpers was the last class, and he got a clear round there also, and more bonus points for being well under time.  Good boy Jake!  Let's hope we can continue the success tomorrow.

Regionals - Day 1

Day 1 at the agility championships.  Today was consisted of a couple of practice runs which I entered, and a couple of steeplechase runs that I didn't.  It started out raining, but finally mid afternoon the sun appeared.

I got to schmooze with some celebrities today.  Fans of Wootube! will recognize the Flamboyance and Flambe of the WooTwoo!  In fact, I got to be Wootie's personal masseuse for a few minutes.  Let me tell you, they are smaller in person than they appear in their pictures.  I can only hope that I am also smaller in real life.

And Woo can jump like a pogo stick:)

About 5:30 or so we had the opening ceremonies, with the flag bearers being a couple of fellows and their dogs that were in the first Regionals in 2001.  I know that the border collie Kylie is running again this year.

We all paraded around the track, or at least some of the 411 dogs that are entered did.

There were poodles in all sizes.

Standard Poodles

The one laying down is Shae.  She and Calli used to be in the same agility class about 8 years ago.  Shae is 13 now.

Miniatures

And Toy Poodles

In the meantime, Larry helped with some course building while the ceremony was going on.

And Jake found it all kind of boring.

The real competition begins tomorrow.

 Hopefully it goes decently for us!

BC/Yukon Regional Agility Championships

Abbotsford News - Canines compete this weekend
http://www.alphadog.ca/bcyr2010/

Jake and I will be there, wish us luck:)

Calli's Story

In a couple of my posts I have made a passing reference to Calli having mobility issues. 

Today is exactly four years since the accident happened. 

Prior to that, in the late summer of 2005, she had her first major medical issue.  We were at the farmers market in White Rock.  We had gone early to set up, so that I had time to get some flower bouquets made up before the market started.  Larry took Calli and Jake to a park to play ball.  At the park, while scooping a ball up from the grass, she caught her lower jaw on a concrete water valve box that was protruding an inch or so above the ground.  She lost a lot of teeth, and fractured her bottom jaw about an inch from the front.  I drove her back home to our vet who was available that Sunday morning.  She had two surgeries, one to get the jaw wired back together, and one to remove a canine tooth that was interfering with another.  Six weeks later she went under again to have the wiring removed.  It was a long time before I felt comfortable with her fetching a ball or chewing on a bone.

There are a lot of teeth missing in her upper jaw, and some in the bottom as well.

In the spring of 2007, she dealt with three abscesses behind her eye (retro bulbar abscesses).  The first one was causing her a lot of pain, and it was drained.  Even after it healed up, she did not seem right.  She didn't want to open her mouth wide enough to pick up the ball.  A month later her head swelled up again, and the abscess was drained once more.  The vet said it was a sterile abscess, there was no infection, and it contained no foreign body.  This time the swelling didn't cause her any pain.  Then it happened again, but this time the hot compresses caused it to weep out through the skin, the swelling went down, and that was the end of it.  The vet wondered if somehow it was related to the accident with her jaw, maybe something out of alignment....?  He couldn't figure it out.

Her worst accident happened June 9, 2006.  It was graduation weekend for David, with Prom that day, and Convocation the next.  Needless to say, our hearts weren't in it.

Here is a little movie I made telling the story.  It is my first attempt with Movie Maker, and I'm pretty happy how it came out.  I won't count the hours I spent on it, fumbling around within the limitations of Movie Maker, trying to figure it out, and then trying to remember how I got there so I could do it again. (I'm not particularly computer savvy).  It's a pretty simplified version of what happened over those couple of months.

I spent hours working her legs, pinching her toes to make the muscles contract so that she kept some muscle tone.

We actually got a wheelchair for her, but between ordering it, and it getting here, she improved enough that she never used it.  We have kept it because we thought she might need it as she aged.  She's nearly 10 1/2 now, and so far so good. 

I still get a warm feeling when I see her bounce around (Calli style).  Life is good:)

Fish and Chips on Tuesdays

At one point when I was a kid, I pretty well knew what we would be having for supper, depending on what day of the week it was.

Sunday was roast beef and yorkshire pudding, with roast potatoes and other veggies.

Monday was cold roast beef with mashed potatoes, baked beans out of a can, cabbage and carrots and/or peas or some other veggie.  A meal I still enjoy now.  There is just something about that cold sliced beef together was a forkfull of mashed potatoes and beans.....

Tuesday was homemade fish and chips.  The fish might have been rock cod that my dad had caught around the breakwater at the end of the White Rock pier.

Wednesday was roast chicken and fresh baked buns, dipped in the drippings in the pan the chicken was cooked in. 

Thursdays, well there my memory fails me.

Fridays we had a stew, which included split green peas, which turned into a mush and coated everything in green.  I thought it was disgusting.  At one point my mother blended it all together, so instead of vegetables and meat coated in green,  it was just green mush.  More disgusting, and I can remember being nagged to eat it.  At some point along the way, Friday's meal turned into liver and onions and fried tomatoes.  I think I liked that.  Which is probably why now when I am making dried liver treats for the dogs, I end up eating quite a bit of it myself.

Saturday was quite often a barbequed chicken purchased from the local Safeway.  My dad loved chicken, (and canned pears).

I'm pretty sure that most meals had a good complement of vegetables added, my mother was pretty fussy that way.

So what got me thinking about all this was that the dogs got fish for breakfast today (Tuesday). 

Well actually they were fish heads.

When I chucked Calli's out on the front lawn, she sniffed it, and then checked around the grass as though to say, isn't there something else *better* here, that maybe she had missed seeing.

Jake got right into his in the garage.

On the back lawn, Luna took a long time eating hers.  In fact I had a shower after feeding them, and she was still eating it when I got out, and she was laying down while she was doing it.  It took her way longer to eat that than it does a chicken quarter.  I was impressed, maybe she will get fish more often.  Luna eats fairly fast, I am always trying to get her to lay down and hold the food in her paws.  She usually prefers to stand up and toss it around in her mouth as she chomps on it.

When we headed out for our walk, we took a couple of buckets, as the salmonberries are just about falling off the bushes, they are so ripe.  We picked two ice cream pails full.

For dessert the dogs had salmonberries. 

Doesn't that just sound so good for breakfast,

salmon heads and salmonberries?

Rather them than me.