Monday, March 7, 2016

Not very long since the last post....

But trying to catch up. As many in the Aussie community know, Thumper is sterile. However I had collected him before the calamity occurred so all hope wasn't lost to see him in future generations. His first frozen litter was in TX last year with breeders Shelly Hollen-Wood (Shalako) and Andrea Torres (Zydeco), resulting in 3 nice puppies, 2 boys and  a girl. The girl, Hummell, is a Red merle and has gone on to Germany to live and show and, eventually, be bred. She held onto her tail as the plan was always so see her off overseas. Shelly and Andrea kept the two tri boys, which are coming along nicely.

Then in December of this past year a litter of 6, borne to AKC/ASCA Ch. Mpossible Warrior Princess CD, cobred by me and MaryAnn Magness. Xena did a lovely job and I traveled out to the west 2 weeks ago to see, and to select a puppy from, the litter. All are lovely, healthy active puppies, and my selection was a handsome balanced blue merle boy now named Tempo (Inkwell's Drumbeat). He favors his daddy in a lot of ways though the blue eyes are quite a new thing for me, and will take time to adjust to, lol.
Sits in Living Room

Tempo has nice foot timing, easy moving


Tempo's first formal stack shot

While out in TX where I met the litter, I traveled to the EASTEX ASCA club's set of shows and showed Tempo for his first experience in the ring, and he did great. No wins but no matter, those will come. Meanwhile his daddy Thumper was along on the trip and Shelly took him into the breed ring at one of the shows where he was BOB and won a stuffed toy I don't think he will get. lol.

Shelly and Thumper looked good in that Texas ring, with judge Tammy Seamans
That catches things up I think. Oh except for this: a brother of Tempo is coming east to join Donna Johnson's household where Sammy, a Thumper brother, lives, and will be destined for an OB, agility and  rally career like Sammy has had. And a sister is coming too, for an ob career with another friend of Donna's. So half the litter will be here in Maryland, which is so marvelous for me!  Pictures of them will no doubt follow.

That's it for now!


so long since we last spoke!!

Wow it has been months without an update, so here comes a very newsy one!

Back in October I packed the entire crew of dogs to go to the ASCA Nationals in Shelbyville, TN, where I set up a booth for art sales and watched the shows. I roomed with Julie Rigby in a converted school bus/RV that she located on AirBnB and it was terrific and fun!
Ribbon and I, oblivious to the danger in the sky behind us. (It was Halloween week). 
I only had Ribbon entered, in veterans, and we did a respectable showing with class placements several times. She looked great though!  Thumper was along for the ride only, as was Ziva.

And Flash. I felt I couldn't leave Flash in someone else's care as he had been having worsening vestibular episodes and his dementia seemed to worsen as well. By Saturday night the first weekend in TN he was deteriorating, with serious confusion and apparent discomfort, despite pain medications and close tending, and the decision to let him go became clear to me. To the end he had an amazing appetite and so he went out with a lovely handful of treats and a lot of hugs and loving from me, with the help of a marvelous vet who came into his office on Sunday to help us along. My sweet old man was 14 years and a few months and I think he had a good life here with me, and hopefully a good death.
The last good photo of my baby, showing his head titl from vestibular disease. 

Anyway with that sadness past, I was also able to watch Julie Rigby's Favor (Satin's littermate) run agility and also show in altered classes. They are a terrific team in both venues and, IMO, should have had more success in the Breed ring than they did, but such are the vagaries of subjective judging. 

I also saw Satin son Ticker, also belonging to Julie, show in the breed ring. He is a lovely little sound dog, but emphasis is on LITTLE here and so his conformation career concludes, lol. He will be a dynamite agility dog though, a rocket. Young still though, not ready for competition for many more months. 
Thats Ticker, up front.
So that was our Nationals week. 

Meanwhile the Satin puppies from the Jimmy breeding are doing well, with Christine's 'Lux' debuting in the Big Boy Breed ring in AKC last month. He showed well but wasn't the judge's cup of tea, but he is very puppyish at this time. I expect he will follow in his Uncle Uno's footsteps as an awesome obedience dog . Which brings me to Uno!

Uno and Lux, doing one of the things they do best.


Uno debuted in the AKC Obedience ring 2 weeks ago, first time for his owner as well, where they garnered a 2nd place in Novice A and a 196 for their first Q! So proud of them both, the owner is an excellent intuitive trainer and has trained all his life just for fun, without any interest in competition until just the past few months, but now is quite fired up!  Stay tuned for further ring reports!!
Uno and his 2nd place ribbon 

I think that is it for this post, further reports coming on the next post!