Oh, she isn't aging gracefully

Colby turns twelve this month. She has had SO many procedures. Her knee, a mast cell tumor, her eye, it seems like all bad things happen to Colby and she doesn't deserve all that. She is THE sweetest dog and best behaved and nicest and most awesomest dog ever!!! She had to have her teeth cleaned today and 8 of her little incisors had to come out. I promised her I WILL clean her teeth every day once her mouth heals. I have her toothbrush next to might right now, all ready. The boys just never seem to need their teeth cleaned. They chew bones well and manage to keep pearly whites! Roscoe might have SOME tartar, but seriously for as old as he is his mouth looks GOOD. And that's a GOOD thing because HE would be horrible to brush his teeth. :O Colby is good about it, I just didn't keep up. Sorry ole gal, I really am. I set her bed up in the sun next to my chair. She isn't happy..............

Lots of videos!

Updates on Spur's threadle homework!!! And a pool party!!!!! We had twelve dogs and seven people. Only one hamburg bun was stolen. Lily, the golden/shepherd, snatched it right off someone's place!! Although, I did see Roscoe licking someone's spoon. OI!!! The pool was full of dog hair, but I still waded in! Had all the my three in for "swimming lessons". Roscoe can NOT swim, poor guy. I put his life jacket on and he STILL just flails. Colby and Spur swim nicely, but Colby needed guidance to find the steps. Spur figured it out pretty quickly, he learned to swim in this pool. :D

An easy weekend!

The day was spent gardening!! I'll get photos later. For now settle with some birds bathing and Spur playing with his new frisbee. I think he likes it. Blogger's new format is such a pain and I can't figure out how to comment or even see the photos I load here. Damn it!!! Rich bought me a new computer but it is sitting in his office. Not sure why it has to sit like that, it is actually taking up space on the couch in there. I think it would be happier down here working for me, but he told me to have patience. I am not very patient. Some of you know that about me. The blue birds are shy and I had to take those photos through the screen. I think some photographers use "screens" to give fuzzy effects. I would rather it was clear, but I had three little black dogs behind me poised and ready to charge out the door. That surely would have sent the bird flying. After that a house finch or purple finch arrived. Later in the day I was sitting at the patio table and the cow birds arrived. They are not at all shy and bathed even with the dogs staring right at them. Too bad I don't have a REALLY nice camera that would have captured the water droplets in space. Maybe if I had adjusted my settings. Oh well, still cool photos!!! The bird bath was a popular place!!!!

Forgot some for the Quirky Hood post yesterday!

Can you imagine being the neighbor of that new home? It was a small ranch style home before. OH MY!!!

I LOVE those tiny and precious poppies! I have trays and trays of flowers to plant this weekend. I keep telling myself I don't need more. Then I think that perhaps my flower/plant obsession isn't such a bad thing. There are worse obsessions, right?

Quirky hoods

I walk through some really quirky neighborhoods during my mid-day dog walks. I don't know what got into me this week, but I have like 100 photos to load and they are all really cool. Such a pretty time of year!!!!

The little dog's world just got a little smaller, since they are little.

Can you spot the MinPins? LOL!!! Not sure why they felt the need to go into the tall grass (deer dung snacks, maybe?), which is reaching for the sky now with a little rain and a little sun. OH MY, we need to do some mowing, I guess.

Some videos from the weekend!

Some of his holding starts. His steeplechase winning run. And some wraps and a push through. The last wrap was a little wide as I had to keep moving and moved into the landing side farther than needed. I should have adjusted my speed as he was coming down the a-frame. Then I also added a video of a gamble that he GOT, but the buzzer went off just as he did the last jump, so it didn't count. Damn!!! He ran well over the weekend. Our first outdoor trial and the weather was FABULOUS. A little hot on Sunday, but we put up our tent for shade and it wasn't that bad. They had a lovely pond to swim the dogs and walk around in the shade. We had a great time!!!

I don't want cat shit in my garden!

The cats have been entering my dog yard where my tiny little garden is. And using the garden as a "litter box", damn it! The dog yard has electric fence on the outside for the horses, where it borders the horse pasture, but the gate by the barn was not electrified and the fence along the front yard side was not, either. They can enter both those places by climbing the gate of a post. I don't want them in the yard also because we have four bird houses out there. So, I made "Fort Knox" and the WHOLE yard is lined with electric wire now at the top of the fence. :D So far, so good.

Hard to find time to post lately

So much going on now that the weather is improving. We have had SO much rain! So, when it is sunny the gardens need tending, the lawn needs mowing, the dogs need long walks. The horses pastured. It is a lovely time of year, but we have had ENOUGH rain! I am wondering if I should rename this blog. It seems that Roscoe is just not the focus lately. He's old and sore and while he sure is the focus of our lives, he isn't the focus of all the training I am doing. I feel bad he doesn't get more training time, but the issue is that he is SO insane when we train and I worry he over-does it. His neck and shoulders are sore and we don't have an explanation other than he is OLD. He is 13/14 years old. Doing REMARKABLY well, but that's pretty old. I try to ask him to do easy things when we train. Like his frog trick. That one is easy on his body. Spinning and jumping and weaving and such, not so good on his old body. Spur has been doing his homework a little. We focuses some on his starts, which are really not much better. I have decided after four months of our "ready, ready, GO" restrained starts that those are not the answer. I give these ideas about four months to see if they will hold up. That one isn't really. I am now of the thought that he needs it mixed up. He doesn't NEED some predictable behavior at the start line. That just ends up becoming boring and TOO predictable. I think he likes chaos. He really does!! The louder and crazier my voice, the more people waiting at the ingate and crowding him, the better. I know that sounds crazy, but that's who he is. He likes chaos. It gets him all pumped. Quiet and calm, not so much. Anyway, our new homework are threadles and pushes. On this video we do some threadle work. He isn't keen on coming into the gap, into me. He would rather take that other jump, not come into the gap. We have some work to do. We also did the course 4 again. He did great!!! I did a "drop-n-go" start. He was fine with that. Silvia thinks maybe I could carry him to the start line. He doesn't like to be carried, so that seems maybe not a great idea, but on occasion maybe it will be?

We had so much fun making a Mother's Day card!!!