Happy Birthday Chili!

Yesterday was Chili's 7th birthday! It seems like just yesterday that Chili was the tiniest little slip of a PWD puppy coming into our lives. I remember the woman that did the temperament test for the litter commenting that Chili and several of her smaller siblings looked more like kittens than puppies because they were so small.

I entered a photo of Chili in a cover contest for the Courier magazine once and here is what I said about her: "This petite PWD goes from performance powerhouse to pillow princess in the blink of an eye." The photo of Chili to the right captures her in "performance powerhouse" mode, blasting up an Oregon beach. The photo below is of Chili as a puppy at around 12 weeks old.

We love you Chili and look forward to many more years of fun and games and cuddles on the couch with you!

BTW, my friend's Dennis and Cheryl at Pics of the Litter took the adorable puppy photo of Chili.

Luke

I got to see Kilo's son Luke at the shows in Salem last weekend. Luke just turned 2 in August and hasn't had much success in the show ring yet. His Mom Kathy has done an awesome job conditioning him and raising him up to be a nice boy and Alyssa does a good job showing him. Alyssa's mom and dad Stacey and Lance Chart are Luke's breeders. Luke is a high-spirited boy, and is extremely confident and sweet. It really gets to me seeing Kilo reflected in his kids and grand-kids...

Puppies in January?

First off, let me tell you that my husband is a really great guy! Oh, he can be ornery and tells REALLY bad jokes, but he is very supportive when I need his help. He spent the vast majority of his day off on Friday running the dogs from one repro specialist to another trying to get Rebel collected so we could breed Stoker. Apparently the "vibe" was right at ICSB at 4:00 PM in the afternoon and the deed was done. We did one more breeding on Saturday for good measure and now we will keep our fingers crossed for a nice litter of pups due in early January.

On Saturday we went to a dog show in Salem and Rebel proved his mettle by earning Winners Dog and Best of Winners for two more points towards his championship. A slow-maturer like most of the dogs in his pedigree, Rebel is really starting to hit his stride in the show ring. He is more than half-way to his Championship now and has already earned one of the two majors he needs.

Yup, that is baby Ecko in the photo. She is just 10-1/2 months old and, although maybe I am a bit biased, I think she looks pretty nice. It's even a decent photo of me for a change!