Rose City and Cool Links

Last weekend was the Rose City dog show in Portland. The show is one of the first big canine events of the year and features agility, conformation, obedience and rally obedience all under one roof. Acres and acres of dogs..... It's a really fun show and there are always terrific vendors to shop there too. Three of our pack were entered this year.

Chili acquited herself well in rally obedience. After many months laid off recovering from an injury, she was entered in Rally Advanced and earned a 3rd place on Saturday and 2nd place on Sunday to finish her RA title.

Decker and I competed in agility for the first time since he switched handlers (from my friend CJ to me). We qualified in Open Jumpers with a 2nd place for our first run together. He had several other nice runs, but no more Qs over the two days he was entered.

Ecko was entered in conformation on Monday. I feel like she really needs to mature a bit before she is competitive, but I entered her anyway because the PNWPWDC was supporting the entry. I had finally worked on teaching her to hand stack and practiced "out and backs" with a free stack at the end. With minimal practice, she showed that she had learned both those lessons well and really showed nicely, so I was pleased with her performance.

One of the people on a PWD e-mail list I am on posted a link to this AKC video illustrating the PWD standard. The video was shot in 1987, I think, so it is interesting to see the changes in trim and presentation since then: http://www.dog.com/dog-breeds/portuguese-water-dog/

Someone else on the list posted a link to a 1975 Sports Illustrated article that talked about the judging of the first USA PWD fun match at the Miller estate.
http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1089396/index.htm

alternative medicine?

Although I have great respect for the conventional veterinary clinic where I take the dogs and rely on them to provide the dogs with excellent care, I have also explored alternative measures where I think it will benefit. The dogs are fed a raw diet, visit a chiropractor on a somewhat routine basis and have had acupuncture treatments to help with healing from injury. I found this article particularly interesting because I think Ecko and Decker are both battling a mild yeast infection right now. I have been using tea tree and neem to treat the areas topically and have added some coconut oil to their diet. While they seem to be improving, they may be getting a few other spicy additions to their meals until things are completely cleared up.

Merry Christmas

Christmas morning dawned peacefully here with the sound of melting snow dripping off the eaves. Although the blanket of snow we've experienced over the last week has been beautiful, it will be nice to have bare roads to commute to work on once it's gone.

Here are some photos of Eckos brother Cooper enjoying his birthday ice cream. I hope Tsuzi got to have some too, Julie!

And thanks to the O'Reilly family for these photos of Ecko's sister Chloe enjoying the winter snow with her family...

Snow Day 2008

When we lived in Alaska, almost every day was a snow day in the winter. Here in Beaverton we don't get much snow, so it really gets everyone's attention. Here are some photos of the dogs out enjoying the snow.

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!