Shelties Like Scratches!

Hi everyone,

I know, I am a horrible person and have been slacking off on the blog-front for a LONG time now! I do have some good excuses, we've been super busy around here lately. Just no time to write anything worth reading.

The PhD project is coming along well.
Gio and Romeo are both happy and healthy, no issues with seizures for a long time now!
I'm now a certified CARO Rally-O judge and am eager about my first judging assignments coming up soon!
I'm still teaching Rally-O classes for Hub City Kennel and Obedience Club.
I've been traveling a LOT for school, and the boys are loving the quality time they get to spend with "gramma" when I am away.

Why am I dusting off the blog today? Because I've entered the boys in a really fun photo contest and I would LOVE if you could maybe help me out with some votes!

The contest is being run by the Western Canada Lottery Association. 10 winning photos (2 from Saskatchewan, where we are) will be selected to appear on Scratch-n-Win tickets! How hilarious is that?! Shelties LOVE scratches, so a Scratch-n-Win ticket is the perfect place for them to be.

I've entered the max of 10 photos into the contest and would greatly appreciate if you could all swing by there and give them a rating. I don't think this is a "vote every day" thing, so just once is enough! I'm trying to find the fine line between asking politely for votes and being so obnoxious so as to turn people off from helping me out. haha

Below are the photos. You can rate them all, or just pick your favorites. I think the voting is only open to Canadian residents.

VOTE FOR THIS PHOTO HERE

VOTE FOR THIS PHOTO HERE

VOTE FOR THIS PHOTO HERE

VOTE FOR THIS PHOTO HERE

VOTE FOR THIS PHOTO HERE

VOTE FOR THIS PHOTO HERE

VOTE FOR THIS PHOTO HERE

VOTE FOR THIS PHOTO HERE

VOTE FOR THIS PHOTO HERE

VOTE FOR THIS PHOTO HERE

Okay! Okay already!

It's wet. We get it.

Good on the rain. But enough is enough! It's been raining nearly constantly for weeks now. And no, that is not an exaggeration. My driveway has yet again been converted into an outdoor swimming pool, so that I have to back into the driveway to ensure that all doors of my vehicle have decent access to relatively puddle-less surfaces.

This is part of the reason that I haven't been posting for the past while. Really haven't been doing much of anything worth writing about! The regular therapy dog visits, this time toting along a towel to dry off fluffy puppies after our mad dash from the car to the building. A lot of sitting around and being depressed because of the grey weather.

Don't get me wrong, I love rain. Give me a good booming thunderstorm and I am a happy happy girl! But this is quite enough of the downpour. I believe the radio informed me the other day that this is the wettest spring that Saskatoon has seen ... ever. Or, at least since people began keeping track of these things. I'm sure things were pretty soggy after the glaciers melted after the last ice age, but really, I wasn't around then and didn't have $100 worth of bedding plants in the ground that would REALLY appreciate a good sunny day or two!

Last week's 52 Weeks for Dogs photo op was dampened (*pun!*) by the rain.


This week saw a similar situation.



The boys are both getting very antsy with this rain business. They don't mind thunderstorms, neither are sound-phobic, but they are suffering from some serious cabin fever. We've been working on scent games and some new tricks to keep furry little brains busy, but it just isn't the same as their regular walks or runs in the park. The dullness of it all has turned Romeo into a pouty lazy bones. He just flops from one doggy bed to the next, not sleeping, just laying there in his own depression. Gio, on the other hand, is taking the opposite route. He's the gurfy pacer, wandering from room to room puffing and sighing, or as he is doing right now, standing at my feet and staring up at me from under the computer desk, hoping beyond hope that I will somehow make this rain stop so that he can get outside again.

Mr. Weather Man says that it is supposed to break next week. Let's hope, for the sake of all our sanity, that this is true.

Best. Challenge. EVER!

We had a kick-arse evening tonight at Rally-O drop in.

Started things off with Gio's photo shoot for our 52 Weeks for Dogs project on Flickr. A challenge was issued this week stating simply "favorite toy". Well, Gio's preferred toy is a tennis ball. But his FAVORITE toy is a PILE of tennis balls!

So I "borrowed" our flyball club's plethora of tennis balls and literally buried Gio in them.


Gio would like to say that he LOVED this challenge, and would appreciate it if we could do this one again. Soon.

Following the tennis ball extravaganza, I ran the boys through some Rally-O drills, which they ACED. The past couple of weeks they have seemed a little off ... a bit of a tummy bug or Gio having seizure issues, or Romeo being a jack-ass. You know ... the normal. This evening, though, no such problems. They were superstars! I even got to try out the new coupler that Karen so speedily made for me, and the boys are rocking the brace obedience experiment. I have no fears that we will be ready to strut our stuff at the Sheltie National at the end of April.

Then, to top the night off, as if it wasn't good enough already, Romeo got a new girlfriend. Concept is a sweet little Pomeranian, and Romeo thinks she is fabulous! The first few attempts of this fluffy-dog shot included Romeo's nose burrowed deep into Concept's fluff. And the resulting "Ewww Cooties!" glare from Concept.

All three dogs were sporting the Laser Eyes of Doom look, due to the horrid fluorescent lighting in the training building. I tried to dim things down a bit, now they just look like zombies. Oh well ... the amount of fluff in this one picture more than makes up for the zombie eyes, in my opinion.

Eye To Eye

Here is the 10th picture for Gio's 52 Weeks for Dogs project. I can't believe it is week 10 already! I have a feeling that if we keep counting weeks like this, the year is going to seem to go by awfully quickly.

I've been planning on doing this particular photo for many weeks now, but other opportunities always bumped it back a bit. Finally got around to it yesterday and I'm very pleased with the result! I think that this one photo pretty much sums up the relationship between myself and Gio.


I got to play around with the custom timer settings on my camera, so even though I am still using the auto function, I feel as if I am learning how to use that darned thing a little bit better.

I did struggle with one surprising hurdle, though. For a dog that NEVER takes his eyes off of me, it was incredibly difficult to get a photo of him looking at me! I got plenty of nice photos of him smacking me in the face with his paw, and even more of him looking at the camera while I made funny faces at him to get his attention. I finally had to settle for putting Gio in a "stay" in his "head down" position, and then wriggling my head into position so that he wound up looking at my face. And then trying again so that my hair wasn't in my face and my fat arm wasn't covering the whole shot.

But, I think the struggles were worth it. I'm very pleased with how it turned out!

I originally took the photo in color, but decided that the greyscale version was more to my liking.

Where Dogs Shouldn't Be

This week of the 52 Weeks for Dogs project included an optional challenge. The challenge: take a photo using the theme of "Places Dogs Shouldn't Be".

I initially had a totally different photo idea in mind, but when the challenge was issued, I couldn't pass it up! So my original idea got back-burnered until next week, and instead I started wracking my brain for unique ideas that play into the challenge theme.

I decided to take a little creative liberty in the process and finally settled on: Dogs should not be used in place of ...

Flower Vases
(only one flower was harmed in the making of these photos)

I liked the idea so much, that I had to take a couple more shots that included both dogs. I really liked how this one turned out, with both dogs glancing at the camera out the corner of their eye.

Poor Romeo is

a very reluctant model.

Since Gio is my 52 Weeks for Dogs subject, I have decided to do my practices on Romeo. That way, I can't be mad that I ended up getting a better picture of Gio later in the week after already submitting that week's photo entry.

I tried a new lighting set up today and played around with a few new techniques in Gimp. I'm very happy with how the pictures turned out this time.


Thanks also to everyone that has posted pointers on the last post!