Doing Some Catching Up:)

We have been given this award not once but twice in the last week:)  A week that has been so busy that I hadn't been able to do a post to thank the lovely Caron, Zephyr and Astro at Hiking Hounds for the first award.  Caron is an inspiration in herself the way she is handling Zephyr's struggle with encephalitis and very scary seizures.  Please go and visit if you haven't already and say hi.

The second award was given to us just a little while ago by the talented Sue and her beautiful Greyhound, Song at Graceful Greyhounds.  Sue makes the most amazing crafted cards.  They have to be seen to be believed.  I am in awe of her talent and imagination!  She and Song love visitors and comments and if you pop over you'll be made very welcome.

Now I'm in a bit of a quandary.  Most awards come with 'rules' attached and this one is to pass the award on to 10 blogs who inspire you.  Well, there are lots of blogs who inspire me and I passed on my last Versatile Blogger Award to 13 of them and this award has been doing the rounds and has pretty much been passed on to every blog I read at least once!  But I think I can find a few that have slipped through the radar:)

Karen and her gorgeous Visla, Jersey, are at Doggie Stylish.  Karen manages to post at least once, often twice a day.  She must spend hours scouring the WWW for wonderful photos and videos to entertain us. Karen also makes stunning dog collars and Beryl has her eye on a particular one that I think she'll be wearing not long after I get my tax refund, lol!

Next is 24 Paws of Love who write wonderful, often thought provoking posts.  Always from the heart and todays post I really wish I had written myself, except I couldn't have done it nearly as well.

Then there are the 3 gorgeous Rotties, Bart, Gizmo and Ruby over at Rottrover.  The beautiful Ruby has entered a competition to win a cyber-date with the Relentlessly Huge Mango the Mastiff who is having a few seizure problems but has recovered enough to think about getting his glad rags on and taking out a very lucky 4-legged lady on the adventure of a lifetime:)  I think that's pretty inspirational!

And some new friends at Love and a Six Foot Leash deserve the award for the work they do fostering and sometimes rehabilitating Pitbulls until they're ready for their forever homes.  Aleksandra takes wonderful photos that really capture the character of their fosters:)

So there you are.  I know it's only 5 blogs instead of 10 but if I don't stop now this will be all the post I get done tonight!  And I haven't even put in a photo yet!  But that's easily fixed:)

Yesterday we came across an old friend of Frankie's who we hadn't seen for about 18 months.  He and Tigger hadn't forgotten each other and they had a wonderful reunion:)

Tigger is a bit of a funny chap and doesn't like every dog he meets.  I was hoping he'd like Beryl but she gave him a look that spoke volumes and he quickly decided that he'd stick with Frankie:)

Don't even think about messing with me Shorty!

Next catching up is our DWTDS competition has been judged and while we didn't win a prize we are so glad we were a part of it all:)  It was a lot of fun and again I'd like to thank Honey and Hsin-Yi for coming up with the idea and hosting it.  I think they're going to have a bit of a well deserved rest for a while now!  The winner chosen by the judges and also viewers votes was an absolutely delightful miniature dachshund, Prana.  Here's his video if you'd like to check his performance out.  It's worth watching just to see his little tail never stop wagging!  You can't help but smile the whole way through:)


Today on our walk at the river Frankie made another new friend, Lucas, a lovely young Irish Terrier.  Frankie quickly became his hero and Lucas had a lot of fun tagging along with him.

Wait for me Frankie!

Beryl got sick of Frankie having all the fun with other dogs the past couple of days so she thought she'd show him she was still fun too ...

I'm not so sure he thought it was fun, lol!

I've been really busy working the past couple of weeks but one night the week before that Beryl and I managed an outing to the opening of a new horse equipment shop along with a few other GAP Greyhounds.  Beryl really wanted to let rip around the shop and steal food off the table and grab some stuffie toy horses off the shelves but she restrained herself and everyone kept commenting how laid back and well behaved all the hounds were.

My eyes are going to burst if you don't let me at the food!

We also found time to try out a new walk we'd been told about.  It's not as good as down the river but it's not too bad.  I kept Frankie on the lead seeing as we hadn't been there before.

The walk is about 5 kms long and leads to the patch of bush you can see in the photo above which has a walk through it.  I was surprised how long it took us.

There wasn't anywhere for Beryl to let rip and have a run but it made a change to go somewhere different.

They both went on the lead when we walked through the bush reserve.  I didn't see any playing fields, lol!

Frankie got to go off lead on the way back.  So much to look at:)  We've only done this walk the once so far, but we'll go back again.  The kids have missed out on a few walks as I've been going to work in the dark and getting home in the dark but they've been good and not pestered me too much:)

Tomorrow we've got a GAP Greyhound walk in the afternoon so hopefully I'll have some good photos. I'll have to take Frankie for his walk in the morning so I'll be getting plenty of exercise too:)

Something else I've been researching and working on the past few weeks is shifting my blog over to Wordpress.  Being me I've decided to start at the finish and have it self hosted.  But boy, can I see lots of potential for me to stuff things up!  It will be a while before I make the move and any words of advice from those who have done it already would be appreciated.  I have already got my domain name and signed up with a host but it's dealing with themes I have to contend with now.  How do you shift over all the blogs you follow, one at a time?  I'm hoping to import this blog to my new one so have to find out how to do that.  It all takes time and reading through forums and stuff.  Oh well, it's keeping me out of mischief and giving me a challenge:)

Oh, and it's Saturday so it's time for the

It's hosted by Life With Dogs, Two Little Cavaliers and Confessions of the Plume and you can find the rules on any of their sites.  Why don't you join in?

Have a wonderful weekend:)

Our DWTDS Entries Are A Wrap, Yay!!

Yep, all done and dusted, whew:)  Before I show them to you I better explain the background to our costumes and music.  Most people know Beryl and I are both Australian but New Zealand is home and I thought we'd have a real fair dinkum (oops, sorry, that's an Aussie saying!) Kiwi flavour to our routine.  And you can't get more Kiwi than Footrot Flats which is an iconic cartoon strip that ran for many years in the papers, was published quite a few times in booklet form, and eventually made into an animated movie.  Footrot Flats 'starred' a farmer called Wal and his faithful Border Collie sheepdog called Dog.

The author, Murray Ball, was born in Feilding where we live.

OK, so I'm Wal and Beryl is Dog and we're performing (dancing isn't the best description for our routine!) to Slice of Heaven which was the hit song from the movie.  If you want to check Dave Dobbyn and Herbs singing it have a quick look at this ...



And here is a close up of Beryl modeling part of her costume

Beryl and her bandana

Some more excuses background ... most of you know I get lost going around Rally O and Rally Zoom courses where the stations are not only numbered but also tell you what to do at each station.  So I confess to not having done any choreography except for the beginning and end of our routine.  Funnily enough they are both the same!!  And we nailed them, lol:)  The rest involved a lot of improvisation on both our parts.  At times I go wandering off without Beryl, I've got our next moved planned but forget to tell her what it is.  Other times she'll chuck in a move that she thinks is appropriate.  And I totally forgot to include her marching, duh, and I filmed about 5 different versions.  Enough of my babbling, here is the World Premiere of Beryl and Sue DWTDS - and I think I deserve a medal for my costume, I couldn't have flung anything less flattering together, but I look more like Wal than Wal does lol!


But wait - there's more!  We can't leave Frankie out.  The excuses background for his video is that he had not 1 second of training, no run throughs of things he can do and the choreography is pretty much all his:)  You will notice he isn't wearing the angel wings, they would have been shredded in 10 seconds, lol.

Without further ago here is the World Premiere of Frankie and Sue DWTDS (insert drum roll)


We'd like to thank Honey and Hsin-Yi for coming up with the idea of the competition and all the work they've put into their training tips and videos and the encouragement they've given to those of us who are feeling less than adequate:)  You two are a really special team!

Beryl and I had a lot of fun and we haven't finished yet, I'm determined we'll get the marching thing down and who knows what else?  Frankie had lots of fun just being himself and participating:)

Now we can relax and look forward to watching all the entries roll in and seeing lots of lovely dogs of all shapes and sizes having fun with their people!  You/we all ROCK and are winners because we participated:)

That Blew a Few Cobwebs Away:)

Yesterday morning we bit the bullet and went to the beach even though the weather was looking a bit iffy.  It was very windy when we got there but no rain:)

Beryl loves it at the beach:)

So does Frankie!

While the wind wasn't cold it was strong enough to blow Beryl's lips out of shape!

Beryl sucking it in!

So I stuck to the damp sand hoping I wouldn't get any of it blown into my camera like last trip to the beach:)

We only saw one other person and that was on our way back.  An older man driving a little mini moke who came over to us and asked if Beryl was a Greyhound.  He wasn't sure at a distance as she doesn't have a tail, lol.  So I had to tell him the story of why she hasn't got a tail!

It was lovely to have the whole place to ourselves and just mooch around.  Beryl did some ball fetching

I got it for you, Mum!

Beryl's skid marks;)

I'm bringing it back real quick, Mum!

She dug a hole ...

And then Frankie rolled in it!

That's not why I dug the hole, Frankie!

Frankie coming back for a drink, looks like he really needs one!

Beryl running back for a drink:)

Beryl did some cross country jumping:)

And some more running.

We were there for over an hour and I expected them to sleep the rest of the day (and night) away after all the fresh air and exercise, but no.  Within about half an hour of getting home, having a bit of a power nap they were both raring to do it all again!  I've created a couple of monsters, lol.

This afternoon we went to the park and Beryl met new foster dog, Lily, for the first time.  I also had a great reunion with Lucy and Louie who I hadn't seen for a few weeks.  Beryl isn't impressed with me and Lucy smooching!

Oi, what about me, Mum?

Beryl, Frankie and I went to the river after this and enjoyed the sunny afternoon.

Frankie is faster than Beryl over the stony ground:)

Tomorrow afternoon Beryl and I are going on a GAP walk so hopefully more photos and more new friends:)

We hope everyone is having a great weekend too:)  And I think we'll join in on the Saturday Pet Blogger Hop today.

If you want to join in too, go to any of the first 3 links, who are the co-hosts of the blog hop, for the instructions.  Happy blog hopping!

More Doggie Dancing Training Videos:)

With less than 4 weeks to go and lots to do I thought I'd better do another video when we had a training session early this evening. Beryl and I really should have gone to CGC class but it's a miserable night out there and after her training session she finally seemed ready to have a sleep! So I thought we'd stay home and I'd edit some video instead:)

This was done after she'd had her tea, lucky for me she's very food motivated. On the minus side she is reluctant to do anything if it's unrewarded, lol. Our training session was way too long, I took 10 minutes of video! But she was on fire tonight and she gave herself a couple of breaks when she got bored, although they didn't last more than a few seconds.

I made 2 videos, the first one is of her 'marching' progress plus a couple of other things we're working on. The second one is a few bloopers and also showing how a new trick can be shaped by making the most of opportunities as they arise:)

A few of you might be thinking things would go a whole lot quicker if Frankie wasn't there and you might be right, but they are used to doing training like this. It's mostly Beryl being trained and Frankie getting treats for staying out of the way. Plus, Frankie isn't quite himself at the moment, a bit  subdued for him and I don't know why. But I do know that if he was shut away he'd be miserable.

Anyway, if Blogger lets me, here are the videos, hopefully for your enjoyment:) Comments, questions and constructive criticisms are welcome! Oh, and be prepared, I never shut up during either of them, lots of high pitched praise, I even jump up and down myself at one stage, lol. I'd love to put music over me rabbiting on but then you wouldn't hear the clicker, which is hard enough to hear anyway with my enthusiastic YES at the same time. Which is because I don't always have a clicker on me when we're training as I do a lot of it when we're on our walks at the river and Beryl doesn't know she's being trained then:)

Are Your Dogs Creative?

I came across this page a couple of weeks ago but only got around to reading it today and what a wonderful, thought provoking post I found it to be.  It's what I would call long, which is why I didn't read it immediately.  But I hope you will have a read of it and let me know what you think.  And I'd love to know what creative things your dogs do:)

Frankie is more creative than Beryl, which is to be expected as he was only 10 months old when I got him and has been living here for a bit over 2 years now.  Beryl was 3 1/2 years old when she came to live with us (a year ago) and I very much doubt any sort of creativity is encouraged in Greyhound kennels:)  He's the first one to suss out any sort of 'thinking' toy I get them but Beryl is getting better at thinking about things with practice.

Here's a recent example of Beryl's creativity when she found something to amuse herself with while waiting for me to take them for a walk!

Beryl's abstract art!

It's not like she didn't have plenty of stuffies lying around to play with.  Can you see Frankie in the TV screen?  He looks rather horrified.  Probably because he's more inclined to amuse himself with mobile phones and remote controls, which I think I've finally learnt to keep out of his reach, touch wood!

Madam is quite pleased with her efforts:)

I love to see Beryl have fun and get into mischief, even when it results in a mess for me to clean up!  If you ever come visit don't expect a tidy house, we have a messy, happy HOME:)  And I bet yours is too!

An example of Frankie's creativity is where he likes to eat his meals.  He soon discovered that Beryl didn't appreciate him going to check out what she's got.  I expect her coming to check his meal out would have resulted either in him letting her have it or some unpleasantness between them.  So he figured out that if he eats in her crate then it's all good for everyone:)  It took me a few nights to work out his plan.  I'd be calling him for tea, and would take their food bowls into the loung room, wondering where he was and he'd be lying in her crate waiting for me:)  I shut the door and everybody is happy and I don't have to stand around and supervise and growl.

So, tell me, what do your dogs get up to that surprise and amuse you?

Well, I've Really Stuffed Things Up This Time!

So, Intense Debate wasn't a success on a few levels, mainly nobody could comment, which kind of defeats the purpose!  But then when I uninstalled it I totally lost my comment box and can't get it back.  I even changed the template but still no go.  But just now I got a comment on a previous post so I'm putting up another post just to see if the comment box returns in a new post.  If it does I promise I'll stop fiddling ... if it doesn't you'll probably see me with a Wordpress blog before long!

And, of course we have to have a photo:)  I just happened to take some nice ones of Beryl on our walk this afternoon.

Beryl loves her Maccas!  The bag was empty, poor Beryl:(

What's Frankie Doing?

Helping Frankie hunt for mice!

Wish me luck, fingers crossed my comment box has found it's way home:)

Oh YAY, it's there, whew!

Wordless Wednesday - What On Earth Is She Doing?

I'm not impressed!

Google Was My Friend Again:)

Quite a few months ago now Google saved me a lot of money when I stupidly put my camera SD card into the DVD drive on my iMac. It turns out I'm not the first person to do that and it was easy to fix and I didn't have to take my computer to the Dr. Yay Google! On Wednesday I took the kids to the beach and the zoom on my camera stopped working, I could still take photos but when I tried to use the zoom it would give me an error message. So you're not going to be bombarded with 56 beach photos this post ... only 10;)

When we got home I Googled the error message and the first few pages I looked at said the camera would have to be sent away and the repairs would probably cost more than buying a new camera:( Then I looked at this page which has a list of about 7 things you can try (which won't damage your camera) to unstick the zoom and the 1st one on the list worked:)  I know a lot of people have digital cameras these days and if you go to the beach at all you're likely to get a grain of sand in the zoom and have the same problem.  I've bookmarked this page should it happen to me again.

I have a confession to make ... I'm a very bad Dog Mum:(  It was Beryl's 1st Gotcha Day on Tuesday and I didn't tell anybody.  We were going to go to the beach to celebrate but it was a lousy day, wet and miserable so she had a special breakfast and extra treats and cuddles and I hopefully made up for it by taking the kids to the beach on Wednesday!

This is what the kids spent most of Tuesday doing

Frankie is under the green jacket!

And this

First time cuddled up for the year:)

But when we got to the beach the tide was right in and there was no beach!

No beach to play on here!

So I thought we'd go check out the sand dunes.  We found this cute little shelter someone had made

And the kids had a lot of fun exploring a new place and tearing up and down sand dunes and hills

Beryl is there in the middle of the photo, no zoom now!

We went down into a dense pine tree plantation with a sandy 'road' going through it and they chased a rabbit in there.  I was expecting Beryl to get impaled on something or get lost but it wasn't long before they were both back with me, safe and sound, whew!

Beryl at the top of the pine plantation

Lots of sand!

And native tussock grasses

The sign near where I park my car.

And people still drive on it!

I expected all that tearing around the dunes for a good hour would have laid them both out for about 12 hours but after a couple of hours rest they were both pestering me for another walk!!  I think I've created a couple of monsters, lol!

Beryl CAN Swim:) + Happy Blogiversary Kristine:)

It's Kristine of Rescued Insanity's first Blogiversay today and she has written the most amazing post to celebrate it.  Do go and check it out if you haven't already.  It's well worth reading and she's also running a competition to give away a stunning t-shirt from Jus Animalium Culture Apparel.  Happy Blogiversary Kristine from Sue, Frankie and Beryl.

I had a shorter than expected morning at work today and was home by 9-15 am (I start at 7 am).  It wasn't hot, in fact rain looked possible, but I decided a trip to the beach was in order.  So off we went.  There was a bit of misty rain when we got to Tangimoana Beach but we weren't turning round.  The kids both chased a rabbit on the track to the beach, Frankie yips, Beryl is silent!  But they soon came back:)

At the beach we were greeted by 3 quad bikes which thankfully kept on going.  And quite a few cars were driving around slowly, but we managed to avoid the traffic:)  The kids had the BEST time.

Go Frankie:)

Go Beryl:)

As it was so very overcast I didn't expect my photos to turn out but I got some quite good ones.  Be prepared for an onslaught, lol!  When we were wandering back to the car I discovered a setting on my camera for "High Speed Burst" which I thought I'd try out.  And boy, it sure is high speed!!  I took 216 photos altogether and probably 160 of them were taken in a very short space of time on this setting.  They are only about 670 kb when downloaded onto my computer into iPhoto and the normal setting I use comes out at about 4.8 megs, but they didn't turn out too bad, here are a few for example ...

Lookin good, Princess:)

Happy boy:)

Sighthound:)

I'm looking forward to trying it out again when there's a bit more action happening:)

So here's some more photos of mostly Beryl having fun with the tennis ball.  Oh, and what about her swimming, you're wondering?  Well, I chucked the ball into the sea not knowing the bottom dropped away dramatically and very quickly and neither did Beryl!  I took 3 quick photos (wish I'd had it on high speed burst then!) but only 1 was sort of in focus ... Beryl didn't fetch the ball this time, lol!  But she can swim now:)

Beryl CAN Swim:)

The ball came back in and I threw it out again but Beryl reckoned one swim was enough and the tide took the ball away.  But before the sea claimed the ball she had lots of fun ....

Diving for the ball!

Coming up with the ball:)

Where is it?

Big splash.

Success.

I know it's there somewhere!

Found it:)

It's not going to get away!

Too easy.

See?

Frankie and the fish!

Someone had obviously had a successful fishing trip and left the remains on the beach for the birds, which Frankie and Beryl took great delight in chasing away:)  Beryl wasn't interested in the fishy carcasses but, as you can see, Frankie was.  Hopefully he won't suffer any ill effects!  If I offered him raw fish I bet he'd turn his nose up at it, lol.

Happy Beryl

Pretty as well as happy:)

Ditto!

Chasing the ball on the beach.

For those of you who have looked at this rather large display of photos I took today that made me smile .... be grateful I only put up some of them;)  And we thank you:)

P.S.  As well as an hours running around and swimming at the beach this morning, this afternoon we went to visit an elderly friend who has a very big yard and the kids were doing their usual exploring there.  And now it's normal walk time and I'm getting pestered about that!!  No, I don't think Beryl is lazy at all, lol!