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:)

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:)

Blogger And I Are Back ... More or Less!

First of all the real world impinged upon my cyber world a couple of weeks ago with some events that made me very stressed, tense and emotionally drained.  I wasn't in a fit state mentally to blog or even do any training with Beryl ... so I just didn't.  Once that was sorted I was plunged into full on work which left me physically and mentally exhausted.  And then Blogger has such a hissy fit that I couldn't even see some blogs, let alone comment except on Wordpress blogs.  Even now the videos on my blog aren't visible to me, just a black square where they used to be.  Hopefully they'll reappear.  I think the Blogger people are having some R&R over the weekend before getting everyone back to normal.  I hope so anyway.

There hasn't been much time to do doggy things recently but yesterday morning a contingent of 4 Greyhounds took part in a local pet parade.  We were a hit with the kids and everyone took home a load of stash, which was totally unexpected.  There were only 8 dogs there all told and Beryl was the only one not in fancy dress of some sort as I couldn't think of anything she could go as!  Imagination isn't my strong suit:)  I took my camera but didn't get much opportunity to take many photos and those I did take aren't good but here are a few.

Foster dog, the very handsome Hugo, went as a bumble bee:)

Lucy was Minnie Mouse and found it all very tiring:)

Hugo and Beryl - Beryl went as a pretty Greyhound!

Beryl enjoying a pat

Miss Mischief, Dotty, aka the Ninja Turtle.  She was into everything:)  She's a 7 1/2 year old puppy!

Our training for Honey's DWTDS competition is somewhat sporadic but we're managing a bit most days now and hopefully Beryl will be able to 'march' a few steps at least, in a week or so.  I'm also working on a couple of easier things but have no idea of how I'm going to put everything together yet, lol!  With only 4 weeks to go I'm kind of hoping for camera failure!  But hey, it's all about having fun and bonding, not winning, and we're doing that just fine:)  I'm learning how Beryl likes to be trained, lots of noise and praise and TREATS!!  When I'm beginning to teach her something I'm quiet and give her time to mull things over and go back to something she knows and likes to do.  Once she's got the basic idea she seems to need to be revved up a bit to get her to try more things and when she's wrong I just ignore it.

I hope everyone is having a great weekend.  Seeya:)

Our First Doggie Dancing Training Video!

As you probably know, Beryl and I have entered a Doggie Dancing With The Stars competition being run by Honey The Great Dane.  It's going to be lots of fun for competitors and spectators alike I think.  And I'm so happy because I've finally chosen some music, yay!!

The most complex thing Beryl is going to learn for our Doggie Dancing Debut is to 'march' and we started learning that on Saturday.  She is VERY left handed so the first thing I had to make her aware of is that she has 2 front feet:)  She already knew how to put a paw on something on the ground so I concentrated on clicking and treating only for using her right paw.  This video is of her second lesson which was this morning and I think she progressed very well.  I took a bit more video which I haven't edited yet and might put up a part 2 if it's worth showing:)  I've put little explanation thingys in the top left corner through the video so you can hopefully understand what I'm doing.



This is my first attempt at videoing anything other than Greyhounds running outside or my kids inside and I didn't exactly dress for the occasion:)  The second bit of video I took is better than this one as I moved the camera back a bit and Beryl doesn't get her legs cut off as often, lol!  Anyway, we've started Honey:)

And we've got time to squeak in on the Saturday Pet Blogger Hop which is hosted by Life With Dogs, Two Little Cavaliers and Confessions of the Plume.  Pet Bloggers rock, so why don't you have a wander around some of them, say hi and make new friends.  If you want to join in the instructions can be found on all the above mentioned blogs:)

Rally O and Doggie Dancing:)

A couple of posts ago I mentioned that Frankie, Beryl and I went to a Rally O competition last Saturday.  Even though the weather varied between misty rain and steady rain we had a fun day.  I entered them both for Rally Novice but when I walked the course and saw all the sits in it I changed Beryl to Rally Zoom.  The grass was wet and I thought my chances of getting about 6 sits out of her were absolutely nil!  In Zoom there aren't any sits or downs:)

The only surprise in Frankie's run was that it wasn't my fault we NQ'd:)  As usual he had his nose to the ground for 75% of the course!

When it came to Beryl's turn she wasn't sure what was going on the first part of the course but then something clicked and she seemed to start enjoying herself and paying attention to what we were doing and I was really rapt with how she finished.  Then the judge came over to me and told me I'd missed a whole station:(  As had the competitor before me.  Neither of us saw the sign, it was a 360 degree turn to the left as we came out of a weave and apparently we both treated it as an extra cone in the weave, duh!!!  Another competitor did the same thing after us.  If I hadn't disqualified us Beryl would have got a gold card!!  So while I was kicking myself SO hard I was also thrilled with her.  I never thought to ask someone to take photos but hopefully I'll get some at the next competition this Saturday:)

Next topic is Doggie Dancing ... Honey the Great Dane is hosting a doggie dancing competition on her blog.

"Don’t worry if you’ve never tried dancing before -- this contest is especially for newbies! The routines won’t be judged on how slick they are or how many fancy moves & tricks the doggie knows but rather on creativity and originality, and most of all the “wow factor” -- the top prize will go to the human & doggie team who look like they are having the most FUN, who can make you smile and think “Awww….” or “Yeah!” and take you out of the moment. 


And because I’m an Equal Opportunities Doggie (hey, we’re not all cracker doggies who are happy to work for nothing…us Danes need a pretty good reason to expend any energy!  ), I’m not going to put those stupid rules like at the club trials. Nope, in my contest, you can use whatever ‘motivators’ you like during the routine. This means if you need your human to hold some treats to help you focus or even your favourite ball or toy -- whatever it takes to make you keen, happy & enthusiastic - go for it! "


It looks like lots of fun, the rules are simple and you've got 2 months to get a 1 minute routine sorted and videoed.  Plus there are some wonderful prizes on offer.

Now, Greyhounds and doggie dancing aren't words you would usually put in the same sentence but hey, Honey is a Great Dane (a breed not usually associated with doggie dancing either) and she's a whizz with her dancing routines.  And here is a video of a Greyhound doing Canine Freestyle (the offical name for Doggie Dancing) and having a blast


So I'm mulling over the idea of having a go at this with Beryl and maybe bringing Frankie in somewhere, but I'd better not mull too long or it will be June 15th and I won't have done anything!

Why not pop over to Honey's Blog and check it out.  She's got a few videos on the page for inspiration and if the little dachshund getting down doesn't make you smile I don't know what will:)

And I'll finish with a couple of photos of Beryl playing fetch with some of her little mates at the park the other night.  They all had a blast:)  I was trying out some different settings on my camera and none of the moving shots were in focus but you get the idea with this one ....

Shadow, Beryl, Lucas and Nugget

Lucas, Ted and Beryl