The stream's running!

After a whole summer of being dry, the stream is running again!

On our hike the other day up the ridge, we stopped and took a little time to wade. It was such a nice day!

With all the leaves off the trees, we could see for miles. Maybe with some of those ncstar binoculars, we could have seen for counties!

The other day, heading out on our walk, Mum, Gracie and I heard this big crash! Mum knew exactly what that crash was - a big, big tree falling in the woods behind our cabin. We were there nearby, so it made a sound, BOL! What a magnificent crash it was. So when we went our our little hike, we looked to see if we could find the tree.

Just too many fallen trees to know which one it could be, but we are gonna keep looking. Hope you are having a pawsome weekend!

Three Dog Bakery rawks!

Yums!!!!

You may remember that the nice folks at Three Dog Bakery contributed a big prize as part of my annual Howling Howliday Giveaway - the Life With Dogs Gift Boxer that includes Treats, Goodies, Gourmet Entree, an Aussie Pet Jute Toy & the book, Amazing Gracie: A Dog's Tale! Dog, the pup that one that prize is one lucky dog!

The nice folks at Three Dog Bakery were kind enough to send me some Christmas presents too!!! Some Miniature Snickerdoodles, Cranberry Cookies, and some Begg-Nog Squares, oh my. (Click on the photo to bigfy and see how yummy they look.)

I have to say that they were some pawsome, tasty treats. Heck, Mum even tasted some of them, BOL!!! And not only are they yummy, they are good for you too.

We got word that they have even more pawsome treats just for Valentine's Day. So head on over and check them out, yummmmmmmyyyy!!!!

Aiy, Chi-hua-hua!!!

We were lucky enough to get an advanced copy of Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 DVD from the nice folks at Disney. They sent it to us free to review. The official release is next Tuesday!

If you read my blog, you know that Gracie just loves dog movies. We'll this one didn't disappoint one little bit! As a matter of fact, she was trying to herd some of the dogs on the screen and hit the button that turned off the TV. She looked at Mum and had this look on her face like 'what happened to the dogs, Mum?' She's so goofy.

We liked the first BHC, and this one was fun too! Their press release tells about the movie:

Puppy mayhem turns the lives of newlywed Chihuahua parents Papi and Chloe upside down when their rambunctious, mischievous puppies present one challenge after another. But when their human owners end up in trouble, the tiny pups will stop at nothing to save them - because in good times and hard times, the family always sticks together. So Papi, Chloe and the puppies embark on a heroic adventure, proving once again that big heroes come in small packages.

Great movie for the entire family, and it has some great messages about doing the right thing, parenting, and never giving up. Mum was even laughing out loud at Poppy's one liners. Check out the trailer...

Gotta love bloopers!

Disney Movie Rewards currently has a $10 off coupon for the Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 Combo Pack!

And, if you're in LA, Celebrate National Spay/Neuter Month with a fun day of activities at the Los Angeles Animal Services this coming Sunday. Lots of chances for prizes and gifts, and you can even meet Tamar Geller and other celebrities.

Now for the good stuff!!!

We're giving away one of the Blu-Ray/DVD combo packs of Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 to one lucky winner!!! All you have to do is leave a comment with your email address in the comment section of this post and you'll be entered. Enter for you, your dog, or give it to your kids, nieces, nephews, or even a neighbor. They'll think you're fun!

You've got until next Friday (February 4th) at midnight ET to enter, so get pawing and get a copy of your own or for a gift! Every entry will be assigned a number, then we'll use random.org to pick the winner. We'll have to let you know who the winner is after the weekend, K? We'll be at an agility trial, woo hoo!

Psssstt: If you don't feel comfortable leaving your email address in the comments you can leave a comment and send your email address to me at johann@johannthedog.com.

What breed is your Mum (or Dad)?

Mum took the Dogster breed quiz the other day. Gracie and I were just itching to know what type of dog Mum would be if she had four legs, instead of two.

We had a pretty good idea what breed category she would be in...some type of dog that would be a workaholic, determined, mission oriented, even a little quirky sometimes, (all our Mum's are just a little quirky, aren't they?, BOL!) , probably a herding breed. Well I thought she'd be a sheltie, but nooooo, look what she turned out to be!

Well, guess she's in some good company, nobody that needs acnebodywash.net, BOL! I don't think she has the right stuff for an astronaut though :)

So what breed is your Mum?

Fun winter activities for you and your dog!

When it's not 10 degrees outside, winter is a great time to get out there and have fun with your dog!

Mum, Gracie and I had a great time hiking in the snow a couple of weeks ago, so we decided to make a new Squidoo lens that showcases lots of fun things you can do with your dog in the Winter!

From snowboarding to hiking to skijoring; or just playing fetch with snowballs...we're sure you'll find something you love! And the best part is you won't have to look into pgx, because you'll all be keeping in great shape, even through the winter!

I love this pic, don't you? We found it along with other great winter dog photos that we added to our lens. Check it out!

A little dual heeling!

OK, we're not great heelers, but we like to play around with it sometimes.

Here's just a little vid we did over the Holidays, not great, but it was a nice little first start for a dual heel (is that what they call this? dunno :)

Anyway, we're much better at heeling individually. Sometimes when we heel together like this, we think we need to get Mum some Blue Cross Blue Shield, 'cause we get kinda wacky and start tripping her up, BOL! But then we settle down into a rhythm, and it works fairly well.

Mum thinks we need to do this more, she loves the tandem tricks we do!

Goodies, goodies and more goodies!

I am soooooo lucky!

During Johann's Annual Howling Howliday Giveaway the end of last year, some of the pawsome contributors also sent me some presents for Christmas!

We got all this cool stuff free from several of the contributors. We wanted you to know that we are gonna blog about each and every one of them over the next couple of weeks, because there is so much cool stuff here to share with you!!! After all this I may need to look into some of the best appetite suppressants to keep me slim and trim, BOL!

Stay tuned!

Zoom, zoom!

Just a few more pics from the Holidays!

Zoom! Zoom!

Now we're really getting going! Whee!!!

I think zooming is the best way for losing abdominal fat. My kittie bros don't zoom and they have this little hanging down pouch from their tummies! Not me!

Oh, by the way....update on how I've been feeling. A few days after the my last trial where I wasn't so up to par, I wasn't my usual self. But then, after those few days were over, Mum noticed I was getting back to my wacky self again. DOG, was she glad to see that!

Mum's been working very, very long distance recalls with me in the pasture everyday so I can get my zoom on and hopefully keep my back looser. And she's been massaging me a lot. Can't wait to see how I run in the next trial coming up in a couple of weeks! Mum's hoping for the best. And we're also hoping that they have another one of those B-Matches so we can see what the Grace-ster will do again!

Click to give!!!

There are several sites we've found over the years that you can visit every day and help pups in need! They are 'click to give' sites.

We love these easy and fun ways to help shelter, rescue and foster pups. So we made a new Squidoo lens to highlight some of the sites that you can visit and 'Click to Give'.

Check out the lens, save the links to your hard drives and get helping those pups, it won't cost you a cent!

Oh, and there are a few sites we listed where you can go and play some games and help pups in need too!!! Fun stuff!

Today is Squirrel Appreciation Day!

Woo hoo!!! Today is one of my favorite days - it's National Squirrel Appreciation Day!

In honor of the little tail flipping, tree hopping, nut gnawing, dog teasing rodents, here are my favorite sites, videos and photos of Squirrels!!!

Squirrels actually have a heart...here's one defending his fallen friend :(

Squirrels are very innovative and intelligent, and can conquer most any obstacle you throw at them to keep the out of bird feeders (even to the tune of Mission Impossible)! Although some believe they can outwit the little ones and keep them out of the feeders.

They even like to crash photos, BOL! This is a great (fur real) shot captured by Melissa Brandts (via National Georgraphic).

In case you were wondering: Squirrel Appreciation Day was created by wildlife rehabilitator Christy Hargrove of Asheville, North Carolina.

If you can't get enough of them outside, here are gifts for men who have everything: live webcams, so you can always have the little teasers live at a computer screen near you (via the SquirrelHouse live webcam).

Squirrels have brought down the NASDAQ stock market twice, once in 1987 and once in 1994.

If you'd like to check out photos of lots of different type of Squirrels, National Geographic has a great photo gallery.

Here's my absolute favorite video of Squirrels, their relationship with their young and getting a little help from their 'friends.'


And there's my second favorite video of Squirrels - time to get down! BOL!


Squirrels are featured in some fun online games (mostly involving gathering nuts :) Take a break, go play and have a great Squirrel Appreciation Day!

Barn kittie is back for a visit!

This is the neighbor's barn kittie! Cute isn't she :) I don't think she has a name...

She's back hanging out on our porch for the past 15 hours or so. The last time we saw her was during our snowstorm a couple of weeks ago, she spent four days on our porch. We think she may be a weather kittie...since it snowed a little last night (just a dusting).

We really don't think kitties should live outside all the time, it's just not safe. But we do have to say that this is one savvy kittie! She knows very quickly what the dangers are and moves to keep herself safe. Our neighbor says that she puts food out for her on colder days when she can't mouse. She doesn't look like she's lacking for food, she's just a tad puggy :)

Gracie saw her through the window walking around the cabin yesterday, major chaos erupted! I was barking, Gracie and I were running around the cabin like maniacs, Wolfie and Wiggy jumped higher than home theater seats to get to high ground.

Just then, as Mum watched, Gracie took a running leap and landed on top of the kitchen table to try and see the kittie through the side window. Mum just stood there laughing her fool head off! Whatta ya gonna do? It was quite a sight. Me? I was barking it up, telling Gracie she wasn't supposed to be on top of the kitchen table!

Oh I can't talk...you may remember my little episode a couple of years ago when I landed myself in troubles on top of the kitchen counter. Oops!

Ahhhh....the disadvantages of having agility dogs, BOL!

Catching some rays.

Just catching some rays the other day while Mum works on the 'puter.

In the afternoon, the sun streams into the office and I like to take up the puddle...waiting for our afternoon walk or hike. As you can see we've got hardwood floors, old hardwood floors here in the cabin.

Thank goodness Mum finally got us some rugs all around so we can get a grip and do a little doggie wrestling in the cabin, and a little cat chasing, so the cats don't need to look into apidexin reviews to keep slim and trim, BOL!

They have Gracie and me for that! Although we're not supposed to chase Wolfie and Wiggy. But I think they taunt us to chase them sometimes, darn cats!

Time for a walk?

Gracie wants to know if it's time to go for a walk !!!

Mum has been working way, way, way too many hours on the computer! She said something about tax time, new clients, lots of project work, and organizing the office for the new year, and tanzanite rings, wait that's not right, BOL!.

Sheesh, Gracie and I don't understand any of that stuff! We want to get on the 'puter and visit our friends! And the weather is mild and we want to go hiking again! Ever notice that the more exercise you get (like our hikes from the weekend) the more you want?

Snow hiking is fun!

This past weekend the temps rose to about mid 40's. With snow still on the ground, Mum thought it would be fun to take another hike up the ridge, since we hadn't been up there for a couple of weeks at least.

DOG! It was so much fun! The snow was mushy, the scenery amazing, and so peaceful and quiet up there.

Here's a vid of our little hike in the snow. I even got to wade in the stream a little and take a nice drink of cool, clean, 'snow run off from the mountain' water.

Here are some pics of the weekend too! It's all about the ears, bol!

More ears...

Gracie jumps!

Mum had trouble getting us to look at the camera all weekend because there was so much to watch and see. So we have lots of profile pics...

Finally Mum got one of herself with Gracie...one of those long arm, turn the camera on yourself, pics. There must have been something very interesting they were looking at...serious stuff!

Oh, the possibilities!

We saw lots of tracks in the snow...mine and deer; some coon, and bird scratches, and even some we had a hard time identifying.

Wait, I think one of those critters is in there! (this is the railroad tie bridge near the pond.)

Gracie lives in a state of awe most of the time :)

The view at the stream was just amazing!

We had a great time! Hiked for over 2 hours on Saturday and an hour on Sunday. Mum is feeling it I can tell ya, BOL! There's no way she's going to have to ask, are diet pills safe? Gracie and I are keeping her fit. Hiking on snow is way more difficult than regular hiking.

Hope you all had a great weekend too!

Don't do it!!!

You know what NOT to do with this right?

BOL! Ok, Mum couldn't resist. There's this thing I do that makes her laugh every single day.

Gracie goes (she squats, since she's a girl). Then I have to go over to the spot and mark it (because I'm a boy, and that's what boys, do right?).

Anyway, Mum doesn't bother walking us further after Gracie goes, because she knows I have to get over there quick, sniff it (smells like Gracie got into some kind of oily skin treatment this morning, BOL!) and cover what is there with my smell.

It's a big joke at our house, has been since Gracie came to live with us. So, question. Does this happen at your house too?

Gracie focuses!

Last weekend when we were at the trial, they had a B-Match on Saturday. I think it's super cool that the trial group near here has had a B-Match and a Time 2 Beat demo at the last two trials.

Mum debated and debated about whether to enter Gracie in the B-Match after what happened last time; which is the usual 'take a few obstacles and then run off'. But she never gives up on the Gracester, and who can resist that face! So she decided to run with her and see what she would do this time.

You can use a toy in a B-Match (but no treats) so Mum decided this time to use Gracie's target, which is a yogurt lid. Gracie absolutely loves her target and Mum has been using it a lot with Gracie, after weaves, after several jumps, after weaves and a jump, tunnels, find target and just go target.

Well, Gracie wow'd us all!!! For the first time in three years in a trial situation, she took 16 obstacles all in a row and didn't even really think about running off. Mum was sooooo proud! She looked like a true beginner out there, kind of puppy like, but she had some really good moments of true focus and determination Mum thinks.

Mum tried to cue her as early as she could. She'd been leading out with Gracie in practices so she decided to keep that pattern.

Gracie loves all the obstacles, but she sure doesn't want to do the weaves during a trial situation. Mum thinks she knows she has to stop and think, and she just wants to run. She was doing so great during her run that Mum decided to have her try them again. You'll hear Mum say go target to get her to focus at the weaves, and she did for a while. But it wasn't to be, so they went on.

All that running DW work paid off too. She made the yellow, way too high in the yellow, but considering it was a trial situation, Mum was super proud of her. Gracie got lots of compliments on her DW after the run.

After the run Gracie got a humongous jack pot! We all wanted to beat stainless steel drums, we were so proud of the Gracester!

Mum's going to enter her again in the B-Match in the February trial if they have it. Who knows? Maybe Gracie will run for real in the April trial? We'll see.

Trial last weekend.

We went to a three day AKC trial last weekend. Mum has been concerned over my runs. I just wasn't running my usual self. And I was kind of testy all weekend, and over this past week too. Although, today I've been acting more my usual self.

Practice at the training center and agility in the yard the previous week was super! So she's baffled.

My first run was just OK, but I started refusing jumps (by running past them) on the first day and did it in at least one run each day. And I was just stepping through my weaves on every single run.

After every run Mum massaged me. Heated me before my runs, iced me down at appropriate times throughout the weekend and gave Traumeel each day. It was chilly in the arena, so she even walked early to make sure I had lots of time to warm up. Then took lots of time cooling me down. She did everything except send me off to Corolla vacation rentals, BOL!

I really wanted to run and she didn't ever feel any heat coming from any specific part of my body. So we decided to keep going. Mum's taking me to my vet again soon for an adjustment and more massage pointers; and she's going to ask for a test for Lyme and other TBDs, just in case.

We're signed up for another three day trial in February, so we'll see what happens then.

Here are a few of my runs, you'll see I'm just not running where I have been. I ended up getting over 40 points for the weekend and one Q each day.

Smooth agility moves?

Over in Europe they have some different agility 'moves' than we do over here in the US. It's great now that with technology, we can see what folks all over the world are doing in agility, isn't it?

One 'move' that's been talked around a lot of late is what some call the Jaako Turn, some call it the Ketschkers Turn, some a Top Turn. The subject came up this past weekend when I was at an agility trial and was asked if I knew what the turn was. So I said I'd share what info I knew, or had found about it, on my blog.

This 'move' has been around a while in Europe, although you don't see it much here in the US. I've seen it in various forms since I started blogging about agility. Some may classify it, if needed, as a 'backy-uppy' followed immediately by a blind cross. Here are a couple of examples:


I've seen a few instances of folks using it here in the US. One was Daisy Peel at the USDAA Nationals in 2009. Here's the vid, the 'move' is at the end of the run.

You can also see it in this vid, with Little Jackie at a Silas Boogk seminar. The 'move' is throughout the video in various forms, but the most noticeable is at about the 1:56 point in the video.


And here as a Top Turn.

In this final vid, you can see it in this great run at 2010 FCI, thanks to Agility Vision. It's at the :51 point in the video. Also check out that pre-q'd blind cross after the chute.

So what do you think?

Dog agility bloggers!

If you like agility as much as we do, you want to know everything you can that's going on in the dog agility World. It's a great way to pick up ideas!

There are a lot of dog agility folks just like us on the Internet blogging about their dog agility experiences. And they have great blogs that I like to keep up on throughout the week. They are sharing their agility experiences, tip, tricks, training techniques, ideas, runs, thoughts and more - all about their favorite sport.

Over the Holidays we put together a fun little resource for us dog agility lovers! Check out my new Squidoo lens on Dog Agility Bloggers; listing a whole bunch of dog agility bloggers all in one place with links to their blogs. Now all we need are some tv cables, one of the cool new Internet TV's, and we can surf blogs right from the comfort of our couch, in big screen, BOL!

If we missed your blog, be sure and let us know, we'd love to add it to the list!

More snow!

Gracie, Mum and I woke up to over 5 inches of snow this morning. Wow! What a beautiful sight from the back porch of our cabin!

It kept snowing most of the day and we ended up with about 7 inches of the white stuff. We here they haven't had this much snow here since the mid '90's.

Mum took us for a couple of walks today, short ones since the snow is up to my belly now. It was so quiet up on our mountain today, no car sounds from the mountain road, just pure peace and quiet. Very nice!

Wait, did I hear something? Gracie?

After our walks Mum got us inside and spent 20 minutes helping us get the ice balls off of us. I had 'em all over my belly, chest and legs. In all the snow I've seen in my life, this was the worst case of ice balls I've ever had! Gracie too, on on her butt and legs, BOL! They looked like big casters all over us!

Doesn't look like the snow is going to melt for several days, so we may get some more pics fur ya!

Great company we found to get our staples delivered right to our door!

Lately we've been using a new company to get our cat litter, some cat food and kibble for training; and we were very excited to find them!!! We just had to tell you all about it!

PetFlow is kind of a new company that we think has been much needed in the pet industry. Read on and you'll understand why.

Petflow has an amazing selection of quality cat and dog foods, cat litters, treats and a few other staples. And they have all the great foods that we like, other than raw of course. They have Fromm, Orijen, Halo, Stella & Chewey's, Honest Kitchen, Go!, Taste of the Wild and lots more! And they have our favorite cat litter, too, World's Best Cat Litter.

We like to shop around and get the best deals, and find ways we don't have to travel to buy stuff we need everyday. So when we found these 'guys', we were super excited! And when we did our price comparisons, we found their prices were super competitive with the stores we had been using. Some items were even less expensive than some of the local stores. Oooo, we loved that!

Our first shipment was cat food and cat litter, weighing in at a whopping 45 lbs. And we got it all with free shipping! If we would have purchased that amount of product at that weight from any other online shop it would have been so cost prohibitive. Today we got another shipment of cat food and it was free too!

It's a scheduled delivery service, so you need to order and set up subsequent deliveries. But you are locked into the shipping price for however long you are signed up for regular shipments.

Right now Petflow has an offer on their site that you can get free shipping if you purchase $65.00 or more and sign up for scheduled deliveries. And we've heard this offer is going to last all week. Otherwise the shipping is just $4.95 for all that you order, which is still super inexpensive. Cool huh?

Definitely worth a try to save time and money, in our opinion. We used them twice so far and love 'em!

A little fun on our Holiday vacation!

We got to do some zoomin' and agility practice on our little Holiday vacation!

We had so much fun getting back to the backyard practice, that's fur sure. Gracie and I both worked on weaves since we hadn't even seen them in about two or three months. Gracie surprised Mum, didn't miss a single pole over several days. I, on the other hand, got into a little 'pull out at the 10th pole' routine, but got over it quickly. That's Mum's fault you know, that pulling out on the 10th pole syndrome. :)

Mum also took the opportunity to work on my distance with just jumps, since I didn't do so well on those two gambles at our last USDAA trial. And we hadn't worked on anything like that for, well, maybe a year! We worked with a target out three jumps, with Mum hanging back, then worked the same without the target with a 'go on.' Ahhh....it all came back to me so quickly.

Gracie and I are going to the training center today to get in some contact practice...before my next trial, which is really close to here on Friday-Sunday. And Mum stocked up on the Traumeel to give me each day to keep me loose.

Ooooo!!! Can't wait, three days of agility!

We had a snow day!

A couple of weeks ago, we had a snow day!

We were very happy that we didn't move too far south to enjoy some of the white stuff. And we got to play in it a lot!!!

We wrestled...

We boxed...

We zoomed...

And posed for snow shots fur Mum...

Is that a treat in your hand?

Then we boxed some more...

And zoomed some more...

And practiced our recalls...

And caught a few snow flakes...

Then Mum had some fun with that new camera of ours and got some burst shots, came back home and made a fun gif. She's so goofy!!!

I know a lot of folks got a lot of snow! We only got a few inches, then it melted away not too long after that. But it sure was fun while it lasted!

The next day (post coming soon) everything was pretty muddy and Mum had to put me in the kitchen sinks to clean me off, BOL!!!

But it was a pawsome time playing in the snow!!!