Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Vampire dog just in time for Halloween!

Ooooo, super scary vampire dog spotted in the mountains of NE Georgia! Better watch out, BOL!


HAPPY HOWL-O-WEEN!!! 

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Fall Color on our Mountain!

It's our first fall up here on this mountain with a view. It's been super fun watching the leaves turn from miles and miles away!

This is the view from our back deck, nice and framed by the trees around the cabin.


This is the view just to the east of the cabin. If you look closely you can see a downed tree in the lower right. That tree fell just a few weeks before we moved in. Missed the cabin by inches!


Here's the view out from our fenced in area looking southwest. Love the light in this one.


And here's another view from the deck on rainy day. Very cool how the clouds snuggle in the ridges of the mountains.


Here's a shot of our drive up to the cabin, up the mountain road.


And sunset....awwwww....


You can just hear the jackson guitars at musicians friend playing the mountain music, can't ya! We have outer bands of Sandy hitting us a little today. It's been really windy up here and they say that it's possible that Sandy may be sending a little snow here on Tuesday! Woo hoo! Just a little snow is just what we like. Hope all my fiends on the east coast and in the NE stay safe, safe, safe!

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Giveaway: Chet the Jet is back!

Chet the Jet, the amazing canine sleuth, is back with his latest mystery - A Fistfull of Collars by New York Times bestselling author Spencer Quinn!

If you like a good mystery and if you like dogs, you'll love this smart, witty series featuring Chet (the dog) and his PI pal Bernie of the Little Detective Agency.

In the latest, Chet and Bernie go Hollywood, helping the 'ruggedly handsome' and notorious bad boy, Thad Perry, who comes to town to shoot his latest big budget western. What ensues is a tail of secrets, murder, and unexpected twists and turns always with Chet and Bernie's tight relationship navigating the dusty tail.

This isn't your wimpy dog book, it's a smart, witty mystery that will keep you on the edge of your dog bed till the last page is turned.

The best part is the great folks at Artria Books, the publisher of Spencer Quinn's A Fistfull of Collars and the great books in the series, is providing us with the entire Chet and Bernie Mystery Series of five (5) books to giveaway to one of my lucky blog readers (US only please, apologies to my pals across the ponds and borders)!!!


   

HOW TO ENTER!

We have several ways for you to enter through Rafflecopter below, just follow the instructions. The deadline is midnight October 30th. Have fun and good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thursday, October 11, 2012

How to properly dig for underground vermin from a herding dog's point of view!

How do you properly dig for underground vermine? First you have to use your handy dandy sniffer to sniff out a culprit!


Once you have identified the closest place they may be to the surface, you start digging and I mean really getting down and dirty...digging like you've never dug before!


Once you get down a little ways, you have to stick your sniffer in the hole and see if you can pinpoint how much further to dig! Careful not to inhale too much dirt at this point or you'll start a sneezing fit!


Once you've settled on a good direction, keep digging, dig and dig and dig and dig...at this point you may encounter some smells that resemble the time Mum ordered Chinese food delivered, but do not let that disway you in your mission! You must stay focused on the vermin, you must!


Once you get down to a certain point, the vermin smells will increase, you will know that they have JUST BEEN THERE! Yes, but don't be fooled, take a step back and then BAM! stick your head way, way, way in, and you may just catch 'em by surprise! Oh they are gonna need a business contracts lawyer raleigh nc, for sure now!


Alas, you may not get the vermin on your first try at this. It's an art and science combined, and without the two working paw in paw, you may have to have another go at it tomorrow. But at all costs! DO NOT GIVE UP!!!

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Visit to Sackett's!

On the way back from getting Gracie's blood tests and seeing that amazing Great Horned Owl, we stopped into a store that we've seen passing by a lot, but never had the time to visit.

Mum, Gracie and I love those cool tack and feed stores. You can always find some bargains on staples like muck boots, garden gloves and even nice stainless steel dog bowls. And Sacketts Tack and Feed didn't disappoint!

The first thing we saw were the uber cool antique vehicles they had all over the place, including this cool old Ford (I think) pick up truck.


And this one too, even older than the other one !


And who couldn't resist a ride in the back of a wagon!


Or a covered wagon, soooo cool!


Walking into Sackett's you are immediately overwhelmed by all the cowboy boots. Wow, cowboy boots have really evolved since the time Mum lived in Texas.

We wound through the aisles (didn't see hide nor hare of kids furniture boston here), then made our way to the dog section. We were super happy to see they had a nice selection of holistic dog and cat food. Guess the horse and farmer folks around there feed their pets pretty darn good, love that!

Mum picked up a couple of potato chew treats for us, but she says she's saving them for us for after we run in the USDAA match this coming weekend. Awwww Mum!!!!

Tuesday, October 09, 2012

Last of the flowers!


So it's the last of the flowers. The tomato plant gave us it's last tomato, the jalapeno plant gave us it's last jalapeno. It's turning colder here on the mountain. Last night it was 40 degrees. 

The kitties are seeking out the warm sun spots, Gracie and I stopped blowing our coats, and Mum got out the flannel sheets and fleece blankets. Even though it was only 50 degrees last night, Mum swore she saw a spitting of snow. I told her that's not possible!

Hope you are all staying warm where you are!

Gracie is off the Doxy, yeah!


Mum, Gracie and I took off to the vet for Gracie to get her follow up blood and urine (she peed on command, good girlie!) tests for the her bout with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and Lyme the other day, and we got the tests back yesterday!

Gracie's titers indicated that she has Lyme present in her system, but is now symptom free! And the RMSF tests also indicated that she had a pretty bad bout of it, but now it's completely non-existent in her system both of which are pawsome news! The RMSF tests were so good that they are going to run them again, they just couldn't believe she recovered so well and so quickly! We're so happy she is feeling good we thought maybe we should get the band back together complete with fender bass at Guitar Center and celebrate with some dancing, I tell ya!

When she got sick her white cell count went up too high, as well as her thyroid levels. But they are back to super good normal now, as well!

The not so good news is that as she was recovering from the tick yuck, her snotty nose came back. So they took snot samples (BOL!) and are sending them into the lab for tests as they saw some white cells in the snot under initial examination. If those tests don't show anything causing the snot, she may be going in for a rhinoscope (to search for foreign bodies and/or parasites) and perhaps x-rays of her head and teeth (to check for foreign bodies or hidden dental problems) again.

The interesting things is Gracie's nose gets a lot better, but when a weather front comes in with rain (like when bands of Hurricane Isaac came through), she gets snotty and sneezy again. Then it dries out and so does her nose.

In the meantime, Mum has her on an herbal recovery program from the Doxy (acidophilus) and Vitamin C Echinacea/Goldenseal and Astralgalus (all immune boosters) for her nose, and saline solution nasal rinses which really helped the last time to clear it up.

But the super great news is that she feels super good! She did agility a couple of weekends ago and got a Q and was running really great on most of her runs.

Monday, October 08, 2012

Showing off Gracie's brindle!


You may remember we told ya Mum got a new phone - a Samsung Galaxy. And we are loving it!!! 

So of course we had to join Instagram, since all three of us love photography, playing around with the camera and sharing stuff we enjoy.

Here's one of Gracie the other day. Unless you get up close and personal with Gracie you really don't always see her brindle. She has a lot of it, mostly on her face and on her back end. This Instagram really shows it off, how fun!

If you're on Instagram, be sure and follow/friend us!

Agility weekend!

A couple of weekends ago we got to play some agility!

We got up super early on Saturday morning and drove to Huntsville, AL, about three hours away.

Mum entered me in Snooker and Gamblers, and Gracie in Jumpers, Standard and Snooker.

The location in Huntsville was a super hard packed horse arena inside, just a bit to hard for me (felt like running on concrete).

Mum had an OK Snooker plan for me, not the best as it had to end up kind of long. And I wasn't moving my speediest, so we got a Q, but no SQ for me. In Gamblers I was running kind of slow again, but when it came to Gamble time, I kicked into high gear and had a beautiful run of the Gamble; jump way out to the frame, then in to the tunnel entrance that was placed under the frame, then way out to a jump. I was going over the last jump just as the buzzer went off. So for the thousandth time, I was about .10 sec over time on that. So close!!!

Gracie's jumpers run was happening just as my Snooker run was going on. Anyone that knows USDAA, knows that Snooker always take precedence. So Mum walked Gracie's jumpers, then she had to quickly go and walk my Snooker. I was five dogs in with one jump height change, so Mum had to go and get me ASAP.

Just as we were standing and waiting to run in about two dogs, they started calling for Gracie to run. But Mum couldn't go since the two dogs in front of us E'd on the first couple of obstacles of Snooker, so we had to go run!

After my Snooker, Mum ran to get Gracie, ran to her ring and they were already building the next course. Grrrr....even though Mum had told them she would have a conflict. the ring crew and starters judge insisted that Mum had plenty of time to run Gracie. Well, heck no!!! She didn't. Mum wasn't very happy, so she protested to the trial chair and the trial chair agreed with us. So we ended up with a free run voucher for their next trial.

Next up for Gracie was a standard run. If you know Gracie, you know she's had trouble with aluminium teeters. But they had a wooden one there. Guess what? Gracie did the most awesome standard run, even did the teeter, went ahead of Mum two jumps and downed on the table like a pro, did her weaves on the first try. They were at the 15th of 16 obstacles and guess what, Gracie couldn't control herself and took off to zoom a little. Mum got her back and they took the tire (last obstacle), but ended up taking too long to get Gracie back, so were over time.

But I have to tell ya it was awesome, and a first for Gracie to run almost an entire course, focused, fast and accurate. Good Girlie!!! She was sooo good we wanted to check out Sunset Beach Real Estate and see if they had a rental we could celebrate in!

Her last run was Gamblers, and it was a nice run, she got the first two jumps of a four jump Gamble, but missed the third one and took the fourth. This was one of Gracie's first Gamblers runs, so Mum was happy with it!


We drove home and even got home by 3 PM, pretty cool!

So, the next day we ventured to an outdoor (on grass) trial closer to us. It was fun, but I was only entered in Snooker. After the day before being sore, Mum massaged me that night, and gave me a Traumeel pill the morning of the second day and guess what? I was raring to go on that Snooker run.

So raring to go that Mum wasn't prepared. I took off like a bat out of you know where and barreled into the tunnel, oops that wasn't Mum's plan and was an out of order sequence to get any points for it, so Mum and I didn't get a Q.

Gracie ran Jumpers, Standard and Snooker, I think. Her standard had an aluminium teeter, so no Q for her. Her jumpers run was weird and slow, so no Q's. Gracie's last run was PII Snooker, and guess what? She Q'd in Snooker again! Dang she's gonna be in PIII Snooker before she gets out of PI anything else, BOL!!!

The good side of that is Mum will like the less conflicts on Snooker at least! Pretty fun weekend!

We are attending a USDAA match this coming Saturday, three runs each of us. The club needed dogs so they can be approved to hold USDAA trials so we were happy to use it as a nice practice. Hope they get approved, would be great to have another USDAA trial close by early next year!
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