In the middle of the week we had a little surprise the only egg from a clutch that had candled clear/non-developing I thought MIGHT be fertile and developing well ended up hatching.

Then on Saturday, Miss Cami was entered in her first show - the Victorian Australian Shepherd Club specialty show under US senior breeder judge Sheila Polk. For her first show and not having experience under her belt she did decently - she placed 3rd in her class - with a few more miles on her to smooth out her habit of stickybeaking I think she'll do nicely. I could so tell that I spent early pregnancy 'resting' though... eek, so out of shape! I spent the rest of the day after running around the ring admiring Kate's new baby who was only 3 days old and just too precious, sitting and chatting! (C'mon, admit it, half the fun of a show is just in the chatting!) The judge did make a nice comment on Cami in her critique but I only heard part of it so will wait until I've got the exact words so I don't misquote. I forgot to take pictures at the show, so we took ones after while she was still clean and groomed! LOL Ignore the goofy looking person in the picture... was very tired by that point!


Sunday was the sports day - herding, obedience and agility. None of my guys entered but no way was I going to miss it! I took Veri and Cami along for the ride... Veri tickled me pink by doing very well all day long - probably the best she's done yet, just happy to be with me, rolling around for bellyrubs and cuddles and demonstrating she has figured out the whole people=give attention/approach/watch=reinforcement game. LOL If they didn't notice her when she came up, sat and watched them, she was fine with 'helping' them notice she was doing "Something Verity Should Get Reinforced For" by hopping up, nudging hands or waving a paw to get their attention. I'll have to watch she doesn't actually turn it into something obnoxious but I do get so much enjoyment out of seeing her be her happy little self more and more in public! :-)

Got back to find out we had another nice surprise, itty bitty Aylesbury has hatched out!

Well we had our first show in ages Saturday. I was hoping we'd win at least our class but no luck. Marli aka Ellagant Party Girl took 1st and was RUBOB and Best Puppy In Group also. I felt rather stupid as I fumbled a bit, even more noticable since I'd actually been doing quite nice in practices... d'oh! On the up side, I met up with a few people from that class and it was Terry's first show ever, so I hope our support made her a bit more comfortable. Her Irish Setter did well for his first show. He's such a sookie guy, makes me a bit wistful for setters again. (No, I am not getting anymore dogs anytime soon!)

I also took a look at our entries... we're doing absolutely nothing all of August and worse we missed the cut offs for the Royals. :cries: I'm not sure what we're doing in September either as I'm not sure what we will be able to make it to. :sad: I guess in hindsight we're not ready for Royals and it's best to wait and I also have plenty of things to keep me busy here but that really doesn't make me feel better as I'd really, really, really been looking forward to actually being IN the Royals this year since Hope was born. The reason - I simply did not get my entries in. I kept telling Nic I really need you to take Laurent tonight for half an hour so I can sit down and fill everything out but he was always too busy and when he finally took him it was the day after the entries closed.

Hope is doing well with the sheep but I'm also a bit frusterated with progress atm. The alpaca is the chief cause, albeit through no fault of his own. He cannot be in with them while herding as his job is to protect sheep against foxes and dogs look enough like foxes he'll try to protect against them. So I split 1-2 sheep and him into the other paddock while we keep the others in the first paddock. Problem being when I've got Hope working just the sheep, she'll spot the "strays" (iow the alpaca and 2 sheep) which are "getting away" and constantly wants to dash back to round them up! X-o

I still haven't picked up my Wyandotte cockrel, we haven't been able to get ahold of the fellow. I'm hoping he's not sold him elsewhere as they are -very- difficult to find. I've had some good news in that my partridge colour Silkie hen has gotten some very favorable comments from some people who think she's worth showing and should produce excellent babies as well. She was just purchased as a pet as when you buy a baby you can't really tell how it'll end up but if there are any shows nearby in August maybe I'll take her for a lark. Her breeder has offered me an unrelated cockrel which I may take up. The idea of showing chooks seems so funny to me... but I suppose really it's not any different than dogs or cats so not sure why it seems so odd!

Other than that, it seems like there is so much outrageous stuff going on in a lot of my friends lives at the moment... stuff you'd expect to read about rather than watch people you know live through. There is so much upheaval, stress, personal realizations, hurt and other miserable, rotten stuff. I guess this means that I know a lot of very strong people but it sucks to collectively have the universe grabbing us by the ear and turning the world upside down. I've started writing about stuff so many times in the past few weeks and just really lacked the words to capture my thoughts, my moods were too transient and by the time I found the way to put across one thought, I'd picked it apart from five other points of view and what I felt changed entirely. I feel like I'm at a point where I want to move forward with all my plans again but things are just going so frusteratingly slow it's hard to believe I'll ever get there.

Verity's progress is slow but steady. Slow more due to my lack of time to train as intensively as I did pre-toddler. Frusterating as I know what kind of progress we have the ability to achieve if not the time. She is happy though, dances around with joy in her eyes, so it's really a human complaint more than a dog one. It was her second birthday as well a few days ago and she got goodies and into mischief- chewed and shredded a bag of sheep wool and a bag of alpaca wool I'd recieved to try spinning with.

Aside from everything, Laurent is gorgeous and beautiful and wonderful and precious and I really, really, really, really love it when he pops out with cute new phrases, wraps his arms around my neck, gives me a big kiss and bursts out giggling so hysterically he actually falls down and can't pick himself up. He knows how to bribe Cade now into coming, "Caaadddeee.... foo-foood... go buh bye car carrrr" in a sing song voice. Today he pointed to the AB icon on my bookmark favorites bar and when I clicked on it he requested, "Bwyn! Where Bwyn?" (Sif's son Bryn) Then when I found a thread with your sig picture in it he clapped in glee, pointed and exclaimed, "See it? BWYN! Oo-ie!" (Oo-ie being Luey) and giggling and clapping more. He apparently has seen me click on the icon enough to recognize what website it symbolizes and remembered that he's seen their picture while there! O_O

Ahhh... lazy summer days! Well, I wish anyway! Actually it's as busy as ever, though I have been somewhat slack with the dog training. Seems a whole plethora of new things are taking off, old things are changing and I'm thinking about fifty things at once!

As much as I'm eager to move, I'm going nuts over the "where" and feeling a bit sad about leaving this house... it's where we met, where I was proposed to, where we got married, where found out I was pregnant, labored and later brought Laurent home and spent his first year. I'll miss silly things, like the stained glass windows and the beautifully carved fire places with their decorative tiles and insets. And our garden. I'm taking a few things but a lot of the plants we'll have to leave behind when they've been birthday and wedding gifts. *sniffles*

I'm getting more and more eager to meet my new puppy as well, I got the latest photos at 3 weeks of age and I'm ready to fly up there and cuddle her right now! This waiting thing is for the birds!


Now lookit these two pics... what a difference a week makes huh! That chubby little slug has LEGS! LOL Nose is blacking up more and more and will eventually end up solid black, copper is pretty clear now on cheeks, eyebrows and under the rear legs.
We went to the Melbourne Royal on Aussie Shepherds day. I'd been looking forward to it all year long as it's probably one of the biggest Aussie turn outs. Due to crappy traffic ("Take the car!" says my usually PT loving husband! "It's faster!") we got there after judging had already started. It took 1 h 45 min to get from Hawthorn to there!!! Totally bummed out but I still got to catch quite a few of the Aussie Shepherds and got plenty of snaps. If you're interested, here's a link to the Kodak gallery I uploaded them to as there's about 40 of them, too many to put up here! It was waaayyyyyyyyyy too busy, everyone deciding to "miss" the weekend crowds made it into huge, noisy crowd. Blerg. Wayyyy too many people to take Laurent into the petting zoo, you seriously couldn't SEE the animals for the throngs of children so we gave it a miss. I decided to have L's photo taken at the "have your kid's photo taken with a lamb" thingie. It's $10 for a single print or $25 for a "package" which was a single print and a couple of dinky wallet sized ones. I just wanted one for the album, so the lady gave me attitude, which I didn't hear fully at the time (crappy hearing loss...) but apparently was all sniffy like, "Well if you don't think your child is worth it... blah blah" And then just brushed us off, taking 1 shot instead of the 7-8 to choose from she did with the lady before us. OMG!!!!! The NERVE!!! I was steamed for the rest of the day thinking about that lady making a judgement on my gorgeous, wonderful little boy who is more precious to me than anything! It is nevertheless an adorable photo of my gorgeous boy and a very cute little lamb who was licking his fingers! Soooo cute together but poor bubba was so tired!
And one from today, we are actually all having a lovely morning snuggling up together in the bed, just lazing about before we get up. Cade is under the covers, Sierra snuggled up next to L and N, me on the far side of them (you can see my elbow a bit above the lambs nose) and Laurent having fun with the stuffed sheep I bought. You press it and it bleats! Laurent lights up when he hears it and giggles! Tooooo cute!

On a sadder note, the test results for Me-Me, who passed away earlier this month, to confirm the renal failure was indeed amyloid are back. It is something which is something that can only be confirmed after death with a congo red stain test. Today I got an e-mail confirming what we suspected. HERE is the pathology report. End result - positive CRS in both kidneys and liver... amyloidosis with fibroisis and papillary necrosis consistant with Sharpei familial amyloidosis. We're still waiting on her sire, Sami's, report but expect it to confirm the same thing. Not that I expected anything differently because all the symptoms were there and other causes eliminated but I don't know... I just feel so sad, she was such a bright spark, fighting so hard and now gone. It just echos through you.

And as a last icky bit, Cade will be visiting Dr. Jane tomorrow to have his ear looked at. I think the cat must have bit or scratched him while playing as he's got two giant hard red pimples about 2cm size and a smaller 1cm one that look like infections that need lancing and draining. ICK!

the weekend

Long time no blog!

As it happens the weekend was a busy one with both a double obedience trial and Top Dog on Saturday and a double agility trial and Top Dog on Sunday as well. Both days we were just watching and cheering on a few folks we knew who were entered but it was soooooo nice to see so many amazing dog and handlers out there working their best! All of the Aussie's I saw there and their owners did well and I was pretty impressed with how the dogs were all giving their owners a lot of heart in their work! Even when there were mistakes made, you could see the work put in as a team and the partnership and that the dogs were happy to be there working with their person. What we saw of the Top Dog ceremony was very impressive! We didn't get to watch much as DH had a work meeting we had to be at but the dogs and handlers there were very, very nice indeed.

We went back Sunday to watch the agility as well. So many nice performances and some nice examples of handling! Particularly those who were wsorking their dogs at a distance was very nice to see for me. The courses, from my rather novice point of view, seemed to be a nice mix, they had decent flow but also had some real challenges as well where the handlers skills and their ability to be a team with the dog really came into play. There were several times I saw what otherwise were DARN impressive runs get snagged and the handlers had to be very much on their toes!

For my part I had a great time just watching everyone and learning from the nice handling I saw in the more advanced classes. We got in some time working with Si-si ringside and got to catch up with several people as well. Nic came and got to enjoy the day as well and Laurent came and enjoyed it until he was exhausted... and refused to go to sleep because there was too many people and dogs to watch! ;-) What a fantastic day! I am so jazzed and just can't WAIT to train some more until we're back out there on the weekends and having fun competing!

Monday was mostly spent cleaning and recovering from the weekend and today I spent half the day gardening! I still have heaps and heaps more to do but now that the weather is being civilized I'm enjoying being out there in the sun... hopefully Laurent will start taking NAPS again so I can ahve my hour a day to clean and garden again!