Musings of a Demented ...Corgi owner!

Yesterday, I picked up a Dremel and started the grueling exercise of nail trimming.  Rainbow simply groaned the entire time.  Shaker was a bear!  He tried to leap off the grooming table, shook his foot and generally created a wrestling match.  Which leads me to why I was so weakened when I picked up Ella's back foot.  She wiggled and giggled but I got the back foot done.  Feeling empowered I moved forward.  At which point she shook and flicked my hand off like I was a fly.  Unfortunately, I dropped the Dremel on the concrete floor where it was scittering around like a fish seeking water!  And Ella simply looked smug! 

I successfully finished up the Dremel experience this morning while I was fresh and STRONG!  So again feeling empowered, I decided that today was the day, Russ and I would get back to business on training for the performance ring. 

Yes, it has been a long time as I had to recover from the wildly humiliating ring experiences that occurred in 2009, when he peed twice in the ring! YESH!!!

So I filled my pockets with treats, nabbed a leash, Russ and headed outside.   Before we got to the end of the driveway, he decided that cars were far more interesting than me.  No worries, I was ready for that one.  I increased my fun quotient and he was back to me.  He remembered his heeling at different speeds!  Imagine my surprise!  But, of course, he wanted to watch my feet and not look at me.  He wasn't the least bit interested in any of the food I had in my pocket, so it was almost impossible to get him to raise his head.   (Who ever heard of a non food motivated corgi?)  Anyway, I upped my "fun" "good dogs" when he even so much as gave me a glance, but this is going to be a process!  Now you would think that I would have quit while I was marginally ahead, but NOOOO, we were half mile from the house.

So I decided to move to sit/stay while I walk around him.  He completely ignored sit!  He gave me his now legendary, "I don't get it" look.  When I finally got him to "sit", he was rock solid on stay and walk around.   But what was the deal with no "sit"?    I tried several more times on our walk and if he decided to pay attention he would "down".  Obviously this is going to take some more work. 

Earlier training picture.

Well tomorrow is another day.  Stay tuned for more training musings!

Reflections on Christmas' Past

I am slowly putting signs of Christmas 2011 away in boxes, and I am struck by how just about everything survived, well except one little fuzzy snowman.  But seriously, no one rampaged the village, stole the low hanging ornaments, knocked over the santa collection or bulldozed the nativity scene. 

As Christmas' go it was pretty boring!  It must be time for a puppy!

Christmas Toy Graveyard

This year the kids all got "road kill" toys, and still managed to fill my living room with stuffing!  I cleaned a pile of it up again this morning, along with various pieces of tennis balls, toy limbs,  assorted ears and wood chips.  Then I carefully collected all the toys and deposited them into their basket.  I came back about 10 mins later with the vacuum cleaner hose and found this...

 Well they certainly have had a good time! 

Why is it?

Why is it that my dishwasher is always filled with more dog bowls than human dishes?

Music says, "she doesn't care as long as it stays that way, and her bed is perpetually fluffed."

January Snow Play

I personally don't get it, but these clowns love the January cold and snow. 

Yep neither foot is on the ground.  How does he do that?

This is a particularly good example of what is really going on when I am yelling "Come, I am cold!"

Yep a whole lot of not coming!  And these are the ones that are all obedience trained!  Best selective hearing on the planet!

But gratefully they finally all listened.  And yes, that would be Shaker as always bringing up the rear detail!

Plans

As many of you know, we are planning our first litter of puppies, and to say the least we are quite excited. But one of the big hiccups for me and the puppy stuff is the whole issue of bringing more dogs into this world and what that means overall. So Kathy and I decided if we were going to occasionally have a litter of pups, that we had to figure out how to give back to the canine world.


The first thing we did was rescue, rehabilitate and rehome a black lab mix named Bailey. I am happy to report that I have had many conversations with Bailey's new forever mom and she is adjusted and happy in her new home. (Although Bailey wishes to report that she is not crazy about salt on sidewalks. I told her I was sorry I didn't find her a home in Arizona, but her new mom was going to get balloon boots.)  But that didn't seem like quite enough.

Now as much as I would like to keep every puppy I produce in our planned litter, some are already spoken for, so I had to figure something out that would allow me to go forward in good conscience. I am all to aware that a free puppy, way to often, equates to no long-term committment to the dog. (We only need to look to the aforementioned lab mix for proof in the pudding.) So we decided that we would have all of our puppy homes donate to a good canine charity rather than giving any money to Riverbend. This decision left me feeling clear-headed about our decision to bring more albeit beautiful puppies into the world! (It is perfectly acceptable to read and see bias in the last sentence.)
So then the decision was which one? I spent the last days trying to figure out if we had a local canine charity I could get behind, and unfortunately all I found were loosely run organizations without real organizational capacity, or ones that their administrative overhead far exceeds acceptable standards. (I could spend hours ranting about organizational capacity, but will spare you my tirade.) So I turned my sights to national canine charities. Well I won't spend too much time recounting the travails of that mess.

But the long and short of it is, we have chosen Corgi Aid as our charity. I spent several hours reviewing their IRS 990's this morning, and I see nothing but good! Further it appears from these public forms that their administrative overhead is nearly 0%. Which means just about every dollar donated is used for the health and well-being of a rescued corgi. How much better can it get than that?

I can follow my father's oft words of wisdom..."at the end of the day, you only sleep with yourself. Let's that guide every decision." I do, and will continue to!

Shaker vs. Horse Play Ball

We are continuing with our blue theme today!  Shaker loves these horse balls!  (Thanks to Missy and Chas for this one.)  When he isn't pushing it up hill, chasing it down, barrel chasing it, he is removing the handle.  Which is what he is up to in these blue pics!  I might add that it was 14F at the moment he was engaging in this behavior.

Fun Police

Jill T, human mom, of none other than Dora the Explorer, asked about Music yesterday, so I decided to show the world my little bundle of Fun Police (aka Music).

Music believes it is her role in life to let the world know how UNACCEPTABLE it is to horse around. 

Well let's let the pictures speak for themselves.

"Must always be alert to potential play!"

"Oh no I see play!"

"You aren't playing, are you?"

"Ha, I found the ball players, and must stop them now!"

"I could have sworn I said, 'STOP'!"

First snow 2012

It is January 12, 2012, and we are having our first snow!   The whole thing is quite surreal.  Yesterday it was 54 in January!  Anyway the cardis are crazy happy that finally winter has sprung.  Here are a few snaps from their morning romp!

Russ unburied his favorite ball!

Ella contemplates her options.

Shaker stole the aforementioned ball.

Rainbow says, "Game on!"

Riverbend Cardigans New Adventure

Well things have sure been busy around here so posting has been sparse!  We rescued, trained and found a forever home for a lab mix named Bailey, rescued and found a forever home for a Doodle.  I must say if I weren't so committed to my cardigans, I would have kept that Bailey girl!  She stole my heart, hook, line and sinker!  But I know that she is much better off in her new home where she is the one and only!

The kids and I have been busy getting ready for the winter that has yet to materialize, but when the time comes...we are ready!  Ella and Russ were particularly helpful in filling the wood racks.  They only stole and relocated a few dozen pieces.  I guess they thought we should expand the number of places we burn!

Shaker continues to make me laugh every day.  I swear it is impossible for him to complete a day without  cracking me up!  Last night he was so determined to spread himself across my lap that even with much wiggling on my part he just rode out the earthquakes!

Rainbow continues to be our little Rambo, but the little turd is certainly an endearing little critter.  I hope to start agility with her in late spring.  Stay tuned for many embarrassing adventures with that endeavor!

Music, well as long as she has a couch and a pillow she is a happy girl.  But she has put in a special request for dog doors when we build the new house.  We will take her memo under consideration.

But I digress from the intent of this post.  I am starting an adjacent website that will be dedicated to our conformation and performance events, as well as an occassional litter of puppies.  I have deliberatly tried to stay away from mixing our at home adventures and our ring adventures, so this new site affords me the best of both worlds.  It is without a doubt a work in progress.  For example, I do not have Russ' page up as I have tons of pictures to load before doing him justice.  But be that as it may, have a look and tell me what you think.  It can be found at http://www.riverbendcardigans.com/