My weekend is Sunday/Monday – at least in the off-season.  When tourist time rolls around we are open all week, and who knows what will befall me.  I like to set aside one day to take a ton of pictures (because it’s good for my soul) if the weather is nice.  Today the sun was warm and lovely, even if the wind was brisk.  Here are a few from my yard session and my walk with Ella later on.

View the full album here.

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Whiskey, growing up like a dream!

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Ella tries to talk Ian out of his hard-won stick.

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Magnum prepares to pounce.

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There were no pictures of Elli, as she chose to sit on the porch and look disgusted while everyone ran around and chewed on sticks.

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Ella is in love with Whiskey.  I don’t know if it’s Whiskey herself, or if it’s because Whiskey is a puppy.  Ella has always liked puppies, and likes them more since she had some of her own.

Well, she likes her until…

 …she tries to steal her stick…

…!!!

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There is a great nature trail a quarter of a mile from the house.  It’s been impassable most of the winter because it’s shaded by timber and the snow doesn’t melt.  I can’t wait for warm weather, to hike it every day.

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Under the category of puppy updates, the Rush x Ella babies (a.k.a. the mostly “Astronomy” litter – Valentine had to be funny, and mine, no matter what kind of star name I tried to give her, or how I tried to give her away) are growing up.

Rook (Hagaren’s Wandering Star) continues to be goofy…

“My ice. Mine.”  (Narration by Brianna.)

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…Leeloo (Hagaren’s Blue Moon) continues to be beautiful…

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…and Caity (Hagaren Regent Calico Sky) has a new blue puppy to keep her busy.

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I am planning to go South next weekend to look at Joanna’s new Daisy Poppy babies, and to spend a little time with my own.  I  love having grandpuppies!

Valentine loving on Brian.

And Ollie getting in on the kisses, too.

Brian is Kathy and Jim’s son, and Ollie’s “official” owner.  He is also (apparently) the most popular young man in the world.  I swear I get more hits from Google because his name is listed as Ollie’s owner than I do from people searching for dog-related things!

Karen posted some current photos of Brady, Ella’s next husband, and I stole them from her Facebook feed.  She says he was out playing with the sheep, and went straight from the pasture to the table.  Valentine and Ollie are the first dogs I have owned with correct coats, and Brady is the same.  I have to say, I may become a coat nut!

And, lastly but not leastly, a big congratulations to Carolyn Cannon and Mandy Katasse, whose boy Pilot (GCH C-Myste Baledwr Free To Disagree) went Best of Breed at Westminster today.  He brought a whole cheering squad with him from all over the country, and it seems to have worked!  Carolyn and Mandy bred my own foundation dog, Golem, as well as his sister Blue.  They are the most wonderful people, and I am so glad they have been blessed with this amazing experience!  They must still feel like they are dreaming.

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As of this writing they have not gone to group, but I know there will be many people sitting in front of their TVs tonight, cheering Pilot on.

(NOTE: Susan Parmenter is an outstanding artist, and does the most wonderful pet portrait commissions.  The Cardigan in the top left corner of the linked page is a painting she did for me, which was a gift to the woman who helped me do the temperament testing on Stella/Dexter/Ella’s litter.)

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On the back of this photo Susan wrote: “Captain Dexter – loves to ride on the seat! …Wonders if he likes Corona, too!”

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Dexter on the left and Stella (Dex and Ella’s litter mate) on the right.

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With his “squidgie.”

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With daddy Tim.

I became a blogger in 2004, right before I got GoGo, because I wanted to chronicle the many forthcoming amazing exploits I would have.  That blog was called Grendel in the Underworld.  Weird name?  Kinda, but there was method to the madness.  Grendel was the first dog of my adult life, a Pembroke Welsh Corgi that I purchased from Pet Land in the Boise Towne Square Mall, and me having her led to my deciding to buy a Cardigan and play in conformation.  The “underworld” was dog shows.  Because I have an active imaginary life that runs parallel to my mundane one, there is always a big production going on in my head, be it how I would get married, or that graduate degree that never materialized (oops), or that dog I am going to breed fifteen years from now, who will be the first Cardi to win Westminster (uh huh…).  I imagined writing a book of the same name (with the blog as a companion), after I had been showing dogs for five or ten years and knew all the dirty secrets.  In it, Grendel the pet store Pem tagged along for the ride.

Seven years later, the secrets aren’t as dirty, nor as interesting as I’d anticipated, and the Pembroke is long gone, off with the boyfriend who I did not (thank dog) marry.  And, after four years of diligent content, GITU was eaten by some glitch in Blogger which, when asked if you want to permanently delete your blog and you say “NOOOOOOO!” thinks that you actually said yes.

G.I.T.U.

August 2004 – February 2009

This is all to say that that blog was kind of a catch-all blog, with a catch-all name.  My dog stuff was there, but so was my life, such as it was. When I rebuilt in WordPress immediately following the demise the Blogger blog, I called it simply the Hagaren Cardigans blog (I was fresh out of clever at the time), which kind of limited what was expected in the scope of content.  I recently moved again (I had run out of free space on that address, lord forbid I would pay for more), and incorporated my blog and my kennel website, thus restricting myself further.

But to hell with it.  I’ve tried running more than one blog at a time, and that has never worked for me.  Since the dogs are my life, I guess the other parts of my life with have to live with the dogs, or nowhere, so here it goes…

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My thought process, at any given moment, on any given day, is divided along these lines:

(…seasoned but a  general overtone of dread concerning money.)

I am always walking around thinking about pedigrees, or rear angles, or what to do to breed perfect head planes and ratios, or what I can do to make my dogs a little happier and healthier.  Or I’m thinking of the social structure in an hive-organized alien race, or a particular story arch concerning Jhanes (the protagonist) and Brienne (the other protagonist), and how they will need to make a decision to derail the antagonist (Nerro), in spite of the fact that they don’t completely disagree with her method of thinking.  Or it’s the “Better Than Sex” sushi rolls Kim Keifer and I had in Texas several years ago.  And that is why, when you are trying to locate me, just listen for the sound of things being run into, or knocked over, and the swearing, because I am usually not paying attention to what is going on outside of my brain.

A question that comes up in the course of small talk is often if one went to college, and when I say yes, they ask what I went for.  I say English with a Writing Emphasis, and they raise their brows and chuckle and ask what – exactly – I anticipated doing with that.

“Waiting tables, evidently,” I always respond.

Then I say, “I planned to write a book.”

I have been writing a book – since I was fifteen.  It came to me as an offering from the Universe when I was walking around in the pasture of the property I grew up on, because there wasn’t much to do there except walk around in the pasture, for I was over-protected by my grandparents and not allowed to go many places, or do many things, or see many people, because a plane might fall out of the sky and crush me, or something.  That day a crack opened to the Other Land.

If you haven’t read Gregory Maguire’s Wicked Years  – Wicked, Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, and Out of Oz – I CANNOT recommend them enough.  I truly believe, once the years have had their way with them, that collection will be one of the finest pieces of literature to come out of our time.  I claim Orson Scott Card’s Ender books and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods as huge inspirations towards the kind of books I would like to write, but The Wicked Years is proving very pivotal for me.  I didn’t realize how pivotal until the series was completed, and I started them over again, and saw the full scope of the world and the story Maguire had assembled.  They are a perfect example of what a complete “other world” is.

It is no small bit of poetry that, this being the case, one of the big themes in those books is the Other Land – and Maguire renders it so well. Even if you don’t know that series, I’m sure you know Oz.  Dorothy is swept up in a tornado and is deposited in a different world.  Our world doesn’t know that Oz exists, and Oz has never heard of us.  The rules are different in each place, but each place is exactly as real.  I’ve heard many writers speak and write about this, that they feel as if the worlds they write about are out there, fully formed – they are just the translator for what is going on there, narrating for the rest of us.

I feel no different.  The finest gift I have been given in my life is my window to an Other Land.  It’s an amazing view.  The lives of the people there are perfectly mundane to them, but it is a marvel to me.  That is what we love about stories:  seeing into lives and lands that are unlike our own, because our own is boring to us.  The Other Land is, in a way, something outside of myself.  I don’t completely understand this, but if you have experienced this you know what I mean.  I often feel like I’m not making things up, but that everything is there, being revealed to me piece by piece.  It’s like squinting through foggy glasses.  Sometimes you can wipe the haze away and see clearly.  Other times you can’t clear the obstruction, and you have to squint and collect what glimpses you can, and then guess at the rest.  I don’t always get it right. Sometimes, days or months or years later, I realize I was all wrong, and when I do finally see what it really was, about fifteen other things (which hadn’t until them made sense) fall into place.  ”Oh!  That’s why that is!”

I will never be a prolific author, if I ever become an author at all.  This is the only story I will ever have, because it has taken me sixteen years to learn the language and the rules and the culture of that country, and I’m terminally comfortable there.  It is four or five books, spanning thousands of years.  I will always live part of my life in that place – but I am lazy, and distractable, and always have a billion things going on.  I work hard so I can play with the dogs, and that leaves little time for sitting down and transcribing the Other Land.  I visit there at some point every day, and some days all day, but getting it on paper is a different animal.  I will sometimes go years without working on it, just jotting notes for things I don’t want to forget (though I actually forget very little of it, because it is all so organic and complete that it is hard to lose any one thing for long), and then I will sit down and write 25 pages in a stretch, and then there will be another dry spell.

(There is no spell-check on pen-and-paper – and I couldn’t spell at gun-point.)

What drives me to try to record it is that I want more than anything for everyone else to meet and love the people that I love.  I would like nothing more than to be able to say, “How about Alleric?  Isn’t he great?  Such a completely good person…” and have another person say, “Oh, I totally agree!  He is amazing!”  I can’t tell you who Alleric is, because Alleric lives in his actions, his attitude, the way he describes his world, in the text that I have yet to fully apply to paper.  And I do love Alleric!  He’s one of the late-comers, only around the last six or seven years, but he came in like a lion and stole my heart.  I would love it if, one day, you all got to know him, and loved him, too.  I hate the thought that when I die these people will too, and what’s worse, that no one will know they ever lived.

After I say that I am writing a book, the inevitable question is, “What is it about?”

Dangerous ground, this.  It has been very hard for me to answer this question for most of the life of the thing, because there is so much going on there, and going in so many directions, that if you made the mistake of asking you were going to get a 45-minute explanation, chronicling the entire history of the Universe, and a lot of painfully specific details about alien genetics and culture, because I will always be a bit of a scientist and a student of the world, and those are the things that interest me.  In the last few months, though, I’ve come back to myself after a long absence, and I have been able to understand the Other Land in a way I was unable to do while my life was cluttered.

The first book is called Pandora’s Children – a name I hate, but which I’m stuck with because now it can be nothing else.  I picked it when I was sixteen, and while it is perfectly accurate to the story, it will forever sound like a title chosen by a sixteen-year-old.  It is Science Fiction.  I would like to have grown up to be a scientist, but I can barely add, and science careers require a great deal of math.  For this reason, SciFi has been a good place for me.

This is a story about the colonization of Earth by aliens, told primarily by the descendants of the colonizers – called the Baastylle – so many thousands of years after the fact that the Baastylle don’t remember where they came from, so they can’t really be blamed for wrong-doings. They are hybrids of humans and the aliens.  Humanity (stored away for safe-keeping) is coming back.  And they aren’t a bit happy – as few colonized people are, I imagine! Dominant themes are human nature (from the very good to the very bad, which is very interesting to explore with a race that is half-human, and so only half-burdened/blessed by human faults and virtues), and God (in the story, humanity is cast as God, and what a disappointment we are when we show up again!), and the soul (a soul is not universal: it is something humans have, which the aliens do not, and is what the alien Drone – who engineered the Baastylle – most loved about humanity, and longed to possess himself).  It has been an interesting world to put on and wear around, because it is so deep and complex.

The Drone, from 2003 (only drawing I’ve ever done of him):

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Not completely accurate, as I’m not a good enough artist, but close enough.  I need to try again, to see if I can do better now.  If my artist-idol, Wayne Douglas Barlow, could render him – oh, what a sight that would be!  No one can do aliens like WDB!  He did creature design for Avatar, Harry Potter, Hellboy, and more.  His pencil illustrations make me melt, and I have spent years trying to learn from his work.

Anyway…

I’d planned a little more blather for this, but it is almost 1 am and someone has to work a 12 hour shift tomorrow, slopping crab cakes and paella to the masses.  So, more later.

I had planned to repeat my Rush litter, since I have been so happy with his babies, but then I moved far enough away that driving Ella down to Alabama wasn’t a comfortable option anymore, and if you think I am made insane by dog shows, let’s not think about what a stress-ball shipping chilled semen would make of me.  I also thought it might be a good idea to see what another stud dog could do for her.  Eggs not all in one basket.  That sort of thing.

I have pretty much scoured the earth for black stud dogs.  I looked at several when I was at the 2010 National (which is where I got to look at Rush all grown up, and decided to go with him), and after much debate (and annoying of friends) I have settled on one of the other contenders from that time.

Next time Ella will go to Brady, GCH Woodrose Whip Up A Rumor.  Brady is bred by Karen Lyons, and owned by Karen’s sister, Cheryl Mulcahey. The photo on his Cardiped page is outdated, taken when he won back-to-back group placements as a nine-month-old puppy.  I was supposed to take photos of him in Fitchburg a few weeks ago, but he had a girl waiting for him down south, and ran off to be with Granny Karen for a few months to chase sheep and special a little in preparation for the National.  I do have a few not-the-most-greatest photos, which I took of him ringside at the 2010 National, where you can at least see how he matured.  Cheryl says she will pester Karen to take some more.

Brady is a handsome dog who brings Ella:  a better shoulder and better shoulder placement; a beautiful deep keel; ample neck; a strong topline; a good front; and a hard, correct coat.  The line-breeding will be primarily on Fudge (the same line-breeding as I did with Rush and the reason, I suspect, that I was able to improve Ella’s front), with BJ and Inky (both ROM producers) a little father back in the pedigree.

PEDIGREE FOR THIS LITTER

Brady is OFA Good, PRA clear, and DM clear.  He is a fluff carrier, and so is Ella, so we will probably get some coats.  I think we will only get brindle points.  Brady is a half-sibling, through their dam, to Dawn’s Ian and Elli, and Dawn showed him towards most of his Grand Champion points.

I am shooting to do the breeding May-ish, but that will depend on what it looks like work is going to do (Summer is the busy season), what money is like, if I have enough people on my waiting list, and everything else lining up.  If everything isn’t perfect I will push it back until her winter heat.  I do not plan to keep anything from this litter, which means I will be looking for someone to co-own my show puppies with me. And I will have pet puppies available, of course.

Half of me hopes I get something nice.  The other half hopes it’s just a bunch of fluffy pets, because this show puppy thing is rough. My first litter – all pets – was so much easier…

Right now I am thinking I may go back to my “Table of Ellaments” theme for this litter, as it was a lot of fun and I didn’t get to use it. Hagaren’s Nickle and Dime has a nice ring to it.  Dawn suggested that last time, and I thought it was adorable.  There will probably have to be a Hagaren’s Mercury Blues, too.  ;)

We decided to call our grooming setup in Springfield “The Situation.”

In 2004 I bought my first Cardigan, Golem.  He was/is a nice boy.  He took first in his class his first three shows, then took (consecutively) 3 points, 3 points, 1 point, 3 points, 3 points, 3 points, and a BOS his first day as a special.  In three weekends (one two day show, which was a supported entry, and two four day clusters) and the span of about three months he was a champion.  This was in Spring of 2005.

I don’t recommend this course for anyone, because you are set up for disappointment when it isn’t always so easy.  And it wasn’t.

I had a long dry spell after that, which ended with my first litter, from which I got Dexter and Ella.  I had them out from late 2009 to early 2010, but couldn’t find majors.  They were nice enough to win most of the available single points, but I didn’t finish them in that magic moment while they were still nice puppies, but before they fell apart as adults – which is what a lot of Cardis seem to do.

I think you can finish most dogs if you enter enough shows, but I don’t have the time/desire/money to show a mediocre dog 60 times to finish him.  Dexter ended up so straight front and rear that he was going to be unsound, so I placed him.  Ella is sound overall, but has an ugly front. She did fortunately pan out in the health department.

Because it was important to me to breed from the line I loved, I decided to breed Ella to a dog with an incredibly sound front, to see if I could fix her offspring.  This is after one of our most prominent, well-respected breeders told me I would never fix that front.  But, you know, I am, like, stubborn and stuff.

So I bred this:

To this:

And I got one of these:

(Granted, I will have to breed to studs with strong fronts behind them so I don’t go backwards again, but I’ll take it.)

This is Valentine at 8 months:

There are things I would tweak, but considering her mother I am OVER THE MOON about my funny Valentine.  She has the brains and the personality that are so important to me:

“Hey, what’cha got for me up there, Granny?”

She has a flexible pedigree and – not to put too fine a point on it – she’s black.  BLACK.  If you have worked with blue Cardigans you know what I mean here.  That I found a black dog as good for Ella as Rush is a minor miracle, and I think the color-breeding restrictions can’t die off soon enough.

This is Ollie at 8 months:

Where Val is a Cardigan of greater strengths and stronger faults than her brother, Ollie is a dog who has nothing I hate, but many things I wish were just a little better.  Also, he is not one who is “together” the way Val is right now.  Valentine is very much Rush’s daughter, and like her father will probably never have an ugly phase.  I can see promise in Ollie as an adult, but he will have to grow up before I know for sure.  This may be the last you see of him for a while, because you can see that the rear is about to pop up, and the legs to sprout, and the tube-ness to come forth, and the adolescent-boy-puppy-uglies to rage.  I’ll throw a sack over him and peek under it periodically to see if there is a swan underneath.

I don’t think these puppies are perfect.  I’m not sure I think they’re even good - but I am really critical of my dogs.  What they are is a lot better than their mother, and that is a step forward.

I have decided to try not to keep puppies unless I think I will keep them forever, because I am tired of placing dogs, and because it is nice to have just one or two.  I tried to give my pick puppy, Ollie, to Kathy.  She agreed to keep him intact for me, and let me show him, which was perfect.  When she met the puppies she liked Val.  I thought Valentine probably wouldn’t be as nice as Ollie, but a bitch in the hand is worth two in the bush, and I really liked Kathy, and wanted to make her happy by giving her the puppy she wanted, because I would want someone to do the same for me.  Val had two homes lined up, and both had dropped out.  Trading Val for Ollie meant that Ollie was now the homeless one, and my show pick, and I needed to find a conformation home for him.  So I sought one out, and was happy enough about it, but circumstances changed and I got him back, and somehow managed to talk Kathy and Jim in to taking him, too, because Valentine was too smart, and a terrorist, and needed someone to keep her busy.  Ollie did the trick.  They play all day and Val has moved from evil to almost good, because she is no longer bored.  I am so glad my two “pick” puppies ended up in that home, because they are the best people on Earth and I am really lucky to have them.

Because Kathy wanted Val I retained her by accident, and she has grown up decently.  Because of circumstances orchestrated by whatever is out there pulling the strings of the Universe, I have Ollie now, too.

But they are pets.  They haven’t been trained to show, because I didn’t ask their family to do so.  Their family came to me to buy a pet, so I sold them pets.

My kennel is named for the anime Fullmetal Alchemist (see the explanation here).  In that show they refer to the alchemic principle of “equivalent exchange.”  What this means, essentially, is that the scales must balance.  You can only alter objects into something with the same mass, and relatively the same material.  If you become a doctor, it is only because you paid with enough effort to get there.  To have puppies who were happy and loved and wouldn’t be bum-rushed out the door when they weren’t “good enough,” I paid by having puppies who weren’t show trained, and chose to deal with that as best I could.  And I will make that same choice a million times if I can find people like Kathy and Jim, who are willing to take them and share them with me, because I think it is better for the happiness of the dogs.

“‘Stand?’ What the hell does that mean?”

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“‘Sit?’ Is that what you were trying to say, you ignorant man-ape?”

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“Granny… do you have ANY idea what you’re doing? Clearly you do not, as I was doing it RIGHT all along.”

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“Oh my dog, this is so humiliating…”

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“I simply CANNOT tolerate this any longer.  I’m out of here.”

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And, yes, it IS hard to take a show dog out and show him when he hasn’t been prepared.  Put on top of that the fact that I am in a borderline panic when I’m in the ring, showing puppies who I am very close to, who are very attuned to me.  They love to see granny; they love their granny!  “Uh oh, when we see Granny we go to the dog show, and Granny is scared at the dog show.  Guess we better do something to protect our Granny!”  Since GoGo finished fast, and since I haven’t shown much since then, I haven’t gotten a lot of ring time.  I am still a nervous wreck out there.

And so this happens:

Dog Show #1:  They act like what they are, which is puppies who have not been trained.  That is fine, and all is well.

Dog Show #2:  A patient, kind, competent judge.  I feel secure, I show well, the puppies show well – like they know what they are doing.  How did that happen?  Who knows, but I won’t complain.  Four point majors for both! I can’t believe it! It’s a miracle!  Six years later, and I have FINALLY put majors on dogs I own!

Ollie in Winner’s Dog.  Check out my elated dance at the end.

Valentine in Winner’s Bitch.  And NO, we don’t talk about the tail…  O_o

Dog Show #3:  Ollie acts like a puppy who is tired after two days of showing, but is basically good.  The judge has a very forceful, intimidating manner and criticizes my handling as I leave the class – not unkindly, but I am insecure so it knocks me down a little and I start to get nervous.  Ollie is RWD to a 5-point-major.

Val goes in and is doing well.  I put her on the table.  At this juncture I have started to love having her on the table, because she sets up so easily and so beautifully and is such a pretty picture.  The judge spends a long time messing with her head and her mouth.  Val gives her a kiss, as she does most people, and then pulls away looking worried.  As the judge starts to (thoroughly) go over Val, Val gives a little rumble.

At this point I feel like I have stepped into that evil Star Trek parallel universe, because this is NOT a dog who growls at anyone.  This is a dog who loves every person and dog, who is afraid of nothing, who has babies yank on her face and tail and smiles about it.  Things go rapidly downhill.  The judge, an elderly woman, begins to speak angrily to me, threatening to excuse me, and starts handling Val more roughly, so Val growls again.  The woman gets angrier, and tells us to get out, and stomps off to record the excusal in the book.  I cannot believe this has happened.  Neither can the half-dozen people I know, who come over to ask what has happened.  Six jaws hit the floor at the same time, because that is not something Valentine would do.

Dog Show #4:  I am now thoroughly wound up about the incident, afraid it will happen again.  Ollie feels it, and is awful, won’t even walk around the ring.  He puts on the brakes every few steps and melts on the table.  And Valentine does in fact growl again, and while the judge tells me that I need to make sure she stops doing that (and that Valentine is the first Cardigan who has ever growled at her – what an honor!), she says she understands that she’s a puppy, and tired after four days, and that it is obvious she isn’t a nasty dog.  All the puppies were bad and the judge tells all three of us in 6-9 that it was very unwise to enter babies for four days, and that we need to not do that again.  We all nod and agree.

I decide not to take Val out for the next set of shows, and send Kathy and Jim with homework to get her exposed to people handling her on the table, and go home and cry into my pillow.

Dog Show #5:  Three weeks later, I am still worked up about the growling.  I have been told that it may have been her feeding off of my anxiety, so now I am extra anxious about being anxious, so I am, like, super-massively freaked out.

(Perhaps I should mention that I can be a tad neurotic, high-strung, and obsessive.  I bet you haven’t figured THAT out yet, have you???)

And Ollie growls, and I get the same talking to about working with him.  I am sooooo frustrated.  It would be one thing if the puppies had bad temperaments, but they don’t, and they are GROWLING at judges, and I don’t know why!  The ulcers are starting to get frayed at the edges now, and the nails are pretty much out of anything I can gnaw on.

Dog Show #6:  I have mixed feelings about professional handlers.  Everyone has to make a living, but I don’t like the unfairness of how they win based on who they are, and the entitled attitudes they haul around, and the way some of them treat owner-handlers and breeder-handlers. As Dawn said, “I’m not sure where they think those client dogs are coming from…”  I also hate to see dogs out for months and years on campaign, because what kind of life is that for a pet?  And while the handlers set up on either side of us were just as abrupt and entitled as any I have met, they were also very nice to me.  Maybe they were just trying to plant seeds for a potential future client, but the male handler on one side of our grooming area took an interest in Ollie for some reason, and talked happy talk to him on the table the whole weekend (while he groomed his own string of specials), and Ollie loved the attention and wagged and wagged and danced and tried to jump from his table to the handler’s table.

Ollie at the gallows.  (Sponsored by Victoria’s Secret.)

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And the handler on the other side of us listened to my woes and gave me a lot of instruction, like how to show the bite myself first to keep the puppy from being freaked out about a stranger being in his face, and how to hold the head from the top of the muzzle so the dog can’t see, and so stays calm.  She told me to bait the puppy like crazy once the judge moved on from the bite, to keep him distracted – which is just common sense, but that is not always my strong suit and I can be slow to figure things out on my own.  ”And have a drink,” she said.  The puppies were probably growling because they were feeding off me, and if a drink would calm me down, then so be it.  She said that her husband was a competitive archer, and a glass of wine before competition made all the difference.  She and the male handler also left their grooming and came over together and handled Ollie on the table, which was very kind of them.

“Oh, well, I guess it ain’t really that bad.”

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So I had a beer while I was grooming (how nice that they sold it on site!), did all the things we discussed, and made a point of taking my time, breathing, and focusing on the dog instead of thinking about how much I suck as a handler.  And it worked.  He showed beautifully, wasn’t a bit nervous, and didn’t GROWL!  We didn’t win, but we still won.

I left the ring and immediately learned from Kathy and Jim that, oh, by the way, Valentine had gotten a letter from the AKC saying that if she was excused again she would be asked not to show again.  We won’t talk about what THAT is doing to me, but I am trying to take it in stride.  I think that was a bit harsh for a 6-9 puppy who growled, but as a judge I suppose I would take being growled at “menacingly” by an unfamiliar dog seriously, too.

The puppies don’t show again until the beginning of April, and then hopefully will go to the National.  Having learned what there is to work on, we (Kathy, Jim, and myself) will be working on it.  I will also take steps to prevent these problems in the future.

I am happy to be getting back to exhibiting, and hope it won’t get derailed again.  That happiness is tainted by my fear of it, but I’m hoping that a little success and a little more practice will make it something that I do truly enjoy, rather than the necessary evil that goes along with being a breeder.  I have wanted to breed animals since I was little, and purebred dogs are such a beautiful outlet for that.  I love learning, and getting better at recognizing good dogs, though I have a long way to go with that particular, fine-tuned skill.

Dawn got Magnum’s Championship certificate in the mail today.  I would really like to get one of those again.  It has been such a long time.

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To view the full album, click here.

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Ian

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Elli

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Magnum

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Whiskey

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To view the full album from 01/20, click here.

To view the full album from 01/22, click here.

Despite the crumminess of the show location and the climate, the company at this show was excellent and we all had a great time.  Wins were well spread around, I got to spend time with my puppy owners (Kathy and Jim, who own Ollie and Valentine, and who came to watch three days; and Brianna and Ken, who own Rook, who were down Sunday and Monday), and I finally got to meet Elizabeth, whom I am planning to foist a puppy onto as soon as she will allow it.

Dawn graciously typed up all the results from the weekend, and those can be viewed on her blog, here.  Congrats to all the winners, particularly Dawn for finishing her first Champion, Magnum, with a big 5-point win and Best of Breed over several specials on Sunday.  Magnum was bred by Joanna Kimball and is her first bred-by Cardigan Champion, as well!  And just to drop a cherry on top, Mag went BOB the next day for his first Grand Champion major.

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Magnum in the group ring on Monday.

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My first day didn’t go well.  I forgot my show clothes and my untrained puppies acted, well, untrained.  Ollie put on the brakes whenever we tried to move, but still got second in his class of three.  I think that Val was better behaved, but I don’t remember what she received. Second of two, I think.  What could I expect – it was Friday the 13th.

On Saturday some kind of a miracle happened.  It was Jim’s (Kathy’s husband and Brian’s father) birthday, so maybe that was it.  I showed like I knew what I was doing (ha!) and the puppies, while they didn’t act like old specials, acted like they were good puppies who had been worked with a lot.  Since they live in a pet home they’ve had no show training.  I had shown to the judge, Dana Cline, before, and knew him to be through and knowledgeable, so I was delighted that he awarded both Ollie and Valentine their first majors, 4 points each.  Ollie was WD/BOW and Valentine was WB/BOS over a bitch special.  Judge Cline had lovely things to say about both babies, and I can’t wait to see the photos, because I think they turned out great.  Happy birthday, Jim!

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Ollie in the 6 to 9 class.

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Ollie on the move.  Not bad!  I am excited about this puppy.  :)

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Ollie free-stacking for Dawn in Best of Breed.

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Valentine was terribly inconvenienced, as you can see…

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Myself, Valentine, and Judge Dana P. Cline in the 6 to 9 class.

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Valentine on the move.

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Saturday was where we peaked.  Both puppies were tired and D-O-N-E after their hard work on Saturday and were not cooperative Sunday or Monday.  Ollie was happy, though, and went on to take Reserve to Magnum’s 5-point major on Sunday, and Reserve on Monday, which was 2 points in dogs, so I am still very pleased with him.  Pretty good for a skinny, leggy, clumsy boy who wouldn’t walk on a show lead.  Valentine, however, was exquisitely horrible and removed herself from consideration.  Teenage girls…

Elizabeth was my camera operator on Saturday and took the photos of my puppies.  Thanks!

Click here to view the full album.