another mouth to feed!

Rick never learns.  This morning before he went to work at some unreasonable time of day, he tried to tell me that there was a dove in the kennel building.  Since I have no working brain cells at any point prior to, say, 8 am, it didn't sink in, but fortunately he sent me an email about it so when I returned from training at Heartwell at 1 pm, I went to look.  Yup, there was a mourning dove perched on one of the runs.

During the process of trying to catch it, or get it out of the building without it beating itself up on the windows, all it's tail feathers came out.  So when I finally did catch it, I figured we'd better keep it until the feathers grew back, as birds don't fly very well without tails.  For now, it's in a crate in the dog room to see if it makes it a day without dying of shock.

Pretty thing isn't it?  I hope it lives until I can let it go again!

Found this online today -  ;-)

heh heh heh

Rick thinks he's happy that I'll be home more weekends now that Dodger is done with his OTCh but what that means is I'm here to push the home improvements!  ;-)  We have started two now, the first being a minor one -

This is the backyard, with Teaz (and the A frame she ate) there in the background.  Where the edge of the cement is there was a chain link fence, so I could separate dogs when I needed to, but since I don't think I'm going to be doing client dogs any more, it just didn't seem necessary.  And it was ugly!  So we took it down today, and the next step is just clean up and to figure out how to get flowers out there where the dogs can't destroy them...

Then there is the last guest room...

We call this the parquet room because that is what is on the floor - it was there when Rick bought the house in 1984, as was the paneling on the lower half of the walls.  Rick put the wallpaper in not long after he bought the house and as you can see, it is pulling off the walls (after only 25 years?  What a surprise.).  Plus the ugly window treatments.  I've started pulling the wallpaper off the walls -

Of course, it never wants to come off easily, but it's so much fun to destroy things!  Also, I found that for some reason, the room was painted yellow and lilac under that wallpaper...

just because

It's my blog, so I get to brag right?  ;-)  Here is a photo of our loot from the national -

The chair is for Dodger's HIT, the two big head magnets are for First in Utility and Open, the bag is his High Combined, then the HIT and HC rosettes, rosettes for his WCQ, Proxy's WCQ and Teaz's WC, then the First for Dodger in Utility, the Second with a magnet for Teaz in 9-12 puppy (6 shown!), Second with cones magnet (hard to see in photo) for Teaz in Rally Novice (due to me being slow) and First for Dodger in Open.

The only classes we entered that were a bust were Proxy's two obedience classes - she completely lost her mind in Utility - not surprising - and didn't do the broad in Open, which was a surprise.  I think she was still high from doing field work the day before... <G>

flowers

I think I've gotten all of my photos of wildflowers from my long drive downloaded and identified!  These are all from Alabama.

 Beardtongue

 Crimson Clover

 False Garlic

 Primrose

 Violet

 Birdsfoot Violet

 Field Violet

 Mountain Phlox

 Spring Beauty

The long trip home

We are finally home after driving forever from Alabama.  Since the weather was MUCH better on the way back, plus I wasn't sick, I was able to get some photos, mostly of flowers.

 

In a rest area I found separate potty places for city dogs and country dogs ;-)

In New Mexico, I got a picture of one of the flat topped mesas -

 

And in Arizona, a very dramatic sunset!

sweet home Alabama

Last Saturday the crew and I left Iris's house for the national in her Sprinter, with one of her dogs and two of Leslie's.  Here we are all loaded up.

We saw sights along the way, like flowers and windmills.

In New Mexico, tumbleweeds gathered for the attack!

But, we managed to get through and arrived Tuesday afternoon.  Wednesday were the WC/X/Q tests, and everyone passed!  Dodger passed the Q for the fifth? time, Proxy passed the Q and Teaz the C.

That afternoon, we did obedience runthrus at the site of tomorrow's trial.  There were no stakes to hold up the signs for Beginning Novice, so volunteers held them, which was rather, er, different.

Today, at the obedience and rally trials, Proxy bombed both classes but Dodger won both Utility B and Open B for High in Trial and High Combined.  And baby Teaz got a perfect score in Rally Novice B for Second place!