three teeth and a dewclaw - just another flyball weekend

Last weekend was the annual Christmas tournament put on by the Dogwood Pacesetters and Kaotic K9's, this time held in the heated cement-floored barn in Abbotsford. The tourney went very smoothly, with racing done by 4pm on Saturday and by 2:30pm on Sunday - a record as far as I'm concerned! Our entire team had lime green Santa hats that I had ordered online, so we got plenty of comments about those, and overall I had a great weekend.

Ezri has now reached the point in her development where her adult teeth are coming in, and so she has started losing her baby teeth. On Friday afternoon before we left, I found one on the floor where Phoebe was snuffling after something, and put it on my desk for safekeeping. Sunday morning we were playing fetch when she started bringing back a bloody tennis ball, which prompted me to find where the tooth had popped out and slid against the wall. Just a few hours later, the tennis ball was once again crimson as she dropped it into my hand along with one of her lower incisors....this time covering my hand in blood, right before I had to take Jadzia into the ring for a race! I have all three teeth in a little baggie on my desk right now, as I want to keep them even though I have no plans for them at the moment. We never found any of Curzon's baby teeth, so I'm kind of tickled that I've managed to catch three of Ezri's.

Sunday after Curzon was done with his scheduled races (although I could have used him in the last one, as it turned out), Chris took him outside to play fetch. And, of course, he promptly tore one of his dewclaws off again, the same way he did back in September. Luckily Carol was on-hand again and was willing to pull out the remaining claw and then clean and bandage it up properly for us. So I'll be cleaning and rebandaging his leg every 2-3 days for the next two weeks or so, just like I had to do in September. I called the vet to find out the cost and pros/cons of surgery to remove the claws, and it sounds like it is a very painful surgery with a long recovery time, almost disproportionately so. I'll probably talk to her in person at some point to see when they think it is reasonable to do so, and see how that goes. I don't want to put him in pain (especially to pay money for that!), but if the pain is similar to ripping it out then it might save him in the long run.

We got the photos back from the photographer yesterday, and they're gorgeous. She provided two that were downsampled for use on Facebook, and I'm sharing those here. I absolutely love her work and just wish the prints weren't so darned expensive....sigh.

Me with all four dogs, taken next to the stream on the photographer's property.

Chris and I with all four dogs - this is our 2008 Christmas card photo.

It's amazing how much Ezri's grown and changed in just the six weeks since these photos were taken. It's also pretty impressive what the photographer can do to the photos - both of the little dogs were wearing slip leads in the photos, which have been mostly removed (there is a bit of one visible in the photo with me alone). So if you are reading this and want a card, make sure I have your address!