he's not an iron man, he's a tough mudder

First off, today is Tuesday November 5th, so that means it's election day for the USA.  Please, go vote and take part in the democratic process!

October was a very busy month for us, as might be noted from the lack of posts here on the blog.  We had something going on nearly every weekend, including three flyball tournaments straight!  Today I'm posting about the first weekend in October, when Chris ran the Tough Mudder event for the first time. 

After we did the Zombie 5K run in August, Chris decided he wanted to keep doing stuff like that, and he picked up on the Tough Mudder course as his next goal.  With just six weeks to get ready, he didn't get anyone else who was willing to go with him, so off we went on a surprisingly sunny Sunday for him to do the event by himself.  The Tough Mudder is put on by the Army to support the Wounded Warrior project, and involves about 10 miles of running with some insane obstacles along the way, including electric shocks and dunking into a shipping container full of ice water.  I went along the spectator paths and watched as much as I could, and got several neat photos.

He was in the second to last wave to start running on Sunday, shown here as I dropped him off to begin his journey.

The first few obstacles were further away from the spectator path so I didn't get to see them, and in fact missed him due to leaving early on one of them, but I caught up to him when he got to the next batch of obstacles.  There were several hillsides that the runners had to climb up and down, covered in mud of course!

Monkey bars over a pit of muddy water - that's him on the far side of the structure.  He did all of them without dropping into the water - so proud, I know I couldn't do that!

Another crazy obstacle, where he had to go on his back in a pit of water under fencing and pull his way through while keeping his head up to breathe.  Yuck!

All done, complete with his well-earned orange headband for finishing.  Chris has already decided he's doing it again next year, and is working to get a team of people together to go with him as well.  I think they're all crazy, but I'll go spectate again...but this time I'm wearing muck boots, as my sneakers were ruined even as just a spectator!

Of course, this past week was Halloween, and what would that awesome holiday be without a group photo of the dogs?  No costumes for them this year, but I think the setting is festive just the same.  We got quite a few trick or treaters on Halloween, and used that as a chance to do some training with Martok and he did very well.  What a good boy!

a busy weekend for a young dog

I have a post planned in my head, but I need to pull photos off my home computer to do it and I haven't powered it on since the thunderstorms last week.  Hopefully tonight I'll get around to doing that, as I do have bills to pay and that's something that can't wait any longer!  We've had a busy few days, especially for the young dog, so there's plenty to post about today even without the planned post-to-be.

Last week I decided to be brave and try taking both of the merles out for my short run together.  I'm using the CanaCross belt, harnesses, and leash that Chris ordered to use for his runs, and they work really well together (although the belt is a bit big for me).  The dogs were nicely responsive, even when a couple of dudebros were ignoring their little yipdogs who raced out into the road after us, and I didn't fall, so I count this as a win.  We did about a mile and a half according to Runkeeper, which is enough for Martok at this age but not nearly enough for Ezri, so she was annoyed.

Martok also got his first sessions with the Manners Minder, which is basically a remote control treat-dispensing robot.  He wasn't scared of it at all, unlike la princessa who still thinks it's evil incarnate, and he was sold when he realized it dispensed treats.  Martok stayed quietly on his bed (or next to it, he's kind of flaily like that) for well over an hour while we played board games with friends, rewarded every couple of minutes with a treat.  It's such a great training tool!

On Saturday we joined our friends from the Jet City Jumpers to do demos at the Riverdog festival in Issaquah, and we had a great time...once we got there.  While traveling down 405 on our way there, one of the back tires on the truck blew out entirely!  I safely got us to the side of the road, and we were all set to change the tire but the wheel refused to come off - which according to the internet, is a common problem and just needs a sledgehammer to knock it loose.  Seeing as we don't keep one of those in the truck routinely, we had to wait until AAA showed up an hour later - two taps of his sledgehammer and the wheel was off and we were ready to go just moments later.

The demo was a lot of fun, although the grass was damp for the first session so only the older/slower dogs were able to race safely.  Jadzia was happy to fill that role, and Ezri ran in the second session after the grass had dried out a bit.  Our friend Paul got a great shot of her leaping into the box, I just love the concentration on her face!  Martok did training as well, including single-jump recalls on the grass without gates, and over/back training with the jump board and touchstick.  And to wrap up the event, both Ezri and Martok tested for and passed their Canine Good Citizen tests, which will add the CGC title to their names as soon as I send in the paperwork.  First title at six months - not bad for a little border collie boy!

Sunday morning brought flyball practice, of course, where Martok did very well with his training and we'll be adding more to his plate next week.  After practice was over, Gallia and I headed out together to take the ferry to Vashon to go to the herding trial. This trip involved a lot of new things for the puppies, including their first time on a boat!

Martok was a little unsure, but did pretty well and was happy to walk around outside on the deck and up and down the stairs inside.  I think he liked the breeze from the movement of the boat over the water.  And of course, a game of tug with the brother makes it all better - Gallia got this great picture of them playing!

We had a good time watching the herding at the trial, and we stayed for about three hours and enjoyed the event, luckily without getting rained on.  The boys at first were way more interested in playing and romping with each other (much to the other attendees' amusement), but eventually they both caught on that there was something else going on in the field, and then there were lots of pictures like this as they watched intently.

Both puppies did very well, and got to meet a sheep up close as well as see a horse, so it was a big day of firsts for them both!  They were passed out in the car on the way home, and were both tired the remainder of the evening, so it ended a great weekend in a nice calm manner.  Sadly, no such big plans this weekend, but soon there will be flyball tournaments again and lots of fun with friends we haven't seen in a while!

sliding into fall

After most of August off as a break, time to start posting here again!  We had a lovely month, full of all kinds of fun things, most of which I'll touch on here in a photo-heavy wrap-up post.  Hey, those are the most fun, right?

I've been working on the blackberry invasion in our side yard, trimming back and using Round-Up on the stalks once I've cut them to the ground.  I usually have Martok outside with me when I work on this project, as I think lightly supervised solo playtime outside is important for puppies as well as children, and one day he figured out how to eat blackberries off the bushes.  He'd never even HAD a blackberry before that day, which makes it more impressive to me!  Ezri eats berries off the vine as well, but I had to show her where they were the first time out - Martok just did it all on his own.

Our friends were out for a long weekend as one of them did an Ironman triathlon up in Canada, so we kept three of their dogs for them while they were away.  Martok and his favorite girl Flirt (half BC, half mini Aussie) finally stopped playing after about three days and even took a nap together!

We had a tournament in mid-August, rescheduled from April when it was pushed off due to a severe bordetella outbreak in our region. We set a new club record on Saturday of 16.018, with me running my beautiful Ezri in start and Chris running our teammate's dog Savage in second.  Nala and Sprite rounded out the lineup - we think that breaking 16 is going to happen very soon!

Our flyball teammates convinced us to join them for a group run for The Zombie Run, a 5k involving running away from zombies to try and protect your life balloons.  We had a good time, Kristie and I finished in just under 40 minutes so that was kind of exciting, and Chris did really well and finished around 26 minutes I think.  The zombie bit got kind of old near the end, as there were some injuries (I had to jump over someone who fell right in front of me) and at the end there were so many zombies it was impossible to "survive" with any of your life balloons intact.  If there's no way to make it, then that kills the fun for me.  It was a good time with friends, though, and we'll probably do other 5k races together in the future.

And of course, Labor Day Weekend means PAX Prime!  We attended for the eighth year running, with Chris an Enforcer running Unicorn Theater and me being my social self for four days this year, instead of the previous three.  I spent a lot of the weekend running around with other friends, such as my friend Pete in the picture above at the Cards Against Humanity booth, with dinner plans with different groups each night as well as stuff during the day.  I learned how to play Castellan and Zombie Dice, saw some good panels, got my PAX XP prize, and generally had a blast.

And of course, there were buttons.  This was my fourth year doing Buttoneering, and it was definitely a lot of fun.  There were no "dinner plate" buttons this year, so I was able to fit them all on a single bulletin board without hanging off the sides, which was nice!  I still need to move the boards around, as I only have space for the previous three where they are now, but I have a plan for moving them around to a different wall.

Martok continues to grow and learn, and a few weeks ago I took him (along with Ezri and Flirt) to Marymoor Park and the offleash dog area for the first time.  He needed a bit of convincing to swim in the river, but once he figured it out he was having a great time despite the photo above.

And of course, the knitting.  Last night I finished the striped portion of my Color Affection shawl, and miraculously ended up with the right number of stitches.  I have about twelve full-length rows of edging to do and then it's done!
 

I'm also working on a Wingspan shawl, which I picked after getting the most beautiful long-gradient yarn from an Etsy store.  The color made me think of dragon fire (it continues shifting all the way to red), and so a pattern that looks like dragon wings was eminently appropriate.

We are enjoying a bit of a lull here in September, between PAX and when our next batch of flyball competitions starts up again, and it's quite nice.  Chris has decided to do the Tough Mudder run and obstacle course, so he's training for that right now which makes Ezri happy because it involves 8-10 mile runs.  I'm still doing some running, but I'm keeping it short with just 1.25 mile runs or so as my legs and body acclimate to the new activity, plus that's a good distance for little Martok.  Our next tourney is in two weeks, and then we have three straight at the end of October into November - Auburn WA, Hurricane UT, Cloverdale BC.  Hopefully all this running pays off in Ezri's stamina!

summer vacation at the beach!

Last week was the summer shutdown for my place of work, and so we took off for the Oregon beach as we have done for several years now.  This year we went almost to California and spent the week in Gold Beach, OR at the Turtle Rock RV Resort which is on Hunter Creek.  It was a nice place, with an easy walk under the 101 out to the beach, and the "creek" is more like a small river that's more than wide and deep (and calm!) enough for swimming, even when it was windy and the waves in the ocean were crazy.  Lots of pictures were taken as you might imagine...here is a selection in no particular order.

I always have to have a posed photo, and the large rockpile between the creek and the beach worked out nicely for that purpose this year.

Our friends who have Martok's littermate Sirius came to join us for our last day/night, and the little boys had a great time wrestling and playing biteyface for hours.  I particularly like this lucky shot I got of them chewing on each others faces!

On July 4 we went for a long (5.5 mile) hike up Humbug Mountain, as it was so windy that going to the beach was not fun for anyone.  Martok did really well, although he was definitely tired by the time we were done!  I managed to get this shot of all three of them while we were on our way back down - I didn't move them into this pose or anything, just caught their attention and took a few frames quickly.

While we were on the hike up the mountain, we passed by a small stream which Jadzia promptly used as a cooling bath for her hot self.

Jadzia swimming in the creek by the beach.

Martok running about to fetch his ball right on the edge of the waves.  He didn't have any problem with them, and almost swam a bit during the first day or two, but after the wind picked up on our third day and the waves got bigger he wasn't too interested.  That's fine, he's still rather little after all!

Cold, wet, and freshly bathed puppies are awfully pathetic unless you turn them into a burrito with a towel and snuggle them.  The girls weren't pleased at being left out, though, as you can see in the background of the photo.

We took a great jetboat trip up the Rogue River one day, where we saw all kinds of birds (cormorants, vultures, bald eagles, and more!) and had a lot of fun swirling in the rapids.  I took one of my spindles with me to spin while waiting to reboard after a bathroom break.

Very windy...you can see Ezri's coat blowing in the wind!  Martok's short little puppy coat is pretty much unaffected, though.

As always, Ezri loved swimming in the ocean and had a great time even when she had to fight the waves.  Such a strong and smart girl!

~~~~~~~~~~

Of course, there was a small thread of sadness throughout the week as we took our first vacation without Curzon.  Going to the beach was one of his very favorite things, and he would stick his head out the window as soon as he smelled the salt air and would start dancing around in the backseat until we were there and he could race into the ocean.  I couldn't quite bear to leave him behind, so we took the small cherry box that holds his cremains along with his collar and brought them with us, where they rested in the niche in the wall for the duration of our trip.  I considered taking them out to the beach to take a photo, but ultimately decided against doing so as I don't really want photos of that, I'd rather remember him as he was on the beach himself last year - full of life and cheer after healing from that surgery.  One of my favorite photos of him from the beach last year is below to round off this entry on a happy note.

Such a happy boy to be playing in the cold ocean!  The temperature and waves never bothered him, he was more than willing to fling himself into the ocean after a ball or the suggestion of one...at the slightest provocation (or excuse), really!

three weeks of a new puppy

Three weeks ago yesterday, Chris and I took a day trip to Chicago to pick up Martok (Ignited's Order of Kahless) as well as his brother Sirius (Ignited's Expecto Patronum!) to bring them home to Seattle.  We arranged for a friend to come get the adult border collies for the day, as we'd be gone from 4am until almost midnight, set up a meeting place with our friend who was eagerly awaiting Sirius' arrival, and we were off.  The flight out was uneventful, and while it took some time to get our rental car, we were on our way and on time to get to the breeder's house south of the city.

Three of the six puppies were picked up the day before we arrived, with just our two boys and the girl the breeder kept still there.  Little Martok was a bit suspicious, but soon played with us and his siblings with great enthusiasm.  I even got to watch Chris' reaction to a house of ten adult border collies racing around...after that, four seems pretty calm!

Martok took to us pretty well, as evidenced by this photo of a man and his puppy.  :)  We put collars on the boys for the first time, and their sister thought this was great as she could grab the collars to drag them around without them being able to do much about it!  After a few hours of playtime and chatter, we packed up the two boys into their carriers to begin the journey back to Seattle.  Neither one of them were very thrilled about this state of events, and there was a lot of shrieking in the van on our way back to the airport. Luckily for us, this abated once we got to the airport (I think they tired themselves out), and they were well behaved going through security, and both slept through our dinner in the terminal.

As we boarded the plane, we let them stick their heads out of their carriers, which got lots of "awww" remarks from our fellow travelers.  We were lucky enough to have a row of three seats to ourselves, so even with the puppies in their carriers we still had room.  Poor Sirius was very hot, with his double coat inside that carrier, so once we were airborne we picked up his carrier and put it on the seat between us, where he quickly passed out and slept through the whole flight.  Martok snoozed through the whole flight as well, including takeoff and landing - a welcome change from the shrieking his aunt Ezri treated me to on her flight home!

 

We did have a few days with both boys in the house, and one night that week while they were both sleepy I was able to get the above picture.  Curzon did play with Martok a good bit in the few days they were together, enough that I have video of it, and the photo shoot we did with Artis produced some incredible shots as well.

Much to our surprise, Martok managed to convince his sister/aunt Ezri to snuggle with him on the ground level of her princess castle - most of the time she hangs out on the upper level, which he's too little to reach just yet.  I had to sneak around in the garage to get this photo, but it was worth it!

Ezri has had to play auntie quite a bit recently, such as last Saturday when we took both of the puppies to swim for the very first time.  There's a place in Woodinville called Mega-Dogs, which has a small indoor pool that is available for therapy swimming at very nice rates.  That's where I took Curzon for his rehab swimming last year, and it's the best choice I could think of for a warm pool where we could swim with the puppies to teach them how.  It didn't go quite as well as we hoped, neither of them immediately took to the water, but they did well and had no problems swimming, so now we just need to convince them it's fun.

The boys definitely have fun playing together, even something as simple as playing chase-and-bite while racing around the pool.  This is a great picture, especially with the expressions - Martok is definitely up to no good, while Sirius looks a little too innocent...

This week has seen a lot more puppy discipline in our house, as shown by Ezri's Mad Teeth in the photos above.  Much more growling, removal of toys, and general loss of patience has been shown by both Ezri and Jadzia - nothing out of the ordinary or dangerous, of course, but amusing to us humans all the same.  Ezri is still willing to play with Martok a little bit, but she does not want him chewing on her toys.  She's actually rather devilish, and if he has something she wants, then she'll go play with something else to get his attention, let him take the second thing, then go get the original item (or spot!) that she wanted.  Smart girl.

And of course, we've been taking Martok to puppy classes once a week at Ahimsa in Ballard - the same school I where took Ezri through puppy kindergarten.  Part of this week's lesson was body handling and grooming, including putting clothes on the puppies - Martok did really well with that, even if he does look sad in this photo.  He actually ran around with the clothes on without a care in the world until he ran right out of the socks!

~~~~~~~~~~~

It's been eleven days since we lost Curzon, and while I'm not over it (and may never be), it is just starting to get easier.  I can breathe better, and thinking of him doesn't automatically mean tears every time, just some of the time.  This afternoon we will go and pick up his ashes from the vet on our way home from work, and bring him home where he belongs.  I know that one day we will scatter his ashes, probably in the ocean where he so loved to swim, but I don't think I'm going to be ready to do that on our vacation this year.  For now, having his physical remains home with us will be a comfort, as odd as that sounds, and hopefully it will help us continue to heal.

endings and beginnings

Last Monday's loss of our beloved Curzon overshadowed the other major event of the week, which was Jadzia's flyball retirement on Sunday, May 5th.  Originally she was scheduled to retire in April, at her anniversary tournament hosted by the Kings where she debuted in 2004, but the kennel cough outbreak in the region caused that tournament to be cancelled.  Instead, Jadzia ran with her Jet City Jumpers teammates on the lovely "Farewell Flight" team and had a great time on both Saturday and Sunday.

All photos in this post courtesy of Liz Werner.

Beautiful shot of Jadzia waiting for me to play with her in the runback after a heat - we gave up on tugging for anything but a recall long ago, instead I toss the ball and have her spin and beg and play once she completes a run for her reward.

Flying over the jumps, beautifully flat - not bad for an eleven year old girl!  :)

And racing down the jumps in her final race, where she was put in start position for one last time.  Jadzia had great starts all the way until the last heat, when the other dog false started first, then Jadzia false started with a -0.005, then we had a clean race on the third try.  She ran in the high 5's and low 6's all weekend, clearly feeling great and enjoying herself, which is a great way to retire.

Jadzia retires with over 60,000 NAFA points and the titles FGDCh-60k and Iron Dog from NAFA, and with over 6,000 UFLI points and her TFE-II title.  She started her career as a 14" height dog, ran in a total of 95 tournaments,  and competed in two countries (USA and Canada) and five states/provinces (BC, WA, OR, CA, AZ).  Jadzia was our first flyball dog, and she's the reason we are border collie people now and is why we play flyball to this day and moving into the future.

We will still let Jadzia play a bit at practice with our new club to help train the newer dogs, as well as hopefully sending her in to play with her old friends in Veterans classes once or twice a year for fun.  Her active racing days are over, though, as her stamina and strength is slowly waning with her age even as her heart and attitude are still as bright as ever.  I look forward to many more years walking and playing with her and her happy smile.

In addition, I haven't posted much about our newest puppy, Ignited's Order of Kahless, call name Martok, who is out of Singed and Fetch.  Singed is Ezri's 3/4 sister (Race/Dazzle to Ezri's Race/Prancer), so Martok is essentially Ezri's nephew.  He was born on February 27, 2013, firstborn of six (four girls and two boys), and we brought him home on April 25th.  Here are a few photos taken at the tournament last weekend, showing his beautiful markings and his goofy puppy antics.

Flailing around and trying to bite/chase a leash on the ground...it rattled and he found this fascinating.

He's coming right for us!

And pouncing on the leash again - Martok is very much a play-motivated puppy, even more than his littermate Sirius (who also lives in Seattle), and it's pretty funny to watch him a lot of the time.  Look for many more posts about him in the future as he grows up and goes through flyball training in preparation for his flyball debut next spring!

~~~~~~~~~~

This past week has been one of the hardest of my life, as we adjust to a life without our bright, beautiful boyo Curzon.  The hole in my heart is still raw, and I still look for him to come to me when he always did, like when paying bills as he hoped for me to run the shredder for him to bark at.  Both Chris and I are working on a memory photo book to keep his memory alive, and that is helping but it's not enough.  The girls and Martok are lights in the darkness, but they're not Curzon and they never will be.  It's a whole new reality for us, one where we must live without that handsome brave boyo, and navigating these waters will take time to learn.  We're concentrating on appreciating the other three for their own special personalities and abilities, as we know none of them can replace our boyo, but it is still hard.  Right now, I'm mostly thankful that Martok's eyes are nothing like Curzon's, as I don't think I could bear it if they were.

I miss him so much.

spinning with a wheel for the first time

On Tuesday, I took a beginner's spinning wheel class with my friend Christy at the Weaving Works down in the U District in Seattle.  I went into the class with a very basic skillset in drop spindle spinning, which I learned at the Sew Expo back at the beginning of March, and with never having sat at a spinning wheel before.  The slight familiarity I had with fiber and how to draft it was very helpful, but of course none of my other baby spinning skills translated in the slightest.

There were a variety of wheels set up in the class for everyone to use, and the one I ended up using was a Lendrum single-treadle folding wheel, similar to the double-treadle one available at the store now. It was easy enough to use once I had played with it, with a single treadle on the right side and three whorl sizes to choose from to adjust the ratio of the flyer speed to the wheel speed.  For this class (and so far at home) I'm keeping it on the slowest speed possible, as it's already very fast to me!  I had always wondered how you set up a wheel to spin, and it turns out to be quite easy once someone shows you how - the yarn comes out of the orifice (the black tube at the top of the photo above) to join with the fiber you're spinning in your hands, and once it's through the orifice it is attached to the flyer in order to wrap around the bobbin.

By the end of the class I had a bobbin about half-full of beginner yarn - some well turned, some not, some way overtwisted, and some not twisted enough.  My biggest challenge so far appears to be controlling the twist in the fiber - I'm using my right hand close to the wheel to control twist, while my left hand is managing and feeding the fiber to my right.  It's very easy to loose my right hand too much and then get twist in my fiber supply, which means a thicker slub of yarn forming since it's difficult/impossible to break that up once the twist is in it.  I also had trouble at the beginning with too much twist going into my yarn, which actually caused it to kink up and almost bind up the flyer, so that's going to take some time to get used to as well.  I only broke the yarn once, though, so overall I'm pretty pleased with the results for my first attempt.

At the end of class, we were shown how to use a niddy-noddy to pull the yarn off our bobbins, and then the teacher tied off the ends for us.  Apparently I wound onto the niddy-noddy very tightly, and it was difficult to get the skein loose once it had been tied off!  The yarn is only a single strand at this point, and of course when it's allowed to relax then all that twist comes out in curlies and overall twist of the skein.  I think it's kind of pretty, honestly - and it's amazing how much yarn was on the bobbin, and that was only about 2/3 of what I spun that night (my one yarn break was irredeemable and I started over at that point with a new leader).  That's probably the same amount (or possibly more) of yarn that I've spun on my drop spindles over the past few months!

The teacher gave us the option to borrow a wheel for the week between classes for a small deposit, so I took her up on that offer and brought it home along with the bag of fiber she gave to each student.  The fiber we're working with is plain undyed Australian wool mix, which she said is probably primarily Corriedale but is mixed with other things.  I spent a short time last night spinning again, but was having some difficulty and slightly different problems then I did while I was at the class.  First off, I was spinning in my dining room for the light and the wheel was moving on the hardwood floor as I treadled, so I used a silicone potholder to stop it from moving.  My first two sections of roving spun up very easily (and I was a lot more consistent with my yarn size, as you can see in the photo above), but then I started having more trouble controlling the wheel for some reason, with it going too fast for me at times and flipping direction when I didn't want it to.  After about the sixth time that the yarn wisped right out of my hands, I gave up for the night and pulled off the wispy bits and just wound off the edge on the guide hook so that I could just practice treadling a bit.  I'll try again tonight, maybe by moving my little ironing board so I can sit in my sewing room where there are rugs *and* good lighting.

And of course, after the frustration of having issues spinning, two of my dogs decided to be absolute brats one right after the other, which did not help matters.  That was when I cut my losses and headed to bed, as clearly anything additional was not going to be accomplished last night!