the girls being quiet...

Today we set up the baby gate outside of the office, with the dog bed between it and the wall. At one point Chris found all three girls quietly sleeping on the same bed, and managed to nab this photo. Perhaps there is hope for harmony amongst the pack yet!

Halloween Flyball

Last weekend was the annual South of the Boo!der tournament hosted by the Cascade Comets at Argus Ranch down in Auburn. While it is nice to not have to leave the country or travel much for a tournament, it does mean that we have to get up ungodly early due to the hour-long drive from our house down to the facility. As usual everything we brought was just covered in dirt, as it is a soft dirt-floored barn that doesn't pack down well, but thankfully we had no canine or human injuries.

All three of our dogs ran very well all weekend, with Jadzia running as height dog again (13") with the new rules change. Her times were slower than I would like, with her best time only around 5.3", but that soft footing made her lose a lot of speed especially coming off the box and causing her to double-step between jumps 5 and 6. I had Carol take a look at her midday on Sunday and Jadzia does have some tightness in her spine, so I think I'll take her to see the vet and see if she needs any chiropractic work. She's also still chunky despite lowering her food, so a thyroid test may be in order as well. Curzon ran well all weekend, with only one bobble on Saturday and that was still a clean run, so it looks like our "throw the ball at his head" drills are helping him with catching the ball out of the box more reliably. Phoebe ran solidly both days, and this was the first tournament in two years that she didn't run every heat of every race, as both Siena and Taben were also on her team.

Perhaps most exciting of all, at least to us personally, was the presentation of title awards on Saturday after racing was over. Chris got the ONYX plaque for Curzon, and I received the Flyball Grand Champion plaque for Jadzia. The FGDCh plaque is huge and really gorgeous, and I'm just so tickled to finally have it - she earned the title on June 29 after all! Unfortunately the title pull was just before Phoebe earned her ONYX, so it'll be another six months or so until I get the plaque for that title. Julie and Tango also got their ONYX plaque, and there's at least two other dogs closing in on the title so hopefully we will have at least one more achieved before the next title pull. I hope to get both plaques up on the wall in the dog room tonight - Curzon's ONYX plaque will go below Jadzia's, but I think I am going to move some art around to put the FGDCh plaque up next to the bulletin board. We might move other things around too, and re-hang the individual photos of the dogs with their ribbons as well, depending on how motivated I turn out to be.

Ezri is doing beautifully and is fifteen weeks old today. I plan to write a longer post tonight with pictures after I've taken the weekly set this evening at home.

of freezers and photos

With four dogs and two cats on the raw diet in our house, we have been looking at ways to cut costs for their food as their food budget outstrips our own at this point. I have joined the local raw buying group to get deals on bulk meat orders, and our first (small) order of Columbia River pet food was quite good. However, the group only orders CR once every three months, so we would need over 300 lbs to last that long, especially as Ezri grows and needs more food. Our chest freezer can only fit about 100-120 lbs, so that was not going to work out, so I started looking on Craigslist to find an inexpensive freezer. Well, I totally lucked out and found one last week - a 31 cubic foot freezer, delivered to our house, for $300 total. These photos are from my iPhone, but they should be sufficient to show the size of this beast - the top shelf is about even with my head! We are now all set to make an enormous order for three months worth of raw food, and I've even taken advantage of a sale at the grocery store to stock up on some french fries and ice cream, although I don't want to put in too much "human food" until we're sure we have the space we need for the raw food. I'm going to also change our Darwins order to quarterly since we will only be ordering cat food from them, and so we'll be stocked for months at a time. All I need to do now is to get a temperature probe and alarm for the freezer, as a "just in case" measure should it ever fail.

When Chris' parents visited us in September, they came to the Gig Harbor demo we were running on the 27th and got to see the dogs play flyball in person for the first time. His mom took lots of pictures, and I nabbed these two from her Flickr photostream to share - our "family" picture is not the best since we were trying to wrangle the dogs, but the closeup of Ezri's face is just stunning. Yay Mom!

We spent most of the day Saturday preparing for and then taking our family portraits with Ann Chase at her home studio in Woodinville, which is a lovely house on absolutely gorgeous grounds. Our appointment was part of her "Fall Fantasy" series to take advantage of the color in the trees, and we got a beautiful sunny day to use for the shoot. In the morning we took the dogs to Marymoor to play and tire them out a bit, then we took them to the dogwash to ensure they were all sparkly clean. This was Ezri's first not-in-the-sink bath, and she was not entirely sure she wanted any part of it! After the dogs were clean we headed home for lunch and to get dressed ourselves (jeans and blue shirts), and off to Ann's house we went. The shoot went really, really well, with the full amily portraits taken in three locations, a set of just Chris and I in another location, and individuals of us with the dogs (Chris with Curzon, me with all four). We even got a nice series of all four dogs, alone together on a blanket! It was fun, none of the dogs went into the creek, and Ann was highly amused by Jadzia and Curzon jumping over her fence prop in the yard. I can't wait to see the proofs at our viewing appointment on the sixth!

nine thousand miles

Yesterday I kicked over nine thousand miles on my bike while on my way home, probably somewhere on Mercer Street. It had about 2700 on it when I bought it in February, so that's just over six thousand that I've ridden this year. Double that to include the mileage that I put on the Vulcan, and I've ridden about twelve thousand miles in the past fifteen months, nearly all of it commuting. That is a lot of city riding, and thankfully I have had no accidents (knock on wood) and only a few truly close calls.

I would love to ride for fun on the weekends, but most of the time the thought of settling the dogs for the day, figuring out where to go, getting geared up, and actually heading out is just too much to overcome. I'd like to go ride on the peninsula by taking the ferry, especially with cheaper fares and preferential loading on bikes, but we just haven't gotten around to doing it. Add in that Chris has been working nights for several months now, and putting a fun ride in our schedule just isn't as easy as it could be. Last spring we did take the bike to go to the tulip festivals in the Skagit valley, and that was a good day. Maybe next year we can go to the lavendar festivals on the peninsula, or find some other destination that involves scenic riding. We both generally do better with a purpose to a trip, and not just riding for scenery.

I've been using earplugs since I got the BMW, as it is much louder than the Vulcan was due to the riding position and lower windshield. However, the earplugs I use have been hurting my ears after just the 30 minute commute, which was another mark against going for a longer ride. Yesterday the new earplugs I ordered online showed up, and so this morning I wore the first pair that I had the highest hopes for - the SilentEar reusable earplugs. They have a noise reduction rating (NRR) of 32, higher than that of the ones I was using (24), and look way cooler and also came in a small size. After one trip with them I am pleased, as my ears did not hurt at all when I got to work, noises were quieter, and they were easier to insert properly than the old ones. Depending on how I like them after a few more days, I may not even try the others - but the others were all $2 per pair or so, thus I am not fussed about the cost. I can probably use at least one of them for flyball, at any rate.

Now, if I could just find a manufacturer who believes that women do in fact ride during the winter and need waterproof, armored, insulated gloves just like men do, I'd be all set. Men's XS is just not the same as a properly proportioned Women's S size.

thirteen weeks -and- three months

Yesterday little Ezri was thirteen weeks old, and today is her three-month birthday as well. As it turns out, the ground rubber floor at our puppy class is an excellent backdrop, as evidenced by this photo, taken on Monday. Over the last five days or so her ears have been standing up more and more, and as of about yesterday they're pretty much settled in a fully upright position. I'm a little sad about that, and have been threatening to tie weights to her ears to make them lie back down again. It doesn't really matter, her health and performance are what matters most of all, but all the same I'm just slightly sad that her ears popped. In happier news, her tail started flagging last week and is showing a nice little fringe already, and her adult coat is already starting to come in along the lower part of her spine. I wish I could somehow record how soft puppy fur feels, but I suppose only pictures and video are available to us now.

She's doing quite well with puppy class, flyball training, and general housetraining. This week in puppy class we did a handling exercise involving dressing the puppies in a t-shirt and socks, which led to this picture of a slightly confused and embarrassed border collie puppy. I wasn't fast enough the first time, but she did have four socks on initially but they slid right off with just walking, so I didn't get a photo. At flyball this weekend we worked on recalls to a toy, chase drills with Riker, and box motion drills on the flat board with a tennis ball. Julie had a new Tug-It, which is basically a mesh pouch that you put food or a toy inside to train tug drive, and with her squeaky toy inside it Ezri went nuts. She's not quite up to tugging on a fleece tug at flyball yet, so this is a perfect way to reinforce the tugging behavior until she does understand it, and I've ordered my own set of Tug-Its to help. Maybe later I'll even see if I can transition Phoebe to a tug!

In the housetraining world, Ezri has been going out in the kennel after Chris gets home for a week now, and it is going well. She is mostly quiet and not waking him up now, and spends most of her time chasing Phoebe as the terrier bounces around watching squirrels. Between the activity and the chilly weather, Ezri has been pretty tired and sleepy during the evening, which is an odd thing to see in a puppy! Housebreaking is going very well although we are still being very careful about regular potty breaks and keeping her within sight or on lead at all times. She has learned to sit before eating and going outside, and is picking up plenty of other household behaviors and cues. She and Curzon spend quite a lot of time playing with each other as well, and she loves playing with a tennis ball although we are still working on the fetch part of that game. So all in all, a happy, healthy, well-adjusted three month old puppy. I love her to pieces and am enjoying every minute of watching her grow.

cold weather is here

This week it seems we have skipped straight over fall and gone directly into winter, at least temperature-wise. We had a nice windstorm on Monday/Tuesday and it's been very chilly in the mornings, down in the low forties already. I saw a temperature of 39.2 degrees at the bottom of my hill yesterday morning on my way to work, that's pretty darn cold for October in Seattle.

The cold weather means more than just another blanket on the bed at night, however, it also means both Chris and I are now wearing all of our motorcycle gear for our commute. Right now, my winter kit consists of the following items:

Olympia AST three-quarter length jacket in grey
Gerbing heated jacket liner in black
Olympia Promax armored pants in black
Oxtar Sunray Gore-Tex boots in black (recently rebranded as TCX)
Scorpion Exo700 helmet in Black Dahlia
Fieldsheer Polar gloves in men's XS, black
Schampa Doo-Z helmet liner in black
Turtle Fur fleece tube neckpiece in black/blue
Conic Fit earplugs

It sounds like a lot of stuff, but it's not really all that much when you put it on even though it can get bulky and time consuming. And after all, all but the helmet liner and fleece tube are necessary for safety! I had forgotten just how bulky the pants are when the liner is in, so that took some getting used over the last two days - I lose some of my leg length on the bike due to the extra fabric, making it a little harder to put a foot down safely.

Of all the gear, however, the most important piece for comfort is the heated jacket liner and the built-in heated grips on my bike. Without those two I would be cold and very unhappy, and probably unable to ride during the winter. On the old bike I was OK without the jacket until about December, but there was also a bigger windshield and more protected riding position on that bike. On the BMW my head, shoulders, and upper chest are pretty much completely exposed unless I'm laying down over the bike, and that is only feasible at speed on the highway and isn't terribly comfortable. As of yesterday morning riding on the highway was not fun at all, even with all the gear, so today I took Lake City Way in to avoid the highway as much as possible.

Despite what many people think, I actually enjoy riding in the cold and rain to an extent. Yeah, misty rain that continually covers my helmet is annoying, as is slightly-cold-rain that makes my visor fog up. There is just something about being encased in my gear and riding along in the elements that driving a car just can't match. I'll keep riding because of that.

12 weeks old!

Today Ezri is twelve weeks old, although it will be another week until she is three calendar months old. Her second vet appointment was yesterday, and she weighed 15.2 lbs and had her parvo vaccine. She'll have her next vet appointment at sixteen weeks where she'll be microchipped and get her distemper vaccine.







I found the pet records file that I kept up until about 2005, and Curzon's growth pattern was as follows:
8 weeks - 12.0 lbs
11 weeks - 16.0 lbs
14 weeks - 21.4 lbs
20 weeks - 24.6 lbs
6 months - 27.2 lbs
8 months - 31.0 lbs
11 months - 34.6 lbs
13 months - 36.0 lbs

So far Ezri was 10.3 lbs at 8 weeks and 15.2 lbs at 12 weeks, so she is tracking just behind where he was growth-wise. I was a little worried that she was bigger than him, as I thought he was only 8 lbs when he came home, so I'm glad I found the data sheet. I should get photocopies of their 2005-2008 records and update the file. Also, it would be interesting to see how Indigo grew if Ben or Deb happens to see this and have the information.

Behavior-wise I think she had a maturity leap in the last few days, combined with stricter discipline by us with regards to keeping her leashed to us physically if she is not actively playing under supervision. She's doing much better with the going outside to potty, is quickly learning tricks and commands (some by observation), and is having a ball at both flyball practice and puppy kindergarten. Of course right now she is chewing on her tail, so not showing much of that vaunted intelligence at this particular moment.....