No photos, no videos just talk

We had a good weekend but unfortunately no videos or photos to blog with. Boring, I know!

We had some scary news last week. Poor Oz had his 1 year vaccination and had an allergic reaction to it. Mary got him home from the vet only to have to turn right around and drive him quickly back as his face and head swelled up. I have been through this before and know how scary it is. Her vet had the same response that my vet did....."Oh he must have gotten bit by a bug"....... WTF!!!! Yeah like it is just a coincidence that he just had his vaccination 1 hour before he swelled up? What is with these vets??? ARGHHHHHHH! I spoke to Mary again today and he is fine and back to normal.

I spoke to the three other puppy owners from that litter to warn them of possible reactions. Luckily Zoe and Wizz had already had their injections with no problems. There is only Kizzy left and at least now Andy and Nancy can talk to their vet about it.

On a more positive note, on Saturday, Lisa and I went to Lesley Olden's for a "Course Analysis" training day. It was a great day as expected and good practice for me and Hex to get back into gear running full courses.

On Sunday I judged at C-side. What a long long day! Thankfully Lisa drove (and scribed) as I was toast on the ride home! We left the house at 6:30 to get to the show to tweak the course and start judging at 8am. I didn't take any breaks as there was another judge to be judging in the same ring in the afternoon and I didn't want to have the ring go late into the night. So I judged around 350 dogs in 6 straight hours!

Luckily I was really pleased with how the course ran and I love watching the dogs go round. It is so interesting as a trainer and as a handler to see how people choose to run a course and how their dogs respond to them in the ring. Most people were very kind to their dogs and I like to give people as much opportunity to work thru issues as possible. I think everyone appreciates that and no one "took the mickey" in my eyes.

One issue I found (as this was grade 1-3 dogs) was a few dogs who refused the dog walk. I didn't mind if people needed to encourage the dogs over but a few people thought the best way to do that was to DRAG the dog across! Yikes! One lady though that she could take her little spaniel by the scruff and force it to walk up the dog walk. Not Likely!

The funniest moment (although probably not to the handler!) was the black lab who grabbed not one but TWO obstacle numbers and did loops around the ring proudly carrying them! HA! The handler was actually very calm and I was so happy that she was not harsh to her dog. I had to have a sit down on the Aframe for a minute or two while the lab did his laps! :-)

The scariest moment was the huge Doberman who did jump 1, jump 2 and then straight AT ME with a deep growl! SHIT! I turned away and just felt the dog skim behind me. Phew!

All in all a good weekend and I enjoyed the judging.

Well obviously Hob-b didn't have puppies this weekend and her due date passed uneventfully. Zen on the other hand is looking possibly a bit thicker in the middle; so fingers crossed. I am already thinking about registered names and am stuck on what theme to use. The pups will still need "Z" names as I want to keep that for all her puppies. But I haven't had a theme for their registered names really hit me as perfect yet.

My first thought was to make a play on Grandma True's name (Ch. Linden 'Tis True) and have the registered names as "OBay Tiz...." but I havent' gotten any further than that! Then I thought maybe something similar to the "OBay Truly .." theme. Maybe "OBay Extremely..." Or "OBay Absolutely.." or "OBay Positively..." I don't know! Hob-b's puppies were going to be so much easier as I had a great "Helluva" theme ready!