I went to Wisconsin and all I got was a snow nose and a boat load of toys and treats!!!

We packed up the car and headed to Wisconsin for Christmas. I got a photo ap for my new iPhone during the drive so here are some pictures of the trip.

Here is little Alpha trying to convince me that she should be riding in my lap and not in the safe cage:

And here is poor Nari feeling car sick. That poor girl tends to get a little car sick during the beginning of our trips, but after we are driving for a while she lays down and is fine. 

Many of the trees were covered in a thick layer of ice and snow so they were completely white! 

And we drove by several fields of windmills. 

And finally, we were there - in beautiful Wisconsin! 

I'm pretty sure with all of the delicious cheese curds and frozen custard, Wisconsin is pretty much heaven. 

Nari was much happier when we were finally in WI and out of the car and she could just lay around the house and have people feed her tons of treats. 

Most of the time Starbuck was doing a lot of this:

to try to beg for food and treats from everyone. Oh, and she was also doing a lot of this:

Starbuck loved lying around the house and sleeping in one of the many beds. Alpha just ran around the house and tried to open the presents so she could have her curly lamb toy. She loves that thing, she's always carrying it around. And here she was using it as a pillow:

The girls all had a great time with the large amount of toys and treats they got for Christmas. They loved the all the tuggies and squeaky toys they got. 

And of course with the holidays comes a little bit of drinking. We found this vintage bottle of Andre from the 70's in a very old record player. And in case you aren't familiar with Andre, it's probably one of the cheapest 'sparkling wines' you can buy. It's actually quite good (Strawberry Andre got me through grad school) but absolutely does not age well. We opened it - it was carmel colored and DISGUSTING!! 

Well, goodbye for now, Wisconsin. We miss you!!! 

Okay - so we don't miss your cold winters with excessive amounts of snow, but everything else is quite awesome. Nari and Starbuck thank you for the winter snow noses you gave them and all the girls miss eating the snow. 

Starbuck finally got it!!

I forgot to post about this a while ago. Starbuck starting taking flyball lessons back in Jan. of 2010. I have no idea what I was thinking when I decided Starbuck would be the one trying out flyball. Out of all of our dogs, she was probably the worst candidate for flyball. She didn't care at all about tennis balls and she could not catch anything at all. She was one of those dogs that if you dropped a treat an inch from her mouth she would just blink and watch it hit her between the eyes and then eat it off the ground. I think the only thing she had going for her was that if there was a jump in front of her, she would take it. She just loves to jump. 


Well, it took her about 5 months to be interested in a tennis ball and catch a treat if I threw it at her mouth. Then another month or so before she could catch a ball when thrown at her. And when we first tried to get her to grab a ball from the box, all she would do was trigger the box and then run after the ball once it shot out:





That was back in October of this year. She had been doing that for a couple of months and we tried everything to get her to understand that she needs to grab the ball before it was thrown. Finally, with a lot of help from the Chattanooga Chomp and an awesome handler, Kate, Starbuck finally got it at the end of November!!!





I never thought she would get it - but I was so excited when it happened. We ended up doing a lot of muscle memory training with attaching the ball to the trigger using velcro so she had to grab it right from the spot. It also helped when we switched to a squishier ball. I'm hoping that she'll be able to run in a tournament sometime in 2011. She seems to be really uneasy around high energy dogs, so I really need to work on her focus. And of course I also need to have a free weekend when there is a tournament... 

Dogs love wearing hats, right?

Here are a few more Christmas pictures. I'm pretty sure all dogs out there hate wearing anything at all on their head so I have no idea why dog outfits come with hats. Well... dogs just hate wearing stuff in general, but they look like they are going to die when they have a hat on.

Here's another group picture. 

And here is Alpha with her little Christmas collar on. 

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas Eve! 

Happy Holidays from Starbuck, Nari, and Alpha!

I tried getting pictures of the girls in front of the Christmas tree tonight. Starbuck has a little Christmas dress because the residents think she looks cute when she does her therapy dog visits. Nari got one as well because they were on sale last year. And Alpha never got one because she refuses to move when I put anything on her. 

Starbuck normally doesn't wear the hat because she just ends up looking so sad. 

This is the best attempt I had of getting them to all look at the camera. 

And of course Nari is always the best poser! I think I'm going to try to take some more pictures tomorrow when there is more light. 

Happy Holidays! 

I'm pretty sure Nari hates me right now...

Twice a year Nari totally hates me for about 3 weeks. Here she is, all smiling while looking outside at the WI wilderness right when she got in the house after her walk:

Awwww... she kind of looks like she's smiling and she's happy. Then, after a couple of minutes inside, I force her to wear some panties because she is a hot, crazy bitch right now! Yep, she's in heat. The moment the panties go on, she goes into her bed and looks really pissed off at me. Or she just yells at me:

Oh yeah, that's right - she's totally wearing little boy underwear. You may be wondering why in the world is this adorable little dog wearing some Spiderman underwear for little boys... That's because I bought her those nice panties for dogs that cost like 15 bucks but she just chewed them off. After throwing 30 bucks worth of those panties down the drain, I said, "Fine, Nari. You're just going to look ridiculous and wear some Spiderman underwear." Now I only loose like a dollar when she gets pissed off and chews them off. And now she gets a wide variety of designs, like Toy Story or Cars or Spiderman and Friends. 


Wait, what's that Nari? There are treats on this table and you totally forgot that you're pissed at me? 

And whenever anyone discovers treats, of course Starbuck is there to check out the situation. 

Yes, Nari, I know you totally want more treats because you are crazy right now!  

Ha!! Nari - you're still wearing those stupid panties!!! 

After she ate a bunch of treats, she remembered that she still had on the panties and went back to the bed to look pissed off at me. 

Then I tried to bribe her with some new toys to make her happy. Nari, how about a brand new adorable little sock monkey toy? 

Come on, Nari, isn't it cute? 

Hmmmm.... okay.... maybe Nari should just chill in her bed for a couple more days and pig out on a bunch of treats... 

It's so cold!!

It was in the teens this morning and it was horrible! This cold weather is driving me crazy. The girls love their daily hikes but with it being so cold we haven't been able to take them so then they get stir crazy. When we start our walks, we get about 20 feet from the house and then Nari starts hopping on three legs because one of her paws gets too cold. So then I pick her up and we turn back home. As soon as we get in the door, Nari completely forgets how cold it is outside and stares at her leash and harness then stares back at me and starts making her crazy Nari noises. Then Nari starts bouncing off the furniture while screaming. At that point, I drag them all downstairs to play in their playroom. 


Here is a picture of Nari trying to stay warm in one of the kitty beds and looking super sad that she isn't out hiking:

Starbuck prefers her beds to resemble little houses:

And Alpha all snuggled up in her bed:

I'm pretty certain she's dreaming about how to torment the kitties, what toy she's going to destroy next, and how to jump up on the table to steal the Christmas ham this year. She is naughty! 


Here she is working on her jumping muscles so she can reach the Christmas ham this year (she almost got it last year):

And here is what happened when I left a role of paper towel in the room with her unsupervised for 30 seconds:

We put up the Christmas trees last week. Yes, I did say 'trees'. I don't know if it's a southern thing or a thing everyone in our neighborhood does but it seems like all of the houses have at least two trees - one for your family to enjoy in the living room and one in a window that faces the street. Well, we were putting up the 'street tree' and decided to take a quick picture of Nari and her USDAA agility ribbons from this year to send to the breeder. So here is Nari posing with some of her ribbons:

We took the ribbons on the tree off and we just have a tree with lights. In fact, none of our trees have ornaments because we're lazy and I just don't want to fight the dogs and cats for the ornaments. 

Snow day!!

We got about 3" of snow in East TN - so they closed down everything! The girls were so excited to see the snow, they love to run while trying to eat as much snow as they can. The house actually had snow on it:

And so did the pond:

Here are some pictures from our snow walk:

Whenever we get back from a walk, Starbuck insists on laying right next to the pond to watch the fish:

Before the walk, I tried to put boots on the girls. Yeah... that didn't work so well, but it was pretty funny to watch:

Yes, it's true. I bought my dog a cake!

Aaron and I went to this awesome dog bakery in Knoxville called River Dog Bakery. We were just going to get some of their adorable little dog cookies (they even had little green Christmas trees and mini blueberry muffins!) but then we saw that they also make cakes! So we had to get the girls a small cake and since they offered to write something on it for free, we decided it should be a congratulatory cake for Nari earning her Advanced Agility Dog title. Here's a picture of the cake -

I was just impressed that there were able to fit all of those words on that cake! Nari's favorite part was the peanut butter frosting. 

Here she is eyeing up the cake - 

Then she smelled the peanut butter frosting... 

She got closer to the cake... 

And then grabbed it and tried to run through the house with it! 

Aaaaaahhhh! It's alien Nari!!!

Back at the end of October, Nari and I went to an agility trial over Halloween weekend. They had a costume parade and I dressed Nari up as an alien. And I picked that costume because it was the cheapest one in her size at PetSmart, only $3. I also thought she looked hilarious in it. Nari thought she just looked stupid but was willing to pose for treats.