Brunching it up with Nari and Aaron

A couple of weeks ago we took Nari out to brunch with us in downtown Knoxville. She loves that the PetSafe company is based in Knoxville because they have done so much for the community to make it more pet friendly. 


Before PetSafe, no dogs were allowed on outdoor patios. Now - dogs can eat out with their family! Here is Nari at one of our favorite restaurants - Tomato Head! She's totally trying to look all cute to get some of our food. 

She thought we had the best table because she got to eat some salad that a messy eater before us left under the table. 

She really wanted to eat some of Aaron's super tasty brunch! I tried to get a picture with her but she was pretty busy people watching. 

 

She helped Aaron pay the bill and then helped clean my hands! 

Then it was off to her favorite store downtown - Mast General. They have homemade peanut butter cookies there and she knows exactly where the sales people keep them. Here she is trying to be all cute to get a peanut butter sandwich cookie! They actually brought the cookie container right to her and she threw her head into the bin and started munching as fast as she could and they even let her get away with it! Such a lucky pup! 

She was tired but had some much fun - and lots of treats!! 

Tell Me Thursday - #14!

Seems like it was just a couple of days that I finished writing TMT #13 (okay, so maybe it was.. and you can find it HERE :)). But now we are up to Tell Me Thursday #14 already - brought to you by Laura over at Crooks and Crazies!






There is only one question this week and its:
What obstacles have you overcome this week, and what did you learn from them? 


Tough one! Well, I guess I learned that Nari is an awesome dog - I love her. 

Okay so I always knew that but I love her despite her (or mine) imperfections in agility and life. She was one of the most timid dogs I know - she was terrified of all the equipment when she first started and she has worked very hard to overcome her fears. I am definitely not a great handler (only been doing this for 2 years) but she still puts up with me (and my crazy arms!) and we have so much fun doing agility together. Nari is such a hard worker and a thinker but we're finally starting to run as a team. Agility has been one of the few times lately that I can actually escape the stress of my everyday life. 

However, sometimes I get really frustrated with what other people say about her. In particular, I've had to start ignoring certain people and the comments they make. It really irritates me when someone will post something great that Nari has achieved and then when I go to check out all of the comments that were made I see that the conversation has turned into a pissing match between who's dog is the fastest or the best and a bunch of other crap. Or if I post a picture or video or something about Nari they make some comment about their dog instead. Those things are the whole reason that I never post on forums. I seriously get sick of narcissistic people. So, over the past couple of weeks I've learned to not care. To hell with what other people say - all of my dogs are awesome just the way they are. 

Anyway, I love Nari and think she is perfect just the way she is. And I view our imperfections not as road block, but as a challenge and I love challenges. She has taught me a lot about patience and understanding, how to think outside of the box and how to run without tripping over my own feet (okay, so I'm still working on that one :)). And I will always love how chatty she is and how she really understands me :) 

And I am so grateful for every moment I get to spend with her and will always cherish every run that I am lucky enough to have with her. We will forever step into the ring with just one goal: to run fast and run happy together as a team because that is what this game is all about. And you never know when this game will end. 

Wordy Word Wednesday: C

C is for Cynosports!! Or as it's officially called - the USDAA Cynosport World Games. Nari was the first Alaskan Klee Kai to qualify for and compete at Cynosports and we had so much fun! Here are some pictures from our trip:

Nari was so happy and spent the whole week smiling. 

It was HUGE - 5 rings, over 850 dogs!! Here is what one of the rings looked like:

It was such an amazing experience to do the walk throughs in the morning to music with some of the best handlers in the world! 

And with over 850 dogs, they had a huge building for us to crate in:

Nari enjoyed all of the shopping! Here is Nari checking out the donuts at the FitPAWS booth: 

She looked so happy on that donut that of course I bought one for her :) There were some places that didn't allow dogs, but Nari always tried to sneak into the gardens.

And we even made it to the Steeplechase and Grand Prix semifinals!! Here we are before our Grand Prix semifinal run - they gave all the semifinalists a blue polo to wear during our run. 

And Nari got lots of snacks she normally doesn't get at home, like sandwiches! 

"I can haz sandwich??"

Nari had a blast and totally 'woofs agility'! 

We had so much fun and got to see so many amazing handlers - there were lots IFCS and World Team members there it was crazy! And Nari even got to bark at Susan Garrett's Swagger because he was tugging like crazy right next to her :) And everyone LOVED Nari and thought she was the cutest dog there. One judge nick named her the "Alaskan Kit Kat"!

We even got to see one of our friends take 3rd place in the Performance Speed Jumping finals and our friend Jean even made it on the IFCS team with her amazing sheltie, Cheer!! Such an amazing week!! 

Here is a video of some of our runs from Cynosports:

Tell me Thursday - #13

It's still Thursday somewhere, right? Like in some alternate or parallel universe or something :)


Anyway, totally missed last Thursday because I spent all week at the 2011 USDAA Cynosport World Games with Nari!! WHOOHOOO our very first Nationals (and the first Alaskan Klee Kai to compete at Nationals) :) Did pretty well - took 11th in the Steeplechase quarterfinals and advanced to the semifinals and took 7th in the Grand Prix quaterfinals and made it to the semis in that as well :)

Okay... enough about my week, now it's time to answer this week's (okay... last week's) questions from Laura over at Crooks and Crazies:




1. What is your favorite Little Debbie snack?


I'm not that big of a fan of Little Debbies but one about every two months the vampires (I mean blood mobile...) comes to take my blood and gives me a Little Debbie oatmeal cream pie in return. And that oatmeal cream pie is delicious! Any other time and it is too sweet for me but for some reason on blood day it is seriously yummy! I also occasionally like those Hostess chocolate cupcakes with the little white swirl on top or a twinkie.


UPDATE - right after I wrote this I found out our lab was having a blood drive today so I got my Little Debbie fix :) Crazy timing! Since I haven't eaten that much for the past week I'm totally crazy right now! 


2. What do you use for laundry detergent?


Tide - I have many different Tides, dark colors, cold water, bleach alternative, that one that's in that pearlescent orange bottle. I don't know why but for some reason I feel like I need them all and I need to rotate which ones I use. Yep, I'm a total sucker for their marketing schemes.


3. Tighty Whities or Boxers?


Boxer briefs! But Nari prefers tighty whities :)

4. Dogs: On the bed? In the house? On the furniture? Never? What are your rules?

My dogs are so cute that they get away with a lot. The only rule I have is not on my plate. As in one time Alpha ran across the couch, leaped through the air, landed ON my plate of scrambled eggs (I was sitting in the chair 3 feet from the couch) with her mouth wide open and proceeded to eat as much eggs as fast as she could before I threw her off my plate. Then there was that other time that she jumped up on my plate and ran away with a fish taco.... that girl is good! And here's the evidence - she found my yogurt! And one time I turned my back for a second and looked back and that girl was drinking olive oil out of a little dipping bowl - olive oil!! 

5. Favorite dog-related website (aside from the Crooks and Crazies blog)? Favorite NON-dog related website? Can be blogs or whatever. 

Dog related - I mostly enjoy random dog blogs or youtube channels. 

Non-dog related - cakewrecks.com. I love cake, I love eating cake, I love looking at pictures of cake and I love laughing at cake wrecks! 

Hope everyone is having a great week! 

SMILE!

Life is too short to spend my time worrying about the future, so I just like to take some great advice from the girls:

SMILE! 

And enjoy all the great things in life. Like pool parties with friends...  

... and hot pink wigs... 

... and walkies... 

... and tasty sandwiches... 

... and naughty puppy messes... 

... and enjoying the outdoors... 

... and rolling around in the mud!! 

Hope everyone has a fabulous weekend :) 

Tell Me Thursday - #12

It's Thursday and time to play Tell Me Thursday brought to you by Laura over at Crooks and Crazies! 




1. If you won the lottery (a big one... I'm talking stupid muchos cash) what would you do with the money?

Picture of my dream yard.

After paying off all the loans I would buy a house with a huge yard and have an awesome agility field. Then I'd build a large building big enough to have a full size agility ring in it. And of course buy a cute RV and make the husband drive me and the dogs around in it. 


2. After winning the lottery would you work a day job? If so, what would you do? 

Me, working at the day job!

We've been talking with all of our friends a lot lately what we would do if we had to pick another career - we've settled on opening a brewery/home brew store with a pet store and doggie daycare and baby daycare next door. Yep, totally and completely random - we just basically took all of our interests and threw them into one complex and then one of our friends is pregnant so we decided to throw a daycare in there as well. I love what I do now but it's really stressful to be a government researcher and constantly worrying about elections and how they might affect your work. 


3. Do you have any auxiliary dogs? Auxiliary dogs are dogs that are not essential to your main purpose (usually tiny, but not always). If you don't have an auxiliary dog what might you choose?

Picture of the cutest sleeping puppy, ever, our little Alpha sprout - the auxiliary dog.

Not sure if Alpha counts as an auxiliary dog or not. She's the smallest and doesn't do agility but she's a total lap dog. She always has to be snuggling with someone and it is adorable. If she can't figure out how to get onto my lap she will bark at me until I make space for her. 


4. Do you have a favorite crock pot recipe (or other recipe) you can share?

 Picture of a cheese brat, AKA - Heaven on a Bun, in front of a bear bush.

Ummm.. what is this thing you call a crock pot? And what are these recipe things? I have a kitchen that I occasionally try to use but then the smoke detector usually starts going off and then the husband yells at me to get away from said kitchen. This becomes a major problem when the husband is traveling. I tried to buy some turkey with cheese sausages thinking I could easily grill them (grilling doesn't look that difficult on TV!). But then I put the sausages on the grill and discovered I had no idea how to use a grill. So I put them in a pan on the stove and of course got distracted. Came back 10 minutes later expecting the sausages to be burnt - but instead discovered that turkey cheese sausages had cooked themselves!!! Apparently as the sausage get hot the cheese kind of explodes and turns the sausage all by itself!!! WHOOHOOO - making turkey and cheese sausage Chef Steffi proof! YES!! Anyway - this is possibly the longest non crock-pot recipe ever so I'll be reading everyone else's blog and giving these recipes to my husband to cook for me. Yum! 

Running the gauntlet!

Three trials...
in three states (AL, GA, TN)...
in less than three weeks...
all while traveling by myself with three dogs!
And that's what my trainer likes to call "Running the Gauntlet!". And we all survived! Had lots of fun with friends, had some fun runs, the girls picked up lots of Qs, 6 titles and lots of great memories. 


Here are the girls after hiking around the St. Croix property in Georgia:

They must have had 20 acres of beautiful rolling hills, a large pond and a perfectly level agility field - it was gorgeous and we had such great weather! 


And here are some highlights from our crazy agility spree: 





I think Starbuck is finally starting to understand that she needs to occasionally listen to me out on the course :) She had so much fun and picked up 4 titles! Here is our last ribbon picture with all of the ribbons we got during the past two and a half weeks: 

We have too many ribbons at home so I'm going to start donating some of them. If you want to donate your ribbons you should check out this website: http://ribbonrecycling.com/. It's a great program - they send your old ribbons to therapeutic riding programs. 


I am way behind on my blog reading and email so hopefully I'll have some time this week to finally get caught up on everything! 


Hope everyone has a great week!