Happy Holidays!

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 

Waiting for someone to drop food!

Starbuck - waiting for some food to fall

Starbuck's latest agility adventure!

Starbuck had some one on one time with me at a local trial. I usually travel with the whole crew but sometimes it's fun to give Starbuck some special time.

Here is one of my favorite pictures from the trial:

Yep - that's me and Starbuck! Notice that I am running in my work clothes! I had to work that day so my trainer was running her for me. I got out of work and showed up at the trial right as they finished walking Time 2 Beat. I didn't even have a chance to change so I ran her in my work clothes with my hair flying everywhere - and we won!!  

Starbuck has some killer A-frames - she just hovers over the apex lands at the bottom of the blue and does one short step into the yellow and then she's off! 

Here video of a couple of our runs:

Doesn't Starbuck have the cutest butt? :) 

Well, hope everyone is enjoying December! 

Dog Agility Blog Event Day - Backyard Training

Okay - I cannot figure out how to join the Dog Agility Blog group (http://dog-agility-blog-events.posterous.com/pages/backyard-training) - stupid Yahoo Group errors!

But I'm going to blog about Backyard Training anyway.

So.... my yard is basically a very large hill. We're talking about a 20-30 degree steep hill. This means there is no way I can do agility in my backyard. The only training I can do in my backyard is to let the dogs race around like crazy which helps with their conditioning.

The other agility training I can do at home is tight jump wraps in my basement. We have a room that is 20'x20' - really not big enough to practice any speed but I do have two tiny jumps that I made and a tunnel so I use the tunnel to work on jump wraps.

While I can't do that much agility training - we can work on conditioning at home! I have several different exercise balls (round, peanut, donut, paw pods) that I use to build up the girls muscles. And I add in some fun tricks to work on coordination and teaching the dogs that failing is not a big deal.

Here's a little video that show some of the conditioning work we do along with them racing around in the backyard:



Anyone have any other ideas on agility stuff that one can do without having a yard?

Super Buck!!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I know the girls did. We had family in town and Starbuck was totally in heaven. In fact, every time we left the house she would cry because she wanted to hang out with the guests. And at night we kept her in our room and she would cry and look at the door to try to convince us to let her sleep with the guests. 

But she was super happy that she did get some tiny pieces of turkey! 

Here are a couple more flyball pictures I found of the 'Buck:

I call this one SuperBuck! She's definitely rocking those lightning bolt boots. 

And this one, yeah, let's just say we're both completely crazy! 

Vote for us in Anna the GSD's Tongue Tacular contest!

Hi everyone! Hope you all are enjoying this Thanksgiving week. I know the girls are excited because we have some out of town guests coming to visit and they just love visitors because that means more people to give them treats :) And more time for walks!

I blogged a little while ago about Anna the GSD's Tongue Tacular contest. Well, we didn't win the random draw but we still could win the Viewer Choice contest. So.... you can see our entry here:
http://annathegsd.blogspot.com/2012/11/viewers-choice-tongutacular.html

And vote for Starbuck, Nari and Alpha!

Here's the picture I entered of the girls:

So remember to click on this link -> http://annathegsd.blogspot.com/2012/11/viewers-choice-tongutacular.html to vote for the girls. 

In the meantime, we are going to start making lots of pies and of course a turkey on Thursday so the girls will be super excited and camped out in the kitchen! 

Happy Thanksgiving and hope you all have a great week!

Wordless Wednesday for an amazing little Klee Kai!

New banner and flyball pictures!

Hi everyone!

Well, I finally changed the banner. As you can tell, I used my mad Illustrator skillz.. which means its still kind of crappy, just not as crappy as the last one :) I'm not telling you how long it took me to make - cause that's super embarrassing :) I could barely figure out how to crop the pictures! Seriously.

Anyway... onto the flyball pictures! This was from Starbuck's very last flyball tournament. She's retired now to focus on agility. But she will always be the cutest one on the team - I mean, who can be cuter? Just look at those lightning bolts on her boots!

Here's Starbuck at the start line waiting for me to release her. You may think I'm smiling, but I'm really yelling 'Ready... Set... Go!' which lets her know the race is on! She actually had a perfect start at this tournament!

Starbuck racing to get her ball. 

Starbuck demonstrating her mad ball catching skillz! 

Now she's racing back to her team with the ball so the next teammate can race! 

Here's a little video of Starbuck racing: 

She retires as the very first (and currently only) Klee Kai to earn a flyball title. Finished with a Flyball Dog Champion title, and is the fastest Klee Kai out there. Which I guess is kind of easy when you're the only one. But she was the fastest height dog on her team, the Big Orange Blast!

Here's picture of her team - B.O.B! 

It's time for Anna's Spectacular Tongue-tacular Contest!

Woohoo!! Anna, from Adventures of Anna the GSD, is holding her third annual Spectacular Tongue-tacular Contest!! 

And now for our entry..... 

It's Starbuck wearing her cute flyball boots with a crazy tongue!  

And just because her sisters were feeling a little left out - here is a group tongue picture!

I know you all have awesome doggie tongue pictures so why don't you head on over to Anna's blog and enter! 

What is an Alaskan Klee Kai?

A little while ago Anna at Adventures of Anna the GSD asked us to talk about what an Alaskan Klee Kai is - so here we go...

It all started a little over 5 years ago. I really, really wanted a small dog. My husband really, really wanted a husky. So... the husband said that if I could find a small husky then I could get a dog! And that's when I started the long search and I found the Alaskan Klee Kai! 

My three girls - Starbuck, Nari and Alpha!

A lot of people refer to the Alaskan Klee Kai (AKK) as a miniature husky. There are actually 3 sizes - toys (under 13" tall at the withers), miniature (13-15" tall) and standard (15-17" tall).

Yep, they are tiny! Here is 8 week old baby Alpha - all 2 pounds of her! 

The AKK started in the 70's and was recognized in 1997 by the United Kennel Club (still not an AKC breed). Their origin is from the working huskies in Alaska, along with Schipperkes and Eskimos. They used these smaller breeds to bring down the size of the husky without using dwarfism. And they retained the structure of the husky so that these little guys are still working dogs with HIGH energy levels (which a lot of people don't understand, these little guys love to have a job to be happy!) 

Here you can tell how small these guys are. If I don't have a size reference in the picture 

a lot of people think that they are full size huskies. 

Most people think my dogs are husky puppies and don't believe me when I say they are full grown :) Kind of funny when people think they know more about your dogs then you do! 

Starbuck and her super strong dad, Loki! 

A lot of people joke about how they must pull little sleds - but these little guys can pull A LOT! My dogs' dad competes in weight pull competitions and he has pulled around 700 lbs on rails! Yep 700 pounds!! 

Nari and I running in the Grand Prix finals at 2012 Cynosport World Games. 

You can see how small she is. 

My dogs have a lot of jobs to do to keep them busy. They work out just like people do :) They love to do tricks. Starbuck has competed in flyball. And of course they do agility!!

Okay, just one more agility pictures. Grand Prix semis at the 2011 Cynosport World Games. 

I think they are just awesome little dogs. Starbuck is actually the first dog I've ever owned so I guess I am biased because it's the only breed I've ever owned :)  

Well, hope you guys enjoyed my little overview of the AKK. Oh, and one more thing - the plural of Alaskan Klee Kai is.... Alaskan Klee Kai!! 

Anymore questions out there? I'd love to answer them :) 

Hope everyone has a great week! 

A cute picture FRIDAY!!!

First - a couple of cute pictures of the girls modeling their new collars! 

One of our agility friends makes them. I even have bracelets that match each of their collars made out of the same material and it uses a quick release. 

Awww - Alpha and Nari look so happy in their new collars. And then there's Starbuck - always looking out for where her next treat may come from :) 

Guess what? IT'S FRIDAY!! Woohooo!!! 

Oh crap.... :) This is the conversation my husband and I had at my agility lesson last night:
Me - Maybe I shouldn't wear shirts while running agility.
Husband - Maybe you shouldn't take jumps while running agility :)

But look at Starbuck - she still takes the jump but gives me this look like I'm totally crazy!!

If you want to see the video - it's at the end of our latest YouTube video:

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!! 

Happy Thursday + new video

Here's the latest video -

Only got two of Nari's Grand Prix runs from Cynosports recorded because I was so busy.

So.... things have been kind of quiet around here lately so I thought I would ask if anyone has any questions for us or topics they would like me to post? Or maybe more random cute pictures? What do you think?

Hope everyone is having a great week!

Pictures!

I just got some pictures back from Cynosports!! Here is my favorite one so far - Nari and I running in the Grand Prix Finals! 

I hope everyone had a great weekend!

2012 Cynosport World Games - dreams do come true!

Well, last time I posted about how much we had to overcome just to get to the Cynosport World Games this year. For those of you who don't know what Cynosports is - it's the National competition for USDAA - there were probably around 800 dogs (running in 6 rings) from all over the world! To say I was nervous would be an understatement. After not trialing since April I decide to fly all the way out to Denver, CO for the games and on top of that we had an amazing team. We teamed up with Elicia Calhoun, an internationally known trainer who travels around the world to compete and give seminars, with her BC BreeSea and her student, Bill Molloy and Cork. Both handlers and dogs are so amazingly talented and then there's me - taking lessons for 3 years, trialing for 2 years. I was terrified.

Back of our DAM team 'Who Corked BreeSea?' t-shirts. I am quite certain we had the best team 

shirts there. Bill designed the shirts and said my shirt would be free if we made it to the finals :) 

Oh yeah, and I was completely freaked out when I found out there was NO RING FENCING and the rings even shared sides!! Crap - my dogs have extremely high prey drives (there's a reason why they are sometimes referred to as 'mini huskies') and love to chase! So considering all we had been through this year, my goals were pretty low - make sure Nari stayed in the ring, try not to E, try not to embarrass ourselves and have FUN! And I was hoping that we'd do a little better than we did last year.

All I can say is that we totally exceeded my expectations.

A happy and very tired Nari after a long week of agility.

And here's how we did :)

Day 1 - We qualified for the Steeplechase and Grand Prix Semifinals!!

Day 2 - Team Snooker, 6th place?!?! I was completely shocked by this one, last time we did team snooker we completely bombed and ended up with a whopping 9 points. Not this time, 6th place with 54 points!

Day 3 - Our DAM team moved up to 17th place out of 170 teams!

Day 4 - We qualified to run in the Grand Prix FINALS and our team moved up to 14th place!!!

Day 5 - And I never thought this was possible - we got to run in BOTH the DAM Team Finals and the Grand Prix Finals!!! I think we ended up placing 10th in Grand Prix and 15th in DAM Team.

There we are after finishing our Grand Prix Finals run. I'm wearing my finalist polo they 

gave us to wear during the run. And there was even a production crew filming the finals runs 

along with commentary. What an amazing experience. 

Just look at that awesome DAM team - from left to right, Bill and Cork, 

me and Nari, Elicia and BreeSea. I was super excited that my shirt had our names on it! 

I'm working on a video, but it will be a while. The person who was recording our finals run forgot to open the lens cap so all I have is the audio :) but luckily someone recorded our run and put it on YouTube :) So here it is...

Still not running as well as I normally do - but considering I'm still injured and had to deal with the change in altitude and being completely nervous (bleachers full of people, tons of people watching the live streaming video, commentators, multiple professional video cameras...), I think we did pretty well! And most importantly of all - Nari had so much fun. That was really my goal all along, for Nari to be happy. 

We were supposed to fly back home on Sunday but had to change everything at the last minute because we MADE THE FINALS and had to stay an extra day!! WOOHOOO!!!

Hope everyone is well - and don't forget to HUG YOUR DOGS :)

Working hard for a dream...

I think I have mentioned this before - but I have been in quite a slump for a while. It started with Nari getting injured August 2011 at the Chicago Regionals. Then I pulled my hamstring which led to plantar fasciitis. The plantar fasciitis turned into posterior tibial tendonitis. I was told by the first specialist that he didn't know what to do so sent me to another specialist. He suspected that I would need ankle reconstruction surgery, putting my out for 18 months. To say I was devastated would be an understatement. Second specialist told me I didn't need surgery... yet... but had to stop everything immediately. So basically I've been out injured for nearly a year and have been in and out of PT since December 2011. You know it's bad when you are in every single picture of your sports therapy's FaceBook page...

I had no intentions of going to the Cynosport World Games (USDAA Nationals) this year. But I decided back in August that I was tired of being pissed off and angry at being injured so I decided the hell with it - I'm going to sign up and I'm going to be ready in September for it. So - I told my sports therapist my plan. He said he couldn't guarantee anything but he would try. You know what happens when you fast track sports therapy? It hurts like HELL. I mean it hurts enough to make those big muscle guys cry. In fact, I was in PT with an MMA fighter. Seriously, it is painful. Let's just say by now the therapist is quite impressed with my pain tolerance.

After I put my mind to I had to work hard with my agility trainer, Ace, to get my dogs in shape. We hadn't even run a full course in months... so my goal for Nationals was just to have fun. At first I had to be creative in finding ways to train my dogs without being able to run.

All I can say is that Ace is simply amazing. I cannot tell how lucky I am to have found him. Not only is he an awesome agility trainer, he cares so much about the dogs and insuring that they are having fun. And he has been so supportive of me in everything that I do. He even took me out to brunch after our lessons to cheer me up.

Here is a little video of some of our hard work getting ready for Nationals - we only had about 3 weeks to cram in months of training....



In a couple of days I'll post how Nationals went...

We're still here!!

Okay - I know it seems like forever since I've posted but things have been super crazy around here. Fall always seem to be a busy time of year for us.

Here's a little video I put together of Starbuck on the A-frame - enjoy!



I hope everyone is doing great and enjoying the nice cool weather that's finally here :)

Happy birthday to a very special little dog!

Today my little Inara is 4 years old! I can't believe it - seems like just yesterday she was just a tiny, crazy puppy! Now she's still crazy, but just a little bit older :) Time sure does seem to go by so fast. 

This morning we went on a very long walk on the greenway - one of her favorite things to do. Tomorrow Nari gets a very special day of hanging out with me. We'll probably do some agility, check out the doggie bakery and then take her out in Knoxville to hit up some of the dog friendly stores. Her favorite happens to be Mast General Store because they have the tastiest homemade peanut butter dog cookie sandwiches. They think she so cute that they just let her eat as many as she wants :) 

Starbuck meets her daddy!

Starbuck was in for a very special surprise this weekend! She was super excited when she found out she got to go on a solo trip to the park with just me and Aaron. And then she was even more excited when she got to meet a bunch of people AND HER DADDY!! 

Last time she saw her daddy, Loki, was when she was just a tiny pup. I don't know if they remembered each other at all but they sure had a lot of fun together. 

Just look at the cute puppy smiles - she definitely gets her smile from her dad. They have a very similar temperament - both really outgoing and friendly. They also like to bark and jump towards dogs that get near them - crazy pups!

After they hung out in the park together we all went out for lunch together - what a fun day! I think that
Alpha and Nari were a little jealous that they didn't get a chance to meet their daddy (all girls have the same sire).

ADCH Inara!!

Okay, I know I've posted before about Nari (or as she's known in agility, Inara) being the first AKK to earn an Agility Dog Champion title in USDAA but I just had to post this picture:

Isn't it awesome? Lisa M. made it for me. If you want her to make one for your dog, just send me a message and I can send you her contact information.

Happy 4th of July!

Hey everyone! I hope everyone enjoyed the 4th of July holiday yesterday. I procrastinated so much that I finally went out to get patriotic bandanas ON the 4th! However, the stores didn't have any 4th of July bandanas so I got the girls these:

And Nari was getting tired of the serious lack of treats! 

Hope everyone had a great time! What did your four-legged family members do for the holiday? 

The girls love custard!

So... how is everyone enjoying summer? While we were on a road trip a couple of weeks ago we happened to come across a Culver's. The girls thought my kids meal was quite awesome:

And then we got custard!
Starbuck was trying to use all her cuteness to get some custard:

Custard?

Mmmmmmmm....

CUSTARD!!!

Their cuteness always works :) 

Cool patriotic pup contest by Pleasant Pup!

Hi everyone! 


It feels like it's been FOREVER since I've posted anything. Lot has been going on around here. I can't remember if I told you guys but Starbuck won a contest a couple of months ago! It's crazy, I never win anything but I think Starbuck has probably won about 3 contests so far. Most recently she won a contest put on by Pleasant Pup (check out her stuff here: http://www.pleasantpup.artsydog.com/ and here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/Dobergrrl). Isn't her stuff awesome? She even makes bracelets to match your dog's collar (and I'm a total sucker for that kind of stuff!). 


AND Pleasant Pup is running another contest right now! Have any patriot pup pictures? Of course you do - so send them to Tricia to enter for your chance to win a gift certificate to get your very own awesome stuff. Here's how to enter (See Pleasant Pup's facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/PleasantPup.):


"In case you haven't heard, Pleasant Pup is having a patriotic dog contest! Send us your photo to dobermonkey07 (at) yahoo (dot) com and I will post them to our contest album! There will be a prize for first, second and third!"


So just what did Starbuck win in the last Pleasant Pup contest with this adorable picture?

She won her very own custom martingale collar for agility! And here are some pictures of it:

Isn't it awesome?! It has Starbuck's named carved in it AND a skull! 

Yeah, she looks pretty awesome in it. 

Not only is this martingale the most excellent martingale ever, but it is super lucky! On the first trial weekend that Starbuck had it she finally got that last Advanced Standard leg - we have been trying to get that FOREVER! And the finished 3 titles, qualified in all three tournaments and got fully qualified for Cynosports this year - never thought that would happen. 

In fact, we loved the martingale so much that we bought a very special collar for our little Alpha:

Yep, that's right it's bright red with SPIKES on it! She has those spikes to protect her if another dog ever tries to bite her in the neck again - two boxers attacked her on a walk and one was about to bite her little neck before my husband got her out of there... 

Hopefully we never have another encounter with a dog attack again. 

And just in case you are wondering - those symbols carved on the collar are her name, Alpha Prime!