Tell Me Thursday 2012 - #15

Okay - it's Thursday and Laura over at Crooks and Crazies is back with Tell Me Thursday!





I've missed a couple so maybe some day I'll go back and pick up the ones I missed. But now onto the questions for this week:


1. Are you a morning person? A night owl? Do you pop up out of bed full of song and happiness? Do you just hit your stride after dark?


It really depends on what's going on for the day. If it's a work day, then I'm not so much of a morning person. But if it's a trial or I have agility practice or a morning workout then I have no problem getting up early :) And I'm also a night owl depending on how much I did during the day. I tend to cram in too much during the week so by the time it hits 10 pm I'm pretty tired but I can sometimes manage to stay up to watch some trashy television or some cheesy sci-fi movie. 


2. What is your favorite candy?

Lately it's been Red Vines. I like to leave them in the car when it's warm outside and then eat them when they are nice and soft. But since I'm on a diet I really haven't had that much candy. I've decided candy is like crack - if it's in the house all I do is constantly think about it until I eat all of it. One time I made my husband hide it and told him to only give me one piece. Then I totally begged him to go get me one more so I could find out where he stashed it. Yep. I'm a total addict!

Oh... and a co-worker gave me a bar of Lindt milk chocolate filled with cognac! And I'm not talking about cognac flavored filling. No way, this sucker has a mini shot inside in piece - totally gives you a little buzz (or more, depending on how many pieces you eat). I think you can only buy them in Texas so we have to import them from Germany. I have it on my desk and have a piece when I first get in in the morning.  

3. What is your biggest driving pet peeve?

TN drivers. I don't know what it is with them - either they are just super rude or totally out of it. No turn signals, no checking to see if there is a car in the other lane before they switch lanes, constant tailgating - a cop was tailgating me and I was going 15 over the speed limit!! Oh yeah, and the idiots don't wear seat belts. I got into a wreck in TN once and they gave me a 'Saved By the Belt' award - they even had a ceremony for it and we got free lunch. Please people - just wear your set belts!! 

4. How do you prepare yourself and your dogs for summer?

I can't stand the cold so I love summer. I really don't mind the heat - just sometimes if it's 100 with 100% humidity - that gets to be a little bit too much. But I love wearing cute summer clothes. My dogs - not big fans of summer. So we take early morning and late evening walks. They also have cool coats to walk in. And we have a treadmill and some agility stuff in the basement to tire them out when it's just too hot outside. 

5. Lets talk about grass in your dog yard. Do you have any? How much maintenance do you do?

I don't do anything to the yard. Basically I just try to ignore that jungle of green stuff. I don't think there is really that much grass out there. I've seen lots of clovers out there and some other green non-grass stuff. We keep it mowed so that at a distance it sort of resembles grass. But it's your typical east TN yard - huge hill! You can see it here:

Tell Me Thursday 2012 - #14

Laura is on a little break from TMT so this is brought you by Rockin' Ewe -


And here are the questions for this week:

1. So, give me at least one good thing that has happened recently - dog wise, non-dog wise or both!

Dog-wise - Nari is starting to become a little bit crazier! She's like me - stresses over things she's not comfortable with and a little hesitant when it comes to new things. So we've been spending more time just being crazy and not worry about things and she's doing great. I've been doing this will all of the dogs and they all seem really happy lately.

Non-dog wise - my foot is slowly getting better. I totally freaked out a couple of weeks ago and thought that I had completely re-injured it so I went back to PT. The PT scraped the bottom of my foot and said it felt okay. So I've been easing back into things and hopefully someone it won't be sore.

Sort of dog-wise - finally went to a USDAA trial with my trainer last weekend and had so much fun! We had some of our fastest runs at a trial and it was great to just have fun and not worry about anything. He even stepped in for me to run Starbuck with only a 5 minute noticed and I had so much fun watching him run Starbuck. It was so great to have someone at a trial who supported me no matter what and who has always been there for me.



2. How did you end up working in the field/profession that you are currently in?

I wanted to be an artist but my Dad told me I should go get a degree in engineering because I had a better chance of getting a job with an engineering degree. So on the first week of undergrad I took a job with the first professor who would hire me and his project happened to be on plasma physics (fusion as a clean energy source). I liked the job so much that I went to grad school and finished a PhD in physics.

3. I got the typical "What are your hobbies?" question at this interview yesterday. What kind of response do you get when you tell people that you "train and trial dogs for (fill in the blank)"?

Most people are pretty surprised. Most have never heard about agility so they think it is pretty cool. Although I'm not sure they really have any idea how much work it takes to do it, I bet they would think I was insane if they really knew how much time and money have gone into it. But I think it's pretty cool to finally have a hobby other than 'studying'.

Another awesome weekend!

I took the girls to Georgia this weekend for another USDAA trial and we had a blast! This time we had a very special appearance from our trainer, Ace!! He's only done AKC for the past 7 years but he finally came out to a USDAA trial with us.

I'm not going to lie, I was pretty nervous about this trial. I knew that Ace was going to be there watching us and that we were going to be running in one of the largest 16" classes I've seen at a local trial - complete with dogs that have made it to the finals at Cynosports and AKC Nationals and are on the World Team. But we did really well!! Nari even managed to take a couple of 1st and my favorite was when we took 2nd in Grand Prix - 1st place was our friends Jean and Cheer who are on the IFCS World Team.

But what really made me happy this weekend was to see Nari starting to run like she does at home which means that I was finally starting to not worry about things so much. Nari and I are so much a like, we tend to stress out about things so it was great to see that we were relaxed. And my foot was starting to feel a little bit better. It was also awesome to see how well Starbuck is doing - she is such a fun girl to run. She's always out there having a great time and not worrying about anything. She did an awesome job running in P3 Snooker for the first time and even got a Q! And she took 1st place in round 1 of Steeplechase.

But I would have to say that one of the coolest things of the weekend was that I wasn't ready to run Starbuck in P2 Standard on Sunday morning so my instructor stepped in and ran her for me! He only had a minute to walk that course while they set the jump bars and I got Starbuck. They were awesome together - I just had such a great time watching them run. And after Starbuck took the very last jump she race as fast as she could out of the ring. I was terrified because we were at an outdoor trial and I had no idea where she was going - but that little girl just raced straight to me and jumped in my arms! It was just so cute :)

Here are some of the runs from this weekend - you can see Ace running Starbuck at the end of the video (and those two never practice together!).



I am just so lucky to have such an awesome trainer. He's always been so supportive of me and even cancelled some of his lessons on Sunday so that he could stay for the whole trial.

It's been quite busy lately - but I at least have a video today :)

I've been quite busy lately. Had some work trips out to San Diego and had to deal with some not so nice technicians... but I'm home now! San Diego was really nice because I got to see some friends and enjoyed some awesome Mexican food.

This weekend Starbuck had a trial all to herself. It was only 30 minutes from my house and she really enjoyed the one on one time with me. And of course our trainer, Ace, was there so it was like a party for Starbuck.

Here is a video of her runs from the weekend:


I'm still a little off on my handling because of my foot. I really aggravated it by running a trial on some rough terrain and then being stuck on a plane for several hours. But at least the PT guy checked out my foot this morning and said it was looking okay. I will just be really happy when it's back to normal.

Anyway, besides my dumb foot, I was super proud of little Starbuck. She really enjoyed herself and had a blast out there. And of course she loved socializing with everyone - she had a great time getting lots of pets and treats.

Well, that's it for now. I hope to post some cute pictures of the girls later tonight. They had a great Easter - complete with knuckle bones (which Nari insisted needed to be chewed on inside of a tunnel) and wild rabbit treats!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!!