Look out agility - Starbuck is back!!!

That's right, Starbuck is back to loving agility again! Starbuck was actually the first dog I started training in agility. She was so fun to train - she's pretty much fearless (has run right off the dogwalk and teeter and will go right back and do it again) and loves to run. But when I first started out at trials I was super slow because I didn't have much confidence out there so she would loose interest and get the zoomies. In fact, here is the only video I got from her first run at her first trial:





After that run she managed to qualify for the rest of her runs so she ended up getting her UAGI title. I took her to another trial 4 months later and she ran out of the ring and just didn't seem that excited to do agility with me. Then at practice she wouldn't focus and was more interested in ignoring me so I gave her some time off. Probably gave her about 6-8 months off and then only would do a couple obstacles with her and trained with her for 1-2 minutes at a time. And then about two months ago she finally was more interested in agility than blowing me off so I thought it was time to take her to a trial. And here is one of her runs from a B-match followed by her first run at a trial:





The best part was that she was so happy and had so much fun! I loved seeing that smile on her face after she finished her run! And she loved meeting all the new people and getting tons of treats. Not sure when her next trial will be but I was just so glad to see her have a blast out there. Oh - and it was pretty great when I looked at the score sheet to see that she had the fastest time for all the dogs out there, yep - she was faster than all of those shelties and aussies in the Novice class!! 

Baby pictures!

I was looking through all of our pictures the other day and found baby pictures of the girls! Wow - they look so much different now. 

Here's a little baby Starbuck:

I think this pictures was taken a week or so after we got her - so she was probably around 2.5-3 months old. She weighed about 3 pounds when we got here and the blaze on her forehead was so big back then. 

And then there's baby Nari. She was around 10 weeks old and weighed 3 pounds when we got her and she had these crazy huge ears - just look at them:

Those ears are bigger than her head! She has finally sort of grown into them, but she definitely has the biggest ears in the family. Starbuck and Nari actually have the same parents, just different litters, but they still look so different now. 

And then came baby Alpha - she was the tiniest baby and weighed only 2 pounds when we got her. Just look at her baby picture - she looks like a tiny toy!! 

Alpha didn't have crazy huge ears when she was a puppy, I guess that's because she looks more like her mom (she does have the same dad as Starbuck and Nari). 

And here is one of the first family pictures we took of the girls together:

See how Alpha is standing close to Nari and Nari is giving Alpha this look like she can't stand that Alpha is touching her? Yeah, Nari totally hated Alpha when we got her. I think that Nari was (and still is) so attached to me that she was jealous when we got baby Alpha. So we kept Nari and Alpha separated with a baby gate for a week until they got used to each other. Then they just started wrestling all the time and they've been best friends since then. And I think Alpha just kept forcing Nari to cuddle with her until Nari got over it :) 

They look so different in their baby pictures, but I definitely love how beautiful they look now. 

She's tricky!

Oh, Alpha, can you be any cuter? 

What's that? You can even do adorable tricks? 

Oh, Alfalfa Sprout - you are the cutest puppy! 

Tiny tennis balls are a girl's best friend

Alpha is madly in love with tiny, squeaky tennis balls. When she gets up in the morning she'll race into the living room to find a tennis ball and then she'll pretty much carry it around all day long. And when she's not carrying it around, she holds it between her front paws and sometimes she'll have a huge smile:

She also likes to stand in front of us and let out one loud bark every minute until we give in and throw the ball to her repeatedly.

She's always been obsessed with tennis balls since she was just a tiny puppy. Here's a video of her catching tennis balls over and over and over when she was 6 months old:

Not sure where she got it from because we never taught her to catch, she just found a tiny tennis ball lying around and it was love at first sight! 

So... how many dogs out there are getting rid of their winter coats and growing in shiny new spring coats? Nari decided she had enough of her winter coat so I've been brushing her. This is the second time she was brushed this week: 

I'm still amazed at how much fur these guys have in their undercoat - where the heck does all this fur come from? And this was the second time I brushed a huge furball off Nari in the last week. By the way, they are totally worth all of the grooming work (which really isn't that hard) and all of the fur tumbleweeds I pick up around the house. 

One more thing - we have another follower!! Thanks so much to everyone who follows us and posts comments:) 

Food and spring - both things the girls love!

First - I just wanted to say hi to all my new followers! Glad you're here and thanks so much for stopping by :) It's been pretty crazy around here so I'm afraid I haven't been posting much but things have finally calmed down so I'll be posting more. 

Spring is finally here! Good thing because the dogs had been going crazy and running laps in the house. Nari enjoys screaming and trying to convince us to either take her on hikes or do agility - that girls never rests. 

We finally got some nice weather last week so I took all of the girls out to the agility field to run around and practice a little. Here's a picture of a dirty Starbuck:

Here's how she got all dirty:

Now onto food! I went to the doggie bakery and got some 'paw-reos' for the girls. Actually, Nari bought the treats for her and her sisters with her Steeplechase winnings :) Here are the girls super focused on the plate of 'paw-reos':

Nari was really going crazy over those cookies: 

As if paw-reos weren't exciting enough, Aaron made the girls a huge batch of their homemade dog food. They go crazy for that stuff. I even use it during training because they love it more than treats. The girls were quite excited that they got to lick the pan:

And Nari just loved licking the spoon! 

Our Spectacular Tongue-tacular contest entry!!

I read about this great Tongue-tacular contest over on Adventures of Anna the GSD so I thought I would post some tongue pictures of the girls for our entry! You can check out the contest ----> HERE. 

Isn't that a great picture :) 

Well, I thought I would have a tough time finding some tongue pictures but it turns out I have a bunch of them. So here are some of my favorites! 

First up - Nari's crazy long tongue that she gets after I have finally tired her out:

I don't know what to call this one - truck tongue (see the horse driving one of those truck things, I have no idea what's going on here...)? 

Now for a group of tasty tongues! Followed by a Nari tongue cleaning the spoon. 

This would be the crazy Nari tongue that I see when she is bugging the crap out of me to take her on a long hike: 

She'll just stand there and yell at me and then start staring at me with this look until I give in. And here is a tired Starbuck tongue:

Now Miss Starbuck, therapy dogs don't stick out their tongues:

And therapy dogs certainly shouldn't be rolling around in the dirt while sticking out their tongues: 

Oh, Starbuck, how I love your crazy tongue: 

And of course I can't forget the cutest, longest tongue in the family - Alpha's! Her tongue gets crazy long when she's panting: 

Isn't she the cutest in this adorable collar: 

And these are my favorite Alpha smiles, so big you can see her whole tongue! 

Well, I think that was a great contest idea - so head on over here to go enter. You have until noon on Friday, March 11th. Maybe I should have a contest someday.... 

I'm back!! And Starbuck has some fancy boots!

It's been a long time since I've posted anything! Let's see.... I had a couple of agility trials, went to Vegas, got sick, filled up my hard drive, husband's computer died so then I got a new computer!!!! YES! Which means I can now have 1080p videos on YouTube! Oh, and I finally have the latest iMovie. 


We noticed at flyball that Starbuck's wrists were bending back a little too much on her boxturn so I got her some fancy new Z-Control Skid boots. They are black with a orange stripe on the back and have sparkly orange lightening bolts on the front!!! 


Here is a video of Starbuck getting used to the boots: