Pet Magazine

Check out the latest issue of Pet Mag for a little follow up piece on the article I wrote last issue

Progress in Obedience training... The dumbbell retrieve

Eukanuba Food Auction

I am running an auction to sell one of my prizes for obedience competitions (Brody cant eat this food because of his allergies). The auction closes next Friday 19th of Feb.

• Eukanuba Adult large breed dry dog food
• 15kg bag
• small tear in the top from me trying to carry it (its heavy!)
• worth $119.95 in vets / pet shops

AUCTION.... Current top bid is $80

AUCTION IS CLOSED... congrats to David :-)

To bid email me, or write a comment at the bottom of this posting. And NO Brody does not come with the food!!!

Christmas Holidays

My Christmas holidays started with marking for NZQA, which I'm sure as you can imagine was thrilling stuff! I managed to get that all wrapped up just before Christmas, and was lucky enough to have two Christmas days, one a bit early with Christine and her family, and Christmas day with Suzanne and her family (including Brody's best buddy Jack the Labrador!).

Early January Brody and I had a great adventure... A flight down to Nelson to catch up with the family. Those of you who

know Brody can understand that I was a little nervous about having Brody at my

parents place in Nelson - its a big lifestyle block with farm fencing (e.g. not Brody-proof), lots of cows and chickens, and other things to get into!

But it really shows my how much Brody has grown up... He took the whole flying thing with ease, and settled in quickly to the farm and his NEW buddy Dougal the Huntaway.

Although we still had to watch him carefully, he just loved scouting out the farm, and chasing (NOT eating) the cows and chickens. And after a little settling in period, him and Dougal became great friends.

The only thing he couldnt get his head around was the pool

- he just didnt get that the pool actually had a bottom to it, therefore would NOT go in. He would site for half an hour, waiting till he toys got close enough to grab. Very cute though!

After our lovely relaxing Nelson trip, I just tried to do all those things that I dont get time to do in term time (clean the car, and house, clean under the bed et.) ad relaxed. And Brody and I did heaps of extra training..... see the next posting about his great results, coming soon!

Email Hack

Well people suck. Someone has hacked / put a virus into my hotmail account, and emailed a hoax email to all my contacts and now all my my contacts have been deleted, along with most of my emails. 

So if you got a wierd email from me... DELETE IT! And email me so I can enter your address back into my contacts! Grrr!

Christmas Party

This weekend we had the North Shore Christmas Party on Saturday (along with the everlasting NZQA marking!) then Hibiscus Ribbon Trial on Sunday. 

The Christmas Party, as always, was lots of fun.  It started out with nibbles, and a dress up competition, before all the relays and games. 

Then Brody and I did a dancing demo (he was a bit manic, so we didnt get all the tricks), then Michelle and Moss did their routine (looking great as normal).

 Brody looked the part in his cute (but somewhat tight) elves costume. 

After our routines, Mark did another fantastic Magic show, then it was into the serious (or not) stuff... prizegiving. To our surprise, we actually won something! Mark and Sophie, and Brody and I tied to win the Elementary Obedience Trophy!  Very exciting. 

Then we had dinner, and a few more games - including a weave challenge, where they set up 48 weaves and timed how long it took to get each dog through, which was fun! Brody actually did pretty well, getting through then all to pop out two from the end, but he was a bit slow. The photo is of Rachel and Quest. 

Thanks to Debbie for some of the photos of Brody and I dancing, and Matilda for a dancing photo, and the photos of Mark and Brody and I with the trophy. 

On Sunday we had another great doggie day out, at Hibiscus Coast. We had a nice group of North Shoreans, including Emily, tanya, Lise and Roy, Debbie, Sarah and I. 

Its safe to say that all the dogs had fun... (i.e. Appollos), and a few were even quite well behaved. 

Tanya placed with Bindi in Elementary Obedience, in Specials Lise and Bessie came third, and Brody and I came 5th (just left turn issues). Brody and I also managed a 7th place in Starters for Agility. A fun, sun filled day. 

Another action packed weekend

This weekend we had two agility competitions. They were both ribbon trials (the easier less important ones). 

Saturday was NorWest, in Kumeu. It was actually pretty nice, but I was really tired! I ended up having several nanna naps in the car. 

Brody was disqualified in Starters, and then we had to wait around for Elementary. But it was totally worth the wait - after bolting over to say hi to the judge, Brody ran a great run, and we came second (by 0.1 of a second)! Yay!

Then Sunday was our clubs agility ribbon trial. True to form NSDTC put on a great, but very wet show. We arrived early to help take entries and set up, and ran a fantastic elementary - the first time that I have been sprinting and not able to keep up to Brody. And Brody and I WON... we beat Suzanne and Jack by less than a second, and now we are out of elementary! 

So I am really happy - Brody is finally getting somewhere, after years of unpredictable (but happy) bolting and being naughty! My goals for this year was to get out of elementary for obedience, agility, and paws n music, which we have now done!

... Now I need to decide what my goals are for next year!