I’m Baaackkk

It’s been a while…so where to start…

I don’t know if I became bored or overwhelmed with my blog or just at a loss as to what to write. Lately I have been going over and over in my head what I want from this blog and I think I just want a place to write down things going on in my life, adventures with the dogs and maybe a little educational info as I go. I am not going to set my expectations to high so I am planning on trying to get a post up at least once a week.

So let me start with some recent things that have gone on.

Last October was the National Specialty Show for Chesapeake’s and I was fortunate enough to be able to attend.

So on October 7th with my van loaded I headed out for a long awaited road trip with Maia and Titan in tow to Wisconsin for the next 6 days. As much as I was dreading the long drive I was excited at the same time.

The trip took us about 8 hours because we had to make a pit stop along the way to meet up with someone and of course pit stops for the dogs but the biggest hold up was driving around in a circle in Wisconsin just miles from our motel due to construction. Once I figured it out we arrived at the motel with me being a bit frazzled the dogs none the wiser but we were safe.

I checked in and unloaded the van…amazing how much stuff one needs to bring when they have dogs! With dogs aired we headed over to the show site to meet up with friends.

This show is sponsored by the American Chesapeake Club every year and the Chair and all the committees did an amazing job on the Specialty. It takes a tremendous amount of time, commitment, team work and money to bring a show like this together. The show was held at the Olympia Resort, Spa and Conference Center in Oconomowoc WI The site was very nice, plenty of places to air the dogs and walk them. The hotel did a great job accommodating the show and exhibitors.

I participated in this show as the State Basket coordinator. I was able to coordinate more than 25 basket donations from all over the US and Canada. People were so generous which made for great baskets for auction.

Each day something different goes on at the National Show, Agility, Dog classes, Puppy classes, Sweepstakes, Obedience, Bitch classes (not necessarily in this order). Maia was entered in the Bred By Bitch class on Saturday. We didn’t make the cut but we had fun and I received some very nice compliments on her from long time breeders. We had a lot of fun and she did show well and I think we worked as a team. You can learn more about Conformation here.

In addition to the specialty there was a Working Dog Stake scheduled for Sunday October 11th and I entered Titan. This would be the first time I would handle him. In the past he has always been handled by my friend and trainer David Keehn but after talking it over we decided I would handle him at the WD since Titan had a little brain fart at the last hunt test, but that’s a story for another time.

We could not have asked for better weather, the sun was shining it was warm but not to hot. The WD committee did an outstanding job on putting this event together. The grounds were fabulous!

I was a little nervous, not that Titan would mess up but that I would but it went great! He ran beautiful for me. For the land portion the judges even complimented him on his marking ability as one of the birds landed a bit hidden but he nailed it! So a big thank you to my friend David Keehn for all the training you did with my boy so I could do this.

So we came home with a new WD dog!

One of the biggest highlights of the trip was finally meeting JoAnn Stancer from Sand Spring Chesapeakes. I also met the cute little Preacher, her beautiful momma Glory and the infamous Gambler.

I met many other Facebook friends and was able to talk with some of them. It is nice to meet people in person that you have only known on social media.

All in all the trip went great! I am looking forward to the next time we can attend a Specialty.

Here are just a few photos…

                                            Tired Dogs in our motel room after a long trip

                    Look close…what is wrong with this photo?

                                          Handsome Boy!

 

                                            Proud of his ribbon (notice his Elvis grin)

 

 And a few candid’s from the show, I kept it small because I have almost 500 photos from this show

		2015 National Specialty Show VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cheyenne’s WD

New Working Dog

Ro-Lyns Cheyenne Mtn Dreams WD

Loved by Tina Cox & Robin Zerbst

CH Tealwaters Timberdoodle Song X CH Ro-Lyns Mtn Dreams Echoing

This certification means a lot to me as this was a title that required a great deal of determination not only by me but Cheyenne as well. We started participating in field work three years ago when Cheyenne was six years old and it was a very rocky beginning since both of us had no clue what we were doing. However, with the dedication and guidance of our good friends David and Michelle Keehn of Dusty Rose Chessie’s who worked diligently with us for many weeks we finally figured it out, and now Cheyenne lives to retrieve her birds! So a big thank you to Dave and Michelle, without you we would never have achieved this.

 

This is the photo and text I submitted to the ACC, my national breed club for the next bulletin, I figured since this title is kind of a big deal for me and Cheyenne she also deserved a blog post all her own.

Chessie Weekend

What a wonderfully exhausting weekend

Saturday was our *B/OB, this is an event my dog club does to work towards becoming licensed by the AKC so we can hold our own shows. We had a wonderful turnout and everyone had a great time, I was not able to get very many pictures since I was so busy with dogs. I am so proud of Maia, she received first in her class and yes we had competition! She stood pretty good for exam and moved beautifully around the ring. It was a great opportunity to practice with her in a relaxed show setting.

The nice thing about pictures is you can see things that you otherwise would not know is going on; like in this picture I see I have let the collar slip down a bit.

 

Then Sunday was the day I have been waiting for with great apprehension and excitement…WD day! Cheyenne and I have been working for this for the last three years; she ran in a WD two years ago but we missed our title by one bird. This time we nailed it, she was awesome and she is now a WD titled dog

RO-LYNS CHEYENNE MTN DREAMS WD

I am still flying high from the weekend and I could not be more proud of my girl’s. I will not pursue any more tests with Cheyenne but we will still go to training to have a good time until she tells me she is done! Maia and I will continue moving forward with her conformation training and entering a show here and there for the exposure and practice until I think she is more mature, then we start trying for her Championship (CH) title.

This was a great weekend of people coming together for the benefit of the dogs. We had a wonderful time working with our dogs, socializing and eating. I can’t wait for the next event!!

 

*Sanctioned Matches Defined.

A sanctioned match is an informal event at which neither
Championship points nor credit toward an Agility, Rally,
Obedience, or Tracking title are awarded. They are
events at which dog clubs, judges, stewards, and
exhibitors and their dogs gain experience needed for
licensed events.

This ‘N That Thursday

 

Well it’s that time again…

 

Last week in my This ‘N That Thursday I posted about my stats and I am happy to say that I have surpassed 50 followers this past week, wahooo!!!

As you know from my post Going Live, I have been working on getting the hang of Twitter and I do have some followers there as well but I gotta tell ya it sure is a lot to keep up with I really appreciate everyone’s comments and helpful hints.

I visited Titan the other day and he is doing great! Did a little work with Cheyenne and she did do better than last week but I think the old dog “I no longer have to listen” has kicked in…LOL We’ll keep at and hopefully she will straighten out before the WD. We had a total of nine training dogs running, here is a video of the dogs that trained that day, well except for Cheyenne since I was the one running her I opted not to try to take pictures at the same time.

 

Hero Dog

With all the negative media out there regarding Pit Bulls I thought I would post this link about a very positive and wonderful story about a dog named Titan (pretty cool my boys shares his name). I enjoy reading these stories that have such a happy ending and show the true nature of a dog raised right. Enjoy!!

 

Hero pit bull rewarded for saving his owner’s life twice

 

So that raps up my This ‘N That Thursday, how’s your week?

This ‘N That Thursday

You guessed it, this post is going to have a little bit of this ‘n that in it.

First I am so excited, WordPress informed me that we have had over 500 Likes on this blog. Second, so far we have had over 8500 hits and yesterday we had 122 views, our busiest day. Third we now have 45 followers, I can hardly believe it! When I started this blog I thought it would be cool if we had ten followers and now we have, yes I’m going to say it again…45 followers! Now I’m thinking won’t that be great if we reach 50, it’s within reason, we’re almost there, it’s just around the corner…okay I’ll stop       I just want everyone to know how much we appreciate you reading this blog and sharing your thoughts and comments with us. Although I have not met most of you in person I feel like I have through your wonderful stories and photos, so thank you for allowing us to share in your life.

Moving on, tomorrow I am going to see Titan and the girl’s will be going with me. The plan is to get some training in with Cheyenne so I can get her ready to run in the WD next month, for those new to my blog WD stands for Working Dog Stake, you can find information about it here. I haven’t worked her very much so far this year but when I did she was much better about getting the bird back to me so here’s hoping we can pass the test this year

And now your Awwwwwwww for today, my friends Dave and Michelle over at Dusty Rose Chessies just had a litter of puppies…I mean their dog Chemmy had puppies   They are so adorable and I can’t wait to smell that puppy breath, ahhhh! You can see a picture here 

Last but not least, 2 Brown Dawgs came up with the This ‘N That Thursday idea and made this really cool badge that they are sharing so I grabbed it to use because sometimes you just need to talk about a lot of different things in one post.

Thanks 2 Brown Dawgs for sharing your badge