Bevor Bilder kopiert, gespeichert etc. werden: Das Copyright, sowie das Urheberrecht liegen bei mir. ;)

LG Katrin

So I requested the butcher at the grocery save me a knuckle bone, and I went to pick it up yesterday.

The bone is BIGGER than Auggie's head - but why should that stop him?

Fancy Auggie gets his raw meat on a plate. (I couldn't think of a good reason to take it off the styrofoam from the butcher before he started chewing it.)

Auggie says "What do I do with this? Do I... lick it?"

"Ohhhh, I do THIS!!"

"This is delicious!"

"Ommm nom nom nom nom"

"Now I nom on this side of my mouth!" (That's right, buddy, get those teeth clean on BOTH sides.)

"Sinew is a delectable treat."

It's gotten nice and filthy by this point...

Dirt is just like sprinkles!

I gave it to him for about fifteen minutes, then washed all the dirt off it, chucked it into a plastic bag, and stuck it into the freezer. He'll get it again tonight, and hopefully after a few days he'll be able to start really getting to work and getting his teeth nice and clean!

Today's JWW course was a LOT better for my lame brain than yesterday. A tunnel separated the first third of jumps from the second third; weave poles separated the second third from the final third of jumps.
However, Mister Auggie HIT THE BRAKES on the weaves after doing 10 of them. Hit the brakes! I was prepared for him to pop out of the last jump - he has been doing that lately - but not a complete stop! It might have been faster to pull him all the way back to the beginning and have him start over, but I decided to simply direct him through the last two jumps. However, this took time - time that put us too far over to qualify.

Still a very good run. Auggie is not the fastest dog in the world, and I am really more concerned with accuracy before speed... but there are times that he forces me to change my plan. I walked the course with a front cross after jump - oh, I dunno, 10 or so - and he was WAY ahead of me as he soared over that jump. There was no hustling to get in front of him. The front cross was because an off-course jump was set directly in front and I was hoping to cross and block him off from that jump. Because I did not make my cross, I instead had to CALL CALL CALL and stop him from off-coursing.
And he responded to my call off, which makes me very proud... but not as proud as what happened next, because (and I don't even remember doing this, but I have seen the video so I know it happened!) I still wanted to be on the inside of the jumps and curl him around into the weaves. So my body decided to do a rear cross over a jump... and rear cross we did. He was fantastic, especially for a dog that really hates to lose sight of me and dislikes rear crosses.

Standard, on the other hand.
He was distracted. He was tired. Two days may just be too much for my little guy right now. Until he matures some, we may not be doing two days anymore.
First disaster: I had two choices - try and do a front cross in an area I didn't think I had room to cross, or try and rear cross him into a tunnel. As I said, this dog hates rear crosses, especially into a tunnel. I made the wrong choice... I should have tried the front cross. He wouldn't go into the tunnel. He almost decided to go into the WRONG side of the tunnel. He stopped in the middle of the tunnel bend to take a sniffy-sniffy at the sand bags holding the tunnel. He FINALLY got into the tunnel.
Second disaster: He came out of the tunnel and was supposed to go over a triple jump. He CRASHED into the jump. I do not mean he knocked a bar, I mean he crashed into it. It was actually hard to see if he even really attempted to jump the bars as opposed to just charging right through them.
Third disaster: He skipped the tire jump. Who cares. He already knocked a bar so that's a NQ. I'm not wasting time when he's obviously already stressed and tired by trying to get him back around and through the tire jump.
Fourth disaster: He came off the a-frame and crashed into another jump. I slowed and almost stopped. I thought he was hurt. He kept going, so I had to speed up again to catch up.
Fifth disaster: He crashes into yet another jump. At this point, I seriously almost waved to the judge and said "We're finished, thank you," picked him up, and carried him off the course. I was VERY concerned, because he has never dropped a single bar in his agility career before, and now he crashes into three separate jumps? Jumping TWELVE instead of sixteen, too.

But he was still willing and was not limping, so I went ahead and did the final two obstacles with him - a set of weave poles and one final jump, which he cleared.

We have lots of theories about what happened, but in the end, he just checked out. He wasn't interested in running the course. But, as J said, he was still smiling after it all (I was holding him afterwards and giving his muscles a massage to make sure he wasn't hurt and wouldn't be stiff the next day - no wonder he was smiling!)

It's hard to go home with no ribbons for the weekend after so much early success. I mean, a title on my first agility dog after only two trials? And then a Q-less weekend. It's rough.
But there were lots of positives in our Jumpers run, he did ALL of his contacts on both days...
and, as always - and most importantly - Auggie and I are learning more and more about each other.

Standard was an interesting experience. I thought it was easy-peasy after all of that goofiness in Jumpers, but then... some guy is sitting near the table, for some bizarre reason, wearing dark sunglasses. Auggie gets into his sit on the table, and then - and he's never done this before - TURNS AROUND, sees the guy behind him, and goes "Oh hi!" Off the table he goes, and over to the spotter. What the crap!! He has NEVER gone up to a spotter in his (granted, short) agility career! I finally get him back up on the table, and fail to remember that the dog walk was right behind us. I should have been standing at a different location. When I call him off, instead of going over the jump, he off-courses and takes the dog walk back the other direction.

Now, at the very first Fun Run I ever went to with Auggie... he went up the dog walk. Then he went back up the dog walk. Then back up the dog walk. THEN BACK UP THE DOG WALK. It must have been six times or more than he went back and forth over that dog walk. So I'm almost beside myself with panic, imagining this scenario happening again - this time on an actual course. I would just die from embarrassment... DIE.

So PRAISE the agility gods, I called him to me CLEARLY away from the dog walk and took him back towards the table, then away we go, over the correct jump and on to finish the course.

So much for easy-peasy!

A bit of a rough day for many people. It was an EXTREMELY long day because FAST classes were running, and they went first. We're still in Novice Standard, and for this trial, JWW came before Standard... so our last run was the very last run of the day. We got there around 9AM and were leaving around 5:30PM. Very, very, very long day for the dogs.
The one positive is that Auggie measured "right at 14" and the judge said "Well, this wicket is a little off. What are you entered in? 12? That's fine."
So, hey! We finally got to compete at the 12 inch level!

Această ediţie a Programului interactiv „Prietenul meu necuvântător” este dedicată porcuşorilor de Guineea. Crescătoriile profesioniste INKA, IMPALA, BIJOU şi PAULINE vor expune peste 40 de exemplare Cavia porcellus, adulte şi pui, din rase ca: Texel, Sheltie, Coronet, Angora, Mohair, Peruvian, etc.

Programul ediţiei 2008 va include pe lângă expoziţia de animale vii şi o serie de activităţi care se vor derula după următorul orar:

Vineri,  19 septembrie 2008
10.00 – Deschiderea expoziţiei de porcuşori de Guineea
12.00 – Prezentarea raselor de porcuşori de Guineea
10.00-18,00 - Concurs de desene pentru copii, inspirate din exemplarele expuse cu titlul “CEL MAI FRUMOS PORCUSOR DE GUINEEA”

Sambata, 20 septembrie 2008
12.00 – Concurs de frumusete cu evaluarea şi jurizarea porcuşorilor de Guineea expuşi de către un juriu condus de unul dintre arbitrii europeni.
16.00 – şedinţa Asociaţiei Naţionale a Iubitorilor Porcuşorilor de Guineea.
10.00-18,00 - Concurs de desene pentru copii, inspirate din exemplarele expuse cu titlul “CEL MAI FRUMOS PORCUSOR DE GUINEEA”

Duminica, 21 septembrie 2008
11.00 - Festivitatea de premiere a desenelor realizate de către copiii vizitatori în cele două zile anterioare. Castigătorul concursului va primi un porcuşor de Guineea oferit de către crescatoria INKA.
16.00 -“ŞI EU AM UN PORCUŞOR DE GUINEEA” - Crescătorii de porcuşori de Guineea  răspund întrebărilor venite din partea publicului deţinător de astfel de animale de companie.

Preţul biletului de vizitare al expoziţiei dedicate procuşorilor de Guineea este de  1 Leu/persoană.

Parteneri media: www.mami.ro, www.parinti.com, www.port.ro

Informaţii suplimentare: Dr. Aurora Stănescu, Şef Secţie Relaţii publice, marketing cultural şi programe educaţionale : 0788. 593.485  sau 312.88.26, int. 118 sau e-mail: auroras # antipa.ro

For those who get my printed newsletter, you already know that I'm a huge dog lover.  She's my silent business partner, and I post photos of her whenever possible.  And some of you even know the whole story of how we got Lily from Petfinders.com last November and went through that thorough and stringent process of adoption.

She of course is a mutt- they thought she was part German Shepherd and Golden Retriever and so did we.  When we got my favorite dog catalog from Orvis and they had this special genetic test you could buy to see what your dog was- we did it!  Talk about a great product and great marketing- these guys are making a killing- it's almost as popular as the chip you should put in your dog in case they're ever lost.  For $75 they gave us a swab to use on the inside of her mouth and place it in the self-mailer tube and off went all her genes to the lab.

It took longer than I had thought to get her results back. Yet when we did, we were somewhat surprised.  They send you this great certificate with your dog's name and photo, (Photo- This is the photo I gave them- this was when she still had her puppy ears- one up, one down) and results. Drum roll please....

Our Lily is 48% Golden Retriever, The rest is a mix of Collie, Border Collie and Sheltie - go figure!  So imagine my delight now when people stop me and ask me what kind of dog she is and I ramble all of the above.  I'm sure they think it's a new kind of breed or something because I'm spouting with great certainty what kind of dog she actually really IS.  That's when I tell them that we adopted her and I took this cool test to see what kind of dog she really was.....

So if you have a mutt and are interested, I'd check out this test.  The vet thought it was great because we know her genes and can see if she's susceptible to any diseases.

Now let's get back to the marketing of this test- who would have thought a company selling a gene test for dogs would get even smarter.  This week I just got an email from them thanking me for my business and telling me they've just upgraded their testing system.  The test I did only tested for 38 breeds.  Now for only $50 I can do another test that now has 70 more breeds.  I was rather impressed by their marketing- what a great niche- going after all the people that bought a previous test, and getting them to do it again because they added more breeds. I have to admit I was almost tempted, but I think we have enough information for now. (Photo- Here's Lily all grown up- doing what she does best- relaxing on the couch!)

So the moral of my story because this isn't just about dogs (sorry Lily).  So if you've read this far- kudos to you- this story is also about great marketing- do you have a product or service that is niched to a specific markplace that you could make a few tweaks to and upgrade it and go back to all your clients that bought it and sell them something more? This is THE BEST strategy because they're already proven buyers and hopefully had a great experience.  Try this out in your business- now's the time to act.  And Ms. Lily is itching to have her say, you never know she may get her chance to write a post one of these days... :-)

Well, I guess today it makes sense to continue along my progression to the final step: True black and white film photography. Yesterday's rant should provide ample explanation if what is and is not to love about the C-41 stuff, and after a few rolls of that I felt the need to try the real thing. A lot of Googling brought me to a basic understanding of how to develop one's own film, and so I took the plunge and ordered chemicals, accessories, and 20 rolls of real live black and white film for a total of about $79, or about the cost of shooting and developing eight rolls of C-41 black and white.

Secure in the knowledge that I would soon possess the necessary skills to develop it, I bought and began shooting real live black and white film (living in the middle of nowhere for work meant that I had to make many phone calls and drive twenty miles to find any, and all that was available was T-Max. I'd like to take this opportunity to give a big shout-out to The Film Center of Altoona, PA not only for explaining to me that no one uses film anymore and everything is digital now, but also for failing to realize the irony of calling their operation "The Film Center." If you know film isn't dead, why don't you give them a call at 814-946-3648 and ask if they have any Tri-X?). I shot one roll of T-Max 400 and one roll of Tri-X 400 on the summer program's trip to Washington D.C. (I probably should have been paying more attention to my students and less to my light meter and circular polarizer, but so be it).

The package arrived at my house the day after I returned home from the summer program. I loaded up a roll of film (re-branded Agfa APX 400, but that's another story), shot through it as fast as I could, gathered my supplies together and worked some chemical magic in my sink. Sure enough, once I fixed and rinsed, I had a three-foot strip of little tiny reversed pictures! I was thrilled that it had worked, so I loaded up a roll in my manual camera and went back to work.

I think this shot is from my second roll. It's Agfa APX 400 shot at 400 and developed in Clayton F76+, an excellent low-toxicity hypoallergenic liquid developer (I also have more to say about low-tox chemicals- stay tuned). The image you see here was scanned from the negative at Target (more about that later too) and lightly corrected, and it will be printed as a 5 x 7 for a birthday present. Chasing a skittish animal around with a manual-exposure manual-focus camera is a bizarre and difficult experience, but I'm pleased with the results.

And here is the gorgeous sunset we enjoyed:  Taken with Tamron 17-50 2.8 lens, no adjustments!

Things sure have been crazy around Shakespeare's world.

lets start from now and work our way back.

We moved... to a land far far away... I mean we drove at least an hour to get there! No more views like this for me.

A while before we moved, I got attacked by a mean ole GSD. He tore me up pretty good. what a mean dog :( Now I'm very nervous around dogs that even remotely resemble German Shepherds :(

Before that we got a new addition to our family. She's nuts. She's a C-A-T!!! What was mom thinking? Gosh... Her name is Juliet

Look into the eyes of evil!

But we get along just fine most of the time.

Before Juliet came to live with us my mommy was very scared. She thought I had a tumor.. She had to wait for 5 days to find out what it was. Lucky for me it was benign and fell off after mom put stinky ointment on it.

PHEW!

There.

Dog Blog Updated!

WOOF!

Wait a second!! Are you SURE you saw that right?? Maybe you should look closer.

I am now the proud owner of Sentinel's The Flash NAJ CGC. That's right... we got our novice jumpers title this weekend!! And all three of his qualifying scores - we got running 16! Snazzy!

Today's runs:

Standard run!
He got buggy on the table and that's what screwed us, but J is almost positive he just didn't "see" the table as a table. She thinks he saw it like a jump, since it's so thin and the walls around it are plain white, not to mention the top is pale purple. So we got 1 table fault (two points) and a refusal for that, but it was the time more than anything else that really put us over. I then failed to pull him in enough to get him a straight shot into the tunnel, so he didn't go into that right away - another refusal! Also, notice that he doesn't come OUT of the tunnel. I notice he's not coming, I can't see the tunnel moving - where is Auggie? I lean over and look into the tunnel... and he's standing there at the bend, nose to the ground, sniffing something interesting! He sees me, goes "Oh - HI!" and comes running out. What a goofball!
Regardless of the NQ, I watched this a billion times because of how wonderful his weaves are!

JWW - the run that got us our title!

Would have been clean, but he changed my plan on me! I was going to front cross before that blue tunnel, but when he spotted the tunnel he suddenly sped up so I couldn't get in front. I KNEW he would hate me trying to rear cross him into the tunnel, and sure enough, when he got to the tunnel entrance and I started to try and cross, he suddenly hit the brakes. Refusal! The time it took for me to back him up and put him into the tunnel put us over time. You can't see them as well here, but he did flawless weaves again here... so beautiful.
Anyway, I came around that last jump and everybody was clapping and going "THAT WAS GREAT!" and the VMO says to me "That was a Q!!" and my mom goes "YOU DID IT" and J goes "YOU DID IT!"
And I say, because I saw the time on the clock as I picked Auggie up at the exit, "But we went over time."
"It's okay," J says. "You're allowed time faults in Novice."
I stare at her.
"You get a point off for every second over time, but you weren't over by that much, even with the refusal. You did it."
I stare.
"YOU DID IT."
"Wh...??"

Seriously... it didn't sink in. It didn't sink in until I looked at the scores posted and saw, yes, he really did Q. And then I stammered out to the trial secretary that we get a new title ribbon. And even now...
we're in Open. My dog can run in Open.

I'm in shock. Seriously.

His prize, a "Q" cookie for qualifying, and his 1st place & qualifying score ribbons.
These are for JWW - no Q in standard (again!) Not really his fault, though!

I couldn't get him to relax enough to measure under 14 inches - he was 14 3/8ths (an improvement from 15.5 like he measured last trial!) So we ran 16 instead of 12 again. He didn't make it all the way over the broad jump, I'm not sure if he misjudged the length of the jump or if I just didn't give him enough "push" to get him over it. But still... no dropped bars, not a single one, and I JUST managed to call him off an off-course up the a-frame (holy crap did I just!!) Besides his landing on the final section of the broad jump, it was a great run. Not his fastest - we are going to have to retrain contact obstacles, I think - but accuracy > speed, my friends.

JWW was beautiful, even though he missed his first attempt at entry on the weave poles (allowed in novice.) 100 points, and the time was... 39.76 or something? I wrote it down, I do not remember it off the top of my head.

Here's the video of our Standard run - apologies for my annoying yapping of "AUGGIE AUGGIE HERE HERE AUGGIE HERE!"

Couldn't be happier, particularly because after they measured him over 14 I honestly was ready to just write the entire day off as a wash. I figured we would totally blow it, because it was indoors and he was in the "wrong" height class... and he had to go and prove me wrong.

Because my awesome Auggie is bad to the bone!