Playing Catch Up, Part 4 ... June Fun, Yard Visitor and Floods

These months are just getting away from me these days.  This post will bring you what all we got into during the month of June.

Honestly, other than an agility trial there wasn't much else that went on.  Our hiking and picture taking took a break.  No conformation shows for Tucker happened since he decided to start blowing his coat.

Teach continued to do nose work every week and started to do really good with it and catching on to what was needed to get that reward.

I do have some videos to share from the agility trial.  This one was held where we wnet back in January, at an indoor horse arena.  While it wasn't air conditioned it was at least out of the hot sun.  So that was nice.

We'll start with Teach because he really rocked his first class.  This Touch 'n' Go course was particularly hard and even the upper level dogs struggled with it.  Teach was one of just a few that actually did qualify during this run.  And not only that, but also placed!!!  I was SOOOO proud of him.  If we had to leave right after that I would have been thrilled.

Here's his run and you can see how tricky it was.

Teach got his next Q from the tunnelers class which I'm sad we didn't get on video.  We do have his round 1 where he didn't qualify based on time, but he did everything.  He's a big dog and not speedy so I was thrilled he did get a Q.  

Here's his first run which didn't get a Q but still looked nice.  This was also the last class of the day and it was getting hot ... so he was even less speedy.  LOL!

He ended the day with 2 Q's out of 4, not bad.  And class placements in both.  Good boy Teach!!

Tucker had 2 Q's out of 6 (he did the weaves class which I'll get to in a minute) and even stayed on course and only wanted to visit the judge once and I was able to call him off before he got there.  So even better than the last trial.  It helped that there was no jumps so no need for ring crew to be sitting around.  

Here is Tucker's first Q in Touch 'n' Go Round 2.  Was really proud of this run for him, he gave me a great start line wait to get to the other end of the tunnel to get a good line for the dog walk.

And here is his tunnelers Q which was also round 2.  He's not quite as big as Teach but still doesn't cover the ground like some dogs do for this class.  We really need to clean up our lines to get that time down!

As for the weaves class I mentioned earlier, Tucker decided he didn't want to do them.  He had one good set out of 3 and after we got that I called it good and we finished the class. For the second round I scratched him.  I didn't want to create a habit of blowing by them.  After this show we have gone back to really working with them.  I did get pretty lax on practicing them (being new to agility) and didn't realize how easily they can fall apart.  Lesson learned on my part!  Now we try and practice them several times a week and even then it could be more, I think.

Here is a picture of the boys showing off their ribbons.  

June also brought a cute little visitor to our house one day.  The boys were out back playing when they started checking out our little kid playhouse that we have for Madalynn.  At first I thought great, they have a snake in there and Randy is gone.  Then I saw brown and thought a chipmunk must have went in and now can't get out.  I was wrong on both counts. Check out who was there:

This picture shows where the house is located and the fawn was behind that blue door!  CRAZY!

Thankfully the mama deer did come back for it that night and by morning it was gone.  It was so adorable!!!!!!  Probably won't ever happen again, but I guess she thought it was a safe place to be.

If any of you follow the news or the weather you'll have seen that we have some devastating floods come through southern West Virginia and completely wiped out several small towns towards the end of June.  Even now, almost 2 months later people still are recovering.  And will be for a long time to come.  The lake/dam that is north of us, Summersville Lake, saw its highest levels since it was constructed back in the late 60's.  Randy and I took a drive up there 2 days after the flooding to see.  Water was in the trees and just 10' shy of cresting the spillway.  The release gates at the base of the lake only normally release water during Gauley River White Water Rafting season that starts in the fall.  Normally the outflow for then is 2,800 cubic feet per second.  The amount of water they were releasing once the levels downstream started to recede was 14,500 cubic feet per second.  The campground was completely under water and where RVs normally sit, boats were tied off to trees there that had gotten loose from the marina.  It really was something to see and without that dam towns downstream probably wouldn't have existed.  Here are a few pictures and videos from the lake.

Playing Catch Up, Part 3 ... Shows & Hiking

This brings us to May.  Which was another busy month, especially for Tucker.

He showed at his second Rally show the first of May and earned his second Q with a 92.

After the show I stopped by Cascade Falls (where we had taken Teach a few years ago) for something fun for Tucker to do.  As usual when taking him places, he was a great breed ambassador to everyone he met along the trail.   This is such a fun trail to hike, and the end is very rewarding for the strenuous hike to get there.

Towards the end of the month Tucker attended a conformation show where we were hoping for a major, but that didn't happen.  Tucker did fantastic showing though.  This was his first show since the Collie Nationals and we had been working hard on getting that free-stack down.  I felt very good about his showing.  Tucker was the only dog entered and took Winners Dog each day and also took Best Of Winners as well.  This got us 2 more points bringing our total to 11, but we still need those elusive majors to finish him up.

This was our first time staying at an AirBnB with a good friend of ours, also showing her collie.  It was a great experience.  And even though I was really nervous about staying with people I didn't know the hosts were very welcoming and made you feel at home.  Its something I would consider again in the future.  And Tucker LOVED their dog ... of course he loves everyone.

As with the Rally show I took Tucker to a park to visit some waterfalls and get some pictures.

Teach was at home taking it easy while we were running the road.  He didn't seem to mind.

Playing Catch Up, Part 2

These pictures were taken by Irene from Fur-Fetched Photography.  Irene came to the All-American Dog Sports Agility trial in April and took some wonderful pictures.  The collies had a great showing.  With each getting a Q in their Regular Run Classes, Teach in Intro and Tucker in Novice.  This was also the first trial that Tucker did the weavers class.  Loved getting pictures of him weaving.  Stay tuned for our fast forward to May (I'll get everyone caught up!).

3rd Bloggiversary!

Looks like I missed Tails of Teach's 3rd Bloggiversary!  It was on Sunday the 13th.  I can't believe I've kept this going for 3 years already.  Even though this past year has really slacked off with the posts.  Its not for the lack of trying ... LOL!

So when we started the blog our family was a family of 3, myself, Randy and Teach.  Then last year we became a family of 4 with addition of Tucker.  I guess at some point I should have changed the name from Tails of Teach to Tails of Teach and Tucker since I mostly post about both of them now.  But I'm leaving it for now.  Maybe sometime down the line it'll change but for now its still Teach's blog.  He just allows posts about Tucker.  HAHA!

I think my last "true" post was back in October or the first of November with a recap of Tucker's show at the East TN Collie Specialty.  Since then we have taken Tucker to one more show in Pennsylvania.  But we weren't so lucky at that show and didn't come home with any ribbons (but still came home with the best dog!).

On the way home we stopped at Gettysburg Battlefield to walk around and stretch our legs.  And of course I had to get pictures.  It was right around sunset so we got some really cool pictures.

Teach and Tucker continue to excel with their agility training.  There is a show coming up the first weekend of January we are going to.

Tucker has accomplished doing 6 straight weave poles for about 3 weeks now.  So proud of him.  Doing them 2x2 is the only way to go!!  I think it took us about 6 months to get here.

Teach is still learning them.  I've struggled finding a motivator for him doing the 2x2 method and our awesome trainer told me to have him weave for dinner.  So that's what we do now.  I put an empty bowl on the reward line and if does them he gets a bite.  And we do this until dinner is gone.  We are also progressing, albeit slow!  

Lets see ... I've been taking lots of pictures so I have no excuse for not posting on Black and White Sunday or Wordless Wednesday.  I need to learn to use the scheduler and start scheduling these posts!  

I did get try my camera skills getting pictures of Madalynn with Teach and Tucker for Christmas Card pictures for my family.  We got some really cute ones!!  Everyone did so well and if wasn't for Madalynn's favorite (Uncle Randy) we wouldn't have gotten smiles from her.  HAHA!

So with that I'm going to save some pictures for future posts and not share all!  Thanks to everyone who has stuck around to read and see the pictures.  Maybe one of these days's I'll get better at writing blog posts.  Until then ... enjoy the pictures.

Catching Up Part 1

Where does time go??  I had all good intentions of updating this more regularly and time just got away from me.  That and staying really busy.

This will be a two part deal.  We have had some shows (and successes) that I want to let everyone know about.

About a month ago we headed north to Morgantwon for a 3 day show.  Tucker showed all 3 days and Teach was entered once to hopefully finish up his Beginner Novice title.

We'll start with Teach.  I was a little concerned with how he would do since we had to get there so early and he had a lot more down time than he normally does at a show.  And I had to get Tucker ready for the breed ring.  Of course their show times were almost at the same time so I was a bit stressed about that.

Teach did fantastic though.  He got a 194 (out of 200) and was 2nd place (only a point behind first) (just a side note that he had a score of 194 for each of his 3 legs ... talk about consistent).  That also finished up his title.  So he's officially Hunybahr's A Pirate's Life For Me RE, BN.  He was so happy in the ring and with only a few errors.  Below is the video of it.

I met a really nice lady who also does the Fenzi Academy classes and she kept me posted on how the classes were running and when we would show.  She was in the same class as me with a Weimraner.

Next up for him will be AKC Novice for his Companion Dog (CD) title.  Years ago when I had Katie, my lab, in Novice I said I wouldn't be doing that again as it was very stressful.  But Teach seems so happy to work that we'll continue on.  Although the CD will probably be as far as we go because he HATES the dumbbell.  He said he isn't a retriever!  We're training for agility but he isn't very enthusiastic about it so we'll see about that!

Tucker had a great weekend as well.  We didn't get any points but he a got nice Reserve Winner's Dog 2 times.  The first day we even beat someone ... LOL!!  We are coming along for sure!

Here's a few of his videos.  

This one is Class 12-18 Months on the first day.

Winner's Dog first day.

Class 12-18 Day 2.

Winner's Dog Day 2.

Two weeks after the show Tucker and I headed to Huntington for a Greg Strong Handling Seminar called 15 Points To Go.  Which was a VERY helpful seminar.  He showed us a lot of different things and gave the group the confidence we needed to hit the show ring.  Come back tomorrow to see how that seminar did for us and see what else Tucker is doing.

Showing off our ribbons at Cooper's Rock State Park

Catching Up

Seems like all I have had time for over the past several weeks is the picture posts that don't require much time (puppies consume a lot of time!).  Its not a bad thing, but some things falter because of it.

We're getting ready for our yearly vacation to the beach next week.  Really looking forward to it.  This year we have not 1 but 2 new members of our family getting to go, Tucker & Madalynn.  

We're also getting to share our "island" with my mother-in-law this year.  Looking forward to showing her all that Hatteras has to offer.  Its always fun to take people down there that has never been or its been a really, really long time (which is her case).

With the heat we haven't been hitting the woods as much as I would like (that and finding the snake last month ... YIKES!).  We did get an early morning walk in this weekend and were able to turn the dogs loose for a bit to play and chase each other.

                                     

Always a good sign when the tongue is hanging low!

Was finally able to find time to hit the trails with Laura this week (had been far to long).  Tucker is still to little to partake in that so its was just Teach and his brothers. 

Riding Dakota

Afterwards Laura wanted to take a horse down to the ring to practice some obstacles in preparation of a judged trail ride coming up.  I walked Tucker down to see what he thought of the horse and also to let him run some energy off.

Love how happy he looks with his tail up ... you can just see him prancing down the road.

"Hey ... what is she doing?"

"Oh ... well that's interesting"

"Quick this way!"

"See ... I can pose on a block too"

"Let's play!"

That's a quick look at what's been going on with us since I've been sort of MIA the past few weeks.