Knight's girlfriend Ennvy...she's beautifoo!!



My boys... (yes, we're still in Texas, we haven't moved to Siberia)



Come here! "yo-yo" game practice...

Pictures coming this weekend, I promise!! It's been TOO COLD to take any good pictures at the stable, and my pups need baths badly. I've decided to do the PNH Levels with Knight, so we started Level 1 last week. He's a smart little horsey and learns very quickly. We've already completed the first 8 lessons of L1, and would be farther along if I knew what I was doing :) Our first lesson is this Sunday, and it's supposed to be warmer, yay!

It's been a busy week to say the least! My b-day weekend was great!! Little Knight horsey has settled in quite nicely. I've had such a good time playing with him the past several days. He's a goofy boy I'm learning. I think the first day he was just a little freaked out about all the new things, but now that he's getting adjusted his funny personality is starting to show. He LOVES these molasses cookies that I bought him. I was doing some Parelli games with him the other day and rewarded him once with a cookie, and boy did I have his attention after that! :) He loves his pasture buddies, except for these to older grouchy horses. There's a yearling arabian filly that he has a major crush on. When we go to get him and lead him off, they call to each other for awhile, so cute!
The pups are going great also. I've started back up my training with Nemo. He so LOVES to please as long as we can get past his anxiety of new people, places, DOGS.
I promise there will be pictures soon!

I know it's been a MONTH

I've just not had the energy to post with all of the holiday fanfare :) My parents just left town after staying with us for 18 days and things are just now getting back to normal. We've taken down the last of our Christmas decorations, now to get them back up into the attic. Chloe is back to school today...work is in full gear...all is well.
I am looking forward to the best weekend ever! This Saturday is my 30th birthday, and for some odd reason I'm really looking forward to it. The first weekend alone with my amazing hubby in a month, yummy steak dinner, playoff football, the prequel to the Lonesome Dove miniseries begins (yes I'm a little weird), and guess who's coming home from training camp.........


Happy Birthday to me!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

A New Year Blessing:

And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:19

Friday!

I'm so glad it's Friday! Duh, state the obvious right? I think I'm getting into full-holiday-excitement mode. I love this time of year! It really helps that we have 90% of our Christmas shopping done :)
I'm going to give the kiddos baths this weekend and get Chloe to help me take Christmas pictures. That should be an adventure...
I'm mulling getting Nemo back into an obedience class, just to get back into the swing of things. I really miss it, and I need a class to keep me honest with my training. I think I'll look into it.
I hope you all have a great and festive weekend! Pictures next week!!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I will have to take pictures of the masterpiece that is our Christmas lights. :o) We did some shopping at Grapevine on Saturday, never made it to the ICE exhibit. 3 hours of shopping totally wears me out. Sunday we started the Christmas decorating...oh boy... it was something. Let me detail the saga for you...
**FLASHBACK Christmas 2006** I decided that stake lights were the end-all-be-all of Christmas lighting. After multiple trips to every Target, Home Depot, Lowes, Hobby Lobby, etc. within a 35 mile radius of our house to find clear C7 lights (the most commonly used light) and ground stakes, I finally had my mother import them from El Paso. Apparently they had a ton, go figure. I then spend a whole Saturday attaching lights to stakes and placing them in the yard. They were AWESOME, for one week... Marcus was taking practice swings with a golf club in the front yard (don't ask me why), smacked a light, it rained, shorted the line, no more stake lights.
**Present Day** I unboxed the infamous stake lights on Saturday with a new exuberance. I went through all five lines and found the two that were shorted out from last year. Then I re-staked the remaining "good" three lines, and we struck out to find replacements for the "bad" ones. Two Targets, a Home Depot, a Walgreens, and one Lowes later, no clear C7 lights... we did find an abundance clear C9 lights at our final stop, and decided it was easier to replace the whole lot, rather than continue try to find the evil C7's. Ok, so I un-stake my C7's, and stake all 6 lines of C9's. Excitedly go out to the yard and stake 150 feet of lights into the ground. Yay!! At 5:30, dark, I am SO excited to turn them on and see them in all their glory...plug in... GORGEOUS, for 45 seconds. Three hours, and 6 blown fuses later, we figured out that you cannot string together 6 continuous lines of C9 lights. Moral of the story: You can never have too many extension cords.

Okay, okay, so it looks like the better team won. Moving on...
I'm so ready for this weekend! I'll be getting done my Christmas decorating, and hopefully wrapping up our shopping. To actually be done early this year would be so nice! I think we're headed to the ICE exhibit at the Gaylord Texan tomorrow, it's supposed to be pretty spectacular.
I got some pictures of a very muddy Knight learning how to park out. He seems to be getting it... :o)



Have a great weekend!

Gameday

VS



I am SOOOOOOOO hoping that the Packers stomp the Cowboys tonight. I'm sorry, I can't help it. I was raised, being from Atlanta, with a strong disliking for all things Cowboy. I've been so glad to see Favre and Green Bay have a miraculously great season this year.

Ojoe and Kody's tummies are all back to normal. Romper room is back in session :)
I think tonight for the game I'm going to try to make Rachael Ray's meatball pizza and Italian popcorn. Have a lovely Thursday!

HOW DOGS CELEBRATE BIRTHDAYS

A few more pictures

I thought these were cute!

This is Chloe and some scruffy puppy that she found when we were at camp:



Here is Marcus trying to give Mya a bath (sorry it's dark, I know):



and eating some hay, for some reason her expression makes me laugh:



My beautifoo and dirty boy:



Me trying to do some Parelli with him, and him wondering "what on earth??":

Okay let's see...

It's only been a month since my last post (which was indeed a "lazy" picture post), so I guess I have some catching up to do. The holidays have totally snuck up on me, so I figure I'd better get caught up now.
In doggie news... Ojoe and Koda have had tummy problems this weekend, but seem to be a lot better today. I hope I didn't get a bad batch of food. It's probably just a bug they passed to each other. Nemo eats the same food, and he's fine. I'm really looking forward to getting back into training with Nemers. He has become a master fetcher, so I'm hoping to incorporate the ball into training more :) The focus that he has when the ball is involved is really something to see! Ojoe has started this new thing where he growls at Nemo all the time. They don't fight, but it's driving me up a wall hearing Ojoe growling nonstop. Nemo used to be the alpha, but I think Ojoe has figured out now that he's been neutered :)
In horsey news... Knight and Mya will be staying at training camp until January. Marcus is going through a job transition, and my parents will be here for two weeks, so I decided that would be best for now. They are both learning a ton out there and getting handled daily. They got clipped for the first time ever last week (with loud electric buzzing trimmers), and surprisingly didn't freak out. Knight, oddly enough, loves trail rides and behaves very well out there, but doesn't really care for working in the arena yet. He's the kind of horse that gets bored easily, so you have to keep coming up with stuff to keep him busy. Mya is very sweet, and has gotten to be a big, sweet, teddy bear of a baby. I can't wait to see how she develops.
In people news... Marcus and I went to El Paso a few weeks ago for my mother's surprise b-day party. We had a great time, and Mom was SO surprised! Work has been very busy for me, and Marcus has had some crazy stuff go on lately with his work. I'm sure it'll all work out for the best though. We had a nice, peaceful Turkey Day - watched lots of football and complained about the weather. Chloe is bouncing off the walls, ready for Christmas. Her list is anything and everything that she sees on a commercial. Who says advertising doesn't work? I think her "big" gift from us will be a child-size ATV. She'll be able to ride around on the trails while we mess with the horses.
My mission this week is to scrub the house from top to bottom, so that we can get all the Christmas decorations put out. Many of our way-too-eager neighbors already put their tree and lights up BEFORE Thanksgiving! Really.... So now we're being peer-pressured to keep up.
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Update soon....

P.S. Starbuck's Pumpkin Loaf is the greatest food on earth!

Picture post!

After Nemo's neuter I decided to just "chill" a bit and let he and I both relax some. It's taken a few weeks, but I've really noticed a big change in him since getting that testosterone out of his system. He's really mellowed out a bunch. I think this will carry over to training and REALLY help! I'm excited!!!
On a totally separate note, meet our newest family member:


This is "Colortown's Royal Knight of Armour" aka Knight! He's a sweet American Saddlebred gelding, only 2 and a half years old. I haven't had a horse since I was a teenager, so I am beyond thrilled! He's at horsey camp for the next couple of months to learn good manners since he is just a baby, and then he'll be boarded at a nice little place in Fairview, only 5 miles from my house. I think I'll be able to do anything I want with this guy. He'll be great for CEP, elegant enough for Dressage (he has that beautiful high Saddlebred head and carriage!), and great for trails. Marcus is looking for a horse of his own so he doesn't have to just sit and watch me, but he is a novice rider, so we want to make sure we get a sweetie pie for him.
Now that Nemo's back in action and we have horse news, look for more updates! I promise... :o)

Happy Birthday Nemo!!!

My little Nemo pup turns 1 today!

Ummm updates...

I am so sleepy, tired, bored at work today! Not a whole lot to update on the Nemo front..we've been working on the CU stuff, which he really seems to enjoy. We've not "field tested" it yet, not ready to, other than in a very controlled environment. He did pretty good on the "look at that" game with Jamie and Miss Aspen. Only one reaction and seemed to be catching on to looking at Aspen = treat! He will be in love with Aspen before we are through :)
I've been slacking big time on our walks. It's too HOT!! I almost wish the rain would come back.

Control Unleashed..

I am reading an AWESOME new book that I cannot say enough good things about. Everyone should read it, even if they don't have a dog with "issues".
I just wanted to share our first night last night of working some of
the CU principals. I first wanted to work on attention with holding
a treat in front of Nemo and *click/treat* when he makes eye
contact. He caught on really fast with treats, and I was quickly
getting consistent eye contact. His ball is a bit tougher..he gets
a frozen eye-LOCK on his ball, so I *click/ball toss* for ANY blink
or eye movement away from the ball. I was soon getting at least a
nice glance from him for his ball. :)
Then I introduced him to that mat. When he checked it out, I
*click/treat* on the mat and continued to treat and praise while he
sat on the mat. It took no more than three minutes of this before
he was FLYING to the mat and diving to a down! He loved it! I was
very impressed!! He was also not breaking his stay on the mat (I
didn't cue stay at all, he was just doing it), until I gave him his
release work "okay". I was already able to add mild distractions,
at which he never broke his stay, and also add the verbal cue for
the mat. Yay!!
Afterwords we had some calm, sleepy time (RP) on the mat. I'm glad
that he liked the mat game, but I hope he's not too excited about
and will see it as a place to calm down. :)
Today I'm looking forward to working on the "Look at that" game and FINALLY a lesson with JH! :)

Yesterday I was supposed to have a lesson, but half way there it started POURING down rain. We worked a ton on "watch me's" yesterday - I want Nemo to have no doubt what that means when I take him out into the scary world. He did great, I got eye contact up to a minute. Maybe I'm easy to impress, but it seems like it would be tough for a puppy to focus for a minute without turning their head, good boy!!
Hopefully I can get some video of Dakota this weekend to post - she's started doing the cutest thing when we go swimming - she'll jump from raft to raft and paddle trying to get the raft wherever she wants to go - so cute!!
This weekend I'm looking forward to seeing the Simpson's movie :) and munching on some Krystal burgers! That's all I got for today..have a wonderful weekend!!

We didn't get much done yesterday. I went and played golf with the hubby afterwork, which took FOREVER so we didn't get home till 9:00. My Click to Calm book came yesterday, and it is excellent!! I read half of it last night and brought it to work to finish today. I'll try to work on some of the things tonight in my lesson.

Nemo Bootcamp

(Nemo sleeping under his bowl 3mos old)


So we met with Dr. Johnson on Monday and started our "action plan" to cure Nemo of his fear issues. In a nut shell it's a regimen of "watch me's" and down-stays, and lots of work on this around other dogs. Also he must learn that every good thing comes from me, so his attention gets more focused on me and less on his enviroment. So our day yesterday went like this:
5:30 am - hand feed breakfast, work on "watch me" without distractions, up to 1 minute
4:00 pm - played fetch one-on-one for about 30mins, but require a down-stay, watch me, or spin before each toss.
7:00 pm - 45 minute walk - moving across the street when other dogs or people approach and request a down-stay and watch me. Across the street is the closest distance for now at which he won't react to another dog or person.
8:00 pm - hand feed dinner, some more watch me's, but some fun stuff to relax too. Spins, rollovers, go on's etc.

He cannot get ANYTHING without doing SOMETHING - sit-stay if he wants to go out, down-stay when he wants to come in, sit for petting, watch me for fetch, etc...

We're going to do some work with JH tomorrow. I'm excited about that! Plus I get to meet her new baby Cheetah (a puppy, not an actual cheetah :)

Everything went pretty well yesterday, the only "incident" was on our walk we were rounding a corner and some people were coming around it whom I could not see. They startled Nemo, and of course they walked right up to him to try and pet him and he threw a fit. They said how cute he is and blah blah blah... Sometimes it stinks having a cute little dog, everybody and their brother wants to pet him - kids are the worst! :) I'm not sure when he got so nervous with people all of the sudden, but there it is...

Today we hand-fed breakfast, and tomorrow I plan on getting up earlier (eeck 4:30 am) and walking him some.

So that's it in a nutshell. There's more but I'm too tired to think of it all right now :)