Sparkie kept refusing to spin and my wristbands were making me itchy. Chana paused in the middle of her routine to complain that the music wasn’t loud enough and Lassie messed up a bit at the end. Jessica accidently dropped Tess’s ball mid-routine, and of course Tess grabbed it and started being goofy. At one point Chantel didn’t hit the right button of the computer and it started playing the wrong song. But overall, a good performance from everyone!
28 January 2013
25 January 2013
Bits and Pieces
Not much has been happening around here. We have a performance planned for tomorrow so we’ve been rehearsing for that.
Chantel, Gabrielle, and Jireh have caught another cold. We’re starting to upgrade our agility equipment, in preparation for the show season. It’s still really hot nearly every day. It’s now official that we’ve going to the Million Paws Walk.
And I’ve now had this blog for over a year, which is the longest I’ve ever kept a blog going!
16 January 2013
Halfway through January!
Already??!! Well, I guess it doesn’t help that for the last four days of December and the first four days of January I was in bed sick. I’ve recovered now, but our Christmas routines had already been cancelled due to a bad round of colds and planned for New Year’s Day. And because both me and Jessica were sick in bed at that time, it means that our “Christmas” routines have now become “Australia Day” routines.
So, plans for 2013? Three different shows in May, as well as the Gympie Show. You’ll know when it’s official when it goes up on the team website. The Gympie Show won’t be up there, though, because it’s a competition not a performance. But our attendance there is already pretty much set in concrete – for me and Sparkie, this will be our fifth year in a row competing there. And Tess’s fourth and Lassie’s third.
Training the team is going good. Our current neighbours have two Chihuahuas, which they brought over to watch rehearsals last night on our request. According to the Gympie Times, at the 2012 Million Paws Walk in Gympie there were around 50 dogs and 100 people. We’re obviously not going to get that amount watching our rehearsals, but we’ll try to get as many as we can, to get the team used to performing around other dogs! The Chihuahuas didn’t faze them at all – not even nervous little Lassie. So it’s looking good and we’re all looking forward to May!
28 December 2012
Last post of the year
I hope everyone had a good Christmas, and I wish you all a happy new year, etc, etc. We had a pretty good day here, nice weather, all that sort of thing. Not that I paid much attention to the weather because I spent most of the day in bed. Not nice having a cold on Christmas! But anyway, I’m feeling a lot better now. We had to reschedule our Christmas canine freestyle routines though, and we’re planning on doing them on the first day of 2013 – that is, depending on if Jessica’s feeling better by then or not. She’s come down with something very similar to what Chana had a few months ago, and it kept Chana in bed for a week.
Now, a look back on some “highlights” of 2012.
JANUARY: We were stuck in a boring caravan park in Whyalla, SA, with annoying neighbours. At the end of the month we finally left, only to have some nutcases throw rocks through our windows the first night back on the road. So back to the caravan park we went until we get the windows fixed.
FEBRUARY: I made the Superdogs Trick Show 2012 video of the team and booked the Wallumbilla Show for May.
MARCH: We had a tour of a fire station in Broken Hill, NSW. That was awesome! We also bred Lassie to Sambo.
APRIL: Not much interesting happened this month.
MAY: Wallumbilla Show. Gympie Show. Last day of the month Lassie had nine gorgeous puppies!
JUNE: Nothing interesting.
JULY: We went down to Beenleigh (Brisbane), met some friends and found an awesome dog park!
AUGUST: Visited cousins in Townsville and performed for them.
SEPTEMBER: I nearly lost Sparkie to some sort of virus thing. She ended up at the vet’s overnight. One of worst nights of my life!
OCTOBER: We spent a week staying in our cousins house near Sydney. Discovered Stargate Atlantis!
NOVEMBER: Took my first lightning photo!
DECEMBER: Nothing much happened this month either.
It wasn’t as busy as 2011 was! I have some stuff planned for 2013 already – mostly dog stuff, shows, you know.
So, that’s it. See you all again in 2013!
20 December 2012
Five days to go!
I’m still here. I know I haven’t exactly been blogging very regularly the last few months, but this time I have a different excuse – I’ve been too busy! The Christmas canine freestyle routines are looking great. Well, some better than others, but that’s pretty normal. We spent Monday night in town, then spent six hours walking around the shops on Tuesday! Ugh. I think we managed to get every we need, which is good because shopping’s not my favourite thing to do, and definitely not for six hours straight.
Since my last post, aside from training the dogs, we’ve been making random videos, learning how to dive into the pool, watching Stargate Atlantis, making a few friends, we set up the Christmas tree, wrapped most of the presents, and set up the tent. It’s been around 30*C and we’ve been swimming almost every day.
That’s the best shot of us older one together so far. Not so good!
Random stuff: Gabrielle, Chantel, and Suzanna have colds. Again. It’s only five days until Christmas, but apparently the world’s going to end tomorrow… I don’t think so! It rained a bit this morning. I need to organize a costume for our routine.
11 December 2012
Swimming and… other stuff!
We got permission from the Ariah Park caretakers to run the team in the oval, and we’ve been spending several hours out there most days (when it’s below 30*C). The routines are looking better, still some kinks to sort out though.
The swimming pool nearby is cheap enough that we’ve already been there twice. And the water’s almost warm!
Mummy was trying to get a photo of us all on the raft, but we kept jumping/falling off!
Last time we were in Ariah Park was four years ago, Christmas 2008. It was so hot that little Sparkie tipped over her water bucket and then dug in the mud patch she’d created! I remember it hit 40*C on Christmas Day. I’m not sure what the temperature was the rest of the time, but it wasn’t far off 40!
This year it’s hanging around 30*C so far, which is not too bad if we can jump in the pool whenever we feel too hot! And there’s showers here too to wash off the chlorine afterwards.
6 December 2012
Back in Action
We haven’t been doing much dog training for the last nearly two months – being in the town your baby sister is buried in can really knock your motivation out the window. And the last two show organisers I emailed never emailed back. But I woke up on the first day of December and realized that we didn’t have any routines sorted for Christmas! Last year I was working on ours even before my birthday. We’ve got some good ideas so far, music sorted, now just waiting to get permission from the camp caretakers to let the dogs off lead. If they say no, we’re going somewhere else!
As of our last rehearsal, Sparkie’s overexcited, Tess is unfocused, and Lassie’s goofy. Jessica jokingly calls us “the rusty Superdogs and their rusty handlers!” which isn’t far from the truth. This is what happens when we take a two month break!
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