Pumpkin

September 5, 1995-April 11, 2012

Pumpkin, our beloved family dog, had to be put to sleep on Wednesday. She was 16 1/2 years old.

 This was over Easter weekend 2012, just three days before she went to the Rainbow Bridge. We think she held on until Easter because everyone was home and she got to spend time with everyone together.

 She has been with our family for as long as I can remember, I was only five when we brought her home. Pumpkin was the sweetest dog who put up with so much from my sister and I as we played dress up with her and pushed her around in a doll stroller. She was also a very well traveled dog. In the picture above, Brittney is holding her in Mexico. Pumpkin traveled with us out to California one summer when we were "homeless" (in the middle of moving from WI to NC).

 In her younger days she could keep up on LONG walks/hikes for miles and miles. My mom walked her several miles a day, every day, when she was younger so she was able to keep up with us until she was about 13 years old.

 As she got older she just wanted to curl up and sleep somewhere soft and warm. When we couldn't find her in the evening we had to check each bedroom to see where she had put herself to bed that night.

 Pumpkin joins our other pet at the Rainbow Bridge, Pickles, a kitty we lost in 2006.

We miss you, sweet girl.

Easter Weekend

I'm a little late with this post....but this week has been pretty rough. Another post on that soon.

Camp fire on Friday and Saturday night in the fire pit. Raley still thinks she's lap-sized :-)

 Raley, Britt, Bryan, and me.

 Pogo and I relaxing on the deck on Sunday.

 First try at making Cake Pops!

They were cute but really time and labor intensive-I don't think I'll be making them again any time soon. To get them to stay on the sticks they had to be so small that I could've made at least three dozen! I didn't though, I made about 15 and then rolled the rest of the cake stuff into large balls that I dipped in candy coating and decorated.

After I made them I didn't really want to eat them. The candy coating stuff wasn't particularly tasty and was really kind of thick. I couldn't figure out how to get it thinner-which I tried-to make them less heavy. Anyhow-the cake/icing mixture was good minus the candy coating-which I ate plenty of while rolling them into balls :-)

Overall it was a fun weekend with the family.

Rally Novice Title!

This past week has been the Tarheel Cluster Kennel Club Dog Show at the NC State Fairgrounds. It is Wednesday through Sunday and each day is sponsored by a different local Kennel Club. Today, Saturday, was Raleigh Kennel Club, and tomorrow is Fayetteville Kennel Club. I attended Wednesday through Friday with Pogo to get him used to the environment. It's a breed show as well as an Obedience/Rally trial so there are 13 breed rings going on along with one Rally ring and one obedience ring. It's really loud inside the big echo-y Jim Graham Building with all the hair dryers, dog grooming, dogs barking, PA system, A/C kicking on and off, etc. Pogo was a little freaked out the first few times we were there but I fed him yummy treats and he started to get the idea that it was a good place to be and started paying attention to me.

 I arrived early on Saturday to make sure I was on time. They ran late, as usual it seems, so I didn't end up in the ring until closer to 1pm when it was supposed to be 11:15am. I was first in for Novice A, which was kind of scary because I didn't get to see anyone do through the course, but it was a pretty simple course so we did fine. We got a 99 out of a possible 100 points. Another team got a 100 and another got a 99. The team that got the other 99 was a big retriever and so did the course faster than Pogo and I, so in the case of a tied score the times are used to break the tie. So we ended up with third place but he did so well and paid such good attention to me that I was pretty happy with it!

Since this was our third qualifying novice score it means we earned our rally novice title and can now move up to advanced. Technically I have 60 days before I have to move up to advanced. But I don't see any reason to do novice again. Even if we do poorly in advanced at least it'll be more experience for us. Advanced is off-leash, which is a HUGE difference from novice so I'm a little nervous but we've trained off-leash almost exclusively and I think we can do it.
Wish us luck tomorrow, we'll see how it goes!

Crazy Days!

When aren't we busy? I always am, I think I prefer it that way.
I celebrated my birthday on February 24th with some friends....I may have gone a little overboard because I ended up in the ER the next night with two sprained ligaments in my ankle (hmmm, good birthday present, right?).

Clearly I had my priorities in order as I took this photo while at the club immediately after I hurt myself. I didn't fall, luckily, just kind of fell off my shoe, well my heel, four inch heel that is.
As of today (Friday) I'm two weeks into a 4-6 week recovery process. I sure know how to have a good time.

The next weekend was my actual birthday. So after a horrible, exhausting, stressful week at school I headed off to Winston Salem. Friday, March 2nd was our (Pogo and I=our) first Rally trial!

 This was after the first day...we're both looking a little rough in this picture. It was almost 10pm and I had had an engineering test that morning at 8:30, gone to class, packed and drove 2 hours to Winston, not to mention the actual Rally part. So, we're both a little tired....excited though! First leg (a rally title=3 legs) with a score of 93/100 and third place, not bad at all!

This is the second day, we finished second place with a 94/100. I'm looking a little more rested, although we had a very active day (Saturday). Brittney and Bryan showed me all over downtown Winston (where they live) along with Raley and Pogo. After the tour we drove over to Reynolda Village and walked around the gardens for a while. We found a stream pretty close to the path and Raley LOVED it! However, the bank was solid mud so she got a bath when we got home :-)

The next day we went out to Yadkinville where Britt rides a horse for a woman who can no longer ride him. Apparently Bryan and I were supposed to be taking pictures of her riding, but instead we took dog pictures.

Britt's trainer (shes in the back of the third pic) has the two german shepherds. The smaller one (black & tan) loved playing with Raley and the bigger one (black) LOVED playing with Bryan!

This past week has been spring break...but it hasn't really been a break. Only from school. I've spent the week catching up on my internship responsibilities as well as developing activities for the outreach program in the College of Engineering at NCSU.