Trip to Dog Slaughter

So we went out to Dog Slaughter Falls tonight. It wasn't a bad hike, but I think it would have been easier if I hadn't been hauling several pound of camera equipment and being dragged along by a little doggy dynamo. Although no where near as fun without Vivre. There were a couple of places that were so steep I had to take Vivre off leash. It would have been to big a risk to have her navigate some of those rocks while attached to me.

Once we got down to the falls I took her leash off and let her run and play in the river. I'm probably not supposed to let her off leash in a national park, but she sticks close and we were in a bowl so nobody would suprise us and she was unlikely to take off.

I scared her big time when we started back. I tripped on a wet root and went down hard. I have a huge bruise and poor Vivre probably thought I was about to fall on her. When I fell I lost my flashlight. Which was a real pain, though we did make it back to the car before full dark. Though just barely. I am uploading some flickr shots, though it was so dark that I had to use a fairly high iso. Which means that the shots are noisy. I will head out there earlier next time so I can spend more time and get some better shots. Anyway here is a quick video clip I took of her wandering around the river.

Mini Terv

Vivre went in for her shots this morning. Renee and Todd had their dogs in, a GP and a newfie- flat coated cross. Vivre has never seen dogs that size before. So to distract Vivre we went to work. It was pretty crappy heeling, but it was the first time she has ever heeled on leash. That combined with the interesting doggy smells and the black giant watching her she did pretty well. I was happy with her performance.

I have been guesstimating her weight since I don't have a scale. She is tiny! She is about 20 inches and 35lbs. It is supposed to be cooler today and tomorrow, so weather permitting we'll go hiking this weekend. If it rains tonight then I will try and go to dog slaughter, if not then we'll head somewhere else. I will definitely have my camera so I should have some pictures from the trip when I get back.

The Wonder of Water

Vivre has never been crazy about water. While her sister, Juno, loves all things water, Vivre considered water a form of cruel torture. Today we walked down to the creek so I could play with my new camera. her normal behavior is to get across the creek as quickly as possible so she can stay as dry as possible. However I was walking up the middle of the creek to get some shots. Then I noticed splashings sounds. I have never seen her voluntarily get wet, but when I turned around there she was running up and down the creek and splashing through the deep part in the middle.

She didn't get up the nerve to lay down in the water, but a few more walks on hot afternoons might get us there.

Hot!

Last summer when Vivre made the trip from lovely northern California to Kentucky she wasn't happy with the heat. She just layed stretched out like she was dying any time she started to get hot. Not so this year.

My AC has been on the blink. We had somebody come out to fix it, it ran for a few hours and quit. Then the weather got cooler and his motor fell out so I just didn't worry about it. Lately the weather has gotten warmer again so he came back out over the weekend to fix the air, it ran for a few hours and quit. It is almost 90 degrees in here and Vivre keeps dropping tennis balls at my feet. I can't believe she wants to run and work in this.

Though I vastly prefer this to the 12 degrees and seven inches of snow, I am certainly more willing to work and play when it gets cooler.

Disappearing About Turns

For some reason we totally lost our left about turn. She has always had a beautiful left about turn. Not so good to the right, though we are actually do pretty well with those now too. I have no idea what happened. I will admit to not reinforcing it as much as I was reinforcing the right turns while I was trying to get those right, but it seems like it just disappeared over night. Luckily she is quick and eager to work. But she seemed completely cluess, almost like she had no idea that she was even supposed to turn with me. It seems to have been a good thing though, because now she is not only turning beautifully to the left, but the issues with her right about turn have also disappeared. She is staying much tighter in all her turns. I need to try and get the flip on the tripod so I can get some video of her heeling.

Picture news. I haven't put up any new pictures for a while. I was still using a SLR, but it finally started to have issues. So I got my Mom's old digital, which is what most of the shots of Vivre have been taken with. I don't think the cold weather was good for it, since it hasn't been the same since winter. But since my Mom's other camera isn't doing well I get it tomorrow, to test it, so I will hopefully be able to get some shots of Vivre. Of course it is going to rain tomorrow so I might not get too many. We have had a lot of rainy days, which has also put a damper on outside training. The falls were 11 feet above flood level. And with more rain on the way it really slows down training. I am going to try and take Vivre to the barn with me sometime this week. That way we can work someplace unusual, but still be out of the rain. Camera is here, so I am going to play.

Puppy Pics

After several instances where I had a hard time finding the picture I was looking for I finally downloaded Picasa for linux and started tagging my photos so I could find them. OMG! I had no idea I had that many pictures on my computer. The finally count was somewhere over 4600.

I did come across some of Vivre's puppy pictures. It is hard to imagine her as this little ball of fluff.

This one was emailed to me by Franziska when Vivre was about 8 weeks old









And this was taken at a horse show shortly after I got her.
All right I am done with my trip down memory lane.

Vivre Vids!

My Flip came in yesterday. I spent most of the day playing with it and then trying to get the videos edited down to something somebody might actually take the time to watch. I run linux so I can't use the FlipShare program it comes with. She is a little off in this video. She was moving a little slower than usual and after a bit I noticed she would occasionally start to limp a little. So she is going to be kept up for a couple of days. She won't like it, but she will live.