It's a big blogging world

Monday's dog training class got cancelled due to some severe thunderstorms and resulting wind damage around our training center. The building is concrete block, and sort of like a fortress except for one big window - obedience is mostly an INSIDE sport but the agility nuts are out there in the weather. Downed trees and power lines really made it a bad idea to try to drive to class, so I was sorta glad to get the call from Kim just before we left home. Good way to get some chores done! Naturally, in the Mauldin micro-climate at our house, the storms were just a nice steady rain.

Rowdy is running out of food, and slowly losing weight. Apparently his metabolism has kicked itself back up to his pre-injury level, and he's really burning the calories now. We weigh both dogs weekly - this has GOT to be the best way ever to control a dog's weight. We catch weight trends, either up or down, early and can really keep their weights stable. So I cooked dog food (translation: pulled some pre-cooked grain out of the freezer and opened some cans) to tide us over till the weekend, and am making sure he's getting plenty of training treats. Last night at Advanced Rally class, he ate a chicken breast, plus kibble treats. This was in addition to breakfast, LUNCH and dinner!

This week was the beginning of the Summer of Socks - an internet knitting event. Actually, I had hoped to join in, and since participation required you to have a blog - well, here we are. But I missed the deadline so I'm just an onlooker now. Holy cow. I've been reading these bazillion blogs by knitters who are knitting socks this summer. Internet knitting has exploded since I was last involved in it, and I thought it was huge then. As soon as I learn how, I'll put up a button linking you to the Summer of Socks 2007. It is AMAZING.

A cool thing I picked up reading all these other knitters' blogs:

63%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Mingle² - Online Dating

Rally class was fun last night - our teacher set up a course that had some very tricky turns and manuevering. Rowdy can't do all the Advanced exercises yet, so we did dumbed-down variations as we came to them. Twisting through the turns and walking a path that steered us around and beside signs was a lot like running through obstacle discrimination challenges on an agility course. Except - the challenge is to the handler, and not the dog! We did some nice Figure 8s. Rowdy is really starting to get the hang of these. A Rally course is sort of like a long, perverted Figure 8, with interruptions along the way. You are constantly twisting and turning you way around a course and the dog must truly understand heel position and be able to anticipate your moves in order to *remain* in heel position.

Spa Sunday

This is how we spend many summer Sundays. Tillie cannot jump up onto the grooming table by herself, but - as you can see from the middle photograph - Rowdy easily jumps up onto it. Anyone thinking about agility training for her dog might want to consider the unintended consequences. (And how 'bout that recovery from knee surgery? Special note to rehab vet: he's jumping and running like an Aussie puppy - had to increase his caloric intake to keep him UP to his atheletic goal weight! ) We have no pictures of the washing, because it takes two people to manage two Aussies when they are both in a participatory mood and the project involves cool water on a hot day. When I groom alone, one dog stays in the house until the other one is done. Today Mike helped, which meant we were able to do almost all the Full Grooming Routine - from thoroughly brushing out all that undercoat, dremeling claws, trimming feet fur, leaving the oatmeal shampoo on for a 10 minute treatment, and blow-drying - for both dogs in about 40 minutes. It also means we both got pretty wet. Aussies are very easy to groom, if you don't consider all the shenanigans that go on.

Tillie loves to be groomed on the deck, where everyone can see her, and well, that's what divas do best. Because her eyes can't tolerate a flash at all, it's great to get some nice pictures of her using bright natural light. Rowdy just thinks anything involving water and his people is wonderful. As you can see, he plays to the camera.

Farmer's Market

Mother and I went to the big Farmer's Market on Saturday. This one is the official Farmer's Market that is open year-round and has a nice facility. I'm sure it's small by big-city standards, but it was a nice size for us. Every parking place was taken; we parked next door. We found more local or regionally grown foods and bought some very interesting things - rice grown from a South Carolina rice plantation that began growing rice in the 1700s, stone-ground grits from a mill in Piedmont. We came home with quite a bit of produce, and are looking forward to dinner tonight. Actually - we're looking forward to dessert: homemade strawberry ice cream! Then we'll use up the remaining strawberries by making strawberry sorbet which is fat-free.

Mike and I decided to put the bread machine to good use and try some whole-wheat pizza dough - probably next weekend.

The knitted lace stole is completed, and awaiting blocking. A new pair of socks is on the needles. This uses self-striping yarn, and the stitch pattern pulls the fabric into waves. This is using yarn I bought at the going-out-of-business sale recently.

Whew - TGIF

We survived our week in one piece. Monday night: competition obedience class, Tuesday night: Greenville Kennel Club meeting; Thursday night: Rally class. Mike has been happy to reduce the number of evening distractions so drastically. He has enjoyed peace and quiet for a change, and done some reading and some weeding.

Rally class was great! But somewhere along the way Rowdy and I have turned into obedience competitors and we now heel like the obedience people do instead of like the Rally people do. I am in shock. Rally is much more informal, and explicit, overt, clear communication with your dog is encouraged. Obedience is all about subtlety. So Rowdy knows that when we're heeling, information about what's next (turn left or right, we're going to stop, turn around in a 180, I'm going to pivot around so stay very close and move your butt, etc) is communicated through my eye movements and my right foot. In Rally, you just....ahem....SPEAK TO YOUR DOG (now doesn't that make sense?) , although you are allowed to do almost anything - so using obedience methods is completely allowed just not required. So our Rally heeling has fallen apart. I will spend some time figuring out how to make this conversion and we'll be back to doing a beautiful heel on Rally courses (loads of very tight turns and very short distances between - precision footwork is important for a high score).

Off to work. Pizza night and we watch Big Love, which Mike taped for me last Monday night.

A pause in the week

Organic heirloom radishes. Don't they look wonderful? They taste as good as they look. Even Mike is eating them. The food from the farmer's market is making for some wonderful lunches. First there was a beet and orange salad, then arugula with the radishes, beets, cherry tomatoes, walnuts, and local goat cheese. Wow.

Tonight I made dog food (most of it was pre-cooked and I cooked grains, mixed it, calculated the phosphorus, balanced for calcium, packaged and froze it). Aside from the time the grains and brussels sprouts cooked, it took less than 30 minutes. I only made one batch - lasts about two days. However, I now have white rice and millet in the freezer for about 3 more batches.

Dinner was turkey burgers, made-from-scratch white beans with sage, white rice, millet, and dill green beans (from a can). It was simple food and quite good.

The new Le Creuset pots are fantastic for grain-cooking. Oh my. Not a single grain stuck to the pot, and they cleaned up beautifully. Cooking was even without any stirring over heat that was med-low. I wouldn't want to be slinging these things around to say, deglaze and reduce and then pour a sauce....but if you're going to cook grains, or stews, or braise - this is The Pan.

Our twice a week dog classes start this week. We are taking Advanced Rally and Competition Obedience. I hope our obedience class continues as there may not be enough students in it. Obedience is very hard, and it is waning in popularity - partly because it is very hard, but also for many other reasons. Rowdy and I do it because Rowdy loves it, and I love doing things with Rowdy. It also gives us a low-impact competitive sport to be involved in, and one that is more like a lifetime sport than Rally, which I am crazy about but unfortunately in AKC Rally, you sort of top out pretty easily. Other sanctioning organizations offer more options at the top tier of Rally competition, but around here it's mostly just AKC for Rally. AKC obedience is changing....we're hoping to be part of the change, but it is a tough sport, with a deeply-rooted system of status and schools, rigid boundaries, known for a chilly climate at ringside, often seen as a guarded and competitive group of exhibitors and tending to favor a small group of breeds. It is a sport of precision teamwork that has evolved over 50 or so years into a system of lore and elaborately nitpitcking scoring that rivals the US Tax Code for complexity. And the idea of demonstrating that precision with undeniable joy in the ring is still a little bit of a new idea over there. You see a lot of grim-looking folks with flat-looking dogs in the ring. People who don't place in this highly competitive venue feel like failures, coming is 5th is known as "first among losers" (placement ribbons are typically given for 1st thru 4th place), even if your score was still close to perfect. We are encouraged by our teachers and others like them who value joy in their relationship with their dogs, who insist on making sure that your furry partner maintains a happy feeling about the sport and competition, and who are very upbeat, progressive and sophisticated in their training methods. That's how I find myself with a dog who starts jumping up in my face when I pick up the clicker, and when I put my headband on (to make my face and subtle cues to him easily seen), he goes wild - this can only mean we're HEELING!!! HOORAY FOR HEELING!! Pull out a dumbbell and he's herding me toward the door.

Coming from agility, where the sport evolved only after the development of modern, motivational training techniques and the activity is so strongly inherently enjoyable for both dog and handler, obedience is well.....a different game indeed.

It's official! Rowdy and I are now registered with Therapy Dogs, Inc (www.therapydogs.com) as a therapy dog team. We received our certificate, Rowdy's tag and my card this week in the mail, along with the organization's magazine. How exciting!

The Downtown Farmer's Market

First, I read The Omnivore's Dilemma, then Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. The latter is written by a best-selling author with an academic background in biology, with sidebars by her husband, a biologist and professor of environmental studies. Their experience spending a year eating only foods they grew or raised themselves, or locally grown, opened my eyes to the importance of eating locally grown foods and supporting sustainable agriculture. The huge agricultural companies sure aren't going to tell us how much petroleum products are used in the petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides used in conventional farming, or how much gas and diesel/jet fuels are burnt hauling this stuff all over the country and world. The carbon footprint for a bag of organic salad is huge. And they're certainly not advertising the loss of flavor in the varieties developed for mass production. That's before we start to discuss what's happened with the nutrition and husbandry of livestock. There's much more to learn as well - and some good eating to be done. But for now, I decided to venture out beyond Whole Foods (which does a good job of selling locally grown produce) to find some smaller farmers.

So mother and I made a trip to the downtown Farmer's Market this morning. It's a branch of the big Farmer's Market on the other side of town, held on Saturdays on Main Street from May to October each year. Tents with vendors line the sides of Main Street for a couple of blocks, as you can see from the picture. What fun! You can meet the farmer, and discuss growing methods, varieties, and so forth. The farmer is very happy to tell you about his work and products, and you learn a lot and buy some undeniably healthy food. I paid less than grocery store prices for everything I bought this morning.

Mother bought peaches (and learned that only the early crop was devastated by this year's late freeze), strawberries and tomatoes - all locally grown in upstate SC. I bought South Carolina-grown beets, pattypan squash, and some heirloom radishes - look for a picture later in the week! I also bought honey from an apiary in Campobello, and the bee keeper makes lip balm, soaps, lotions and other items. I've trying out the lip balm - spearmint flavored. And it's really exciting to find the local organic food co-op of farmers was there - including a poultry farmer just outside of Honea Path (close to Mike's commuting route through the countryside.) They retired from Titusville, FL and set up their little farm. Their hens free-range over an actual pasture and through woods - about an acre is fenced for them. Their diet is supplemented with grain. They have Rhode Island Reds, Arucanas (spelling?), and another variety I did not recognize.....some kind of Black. They select their varieties for tameness and treat them as pets. Their eggs - antibiotic-free, hormone-free and truly free-ranged - come in a variety of colors from the blue Arucanas to brown and tan. I bought a dozen for less than the technically "free-range" eggs without drugs that are driven up from Florida at the store. Now if I can just find someone nearby who raises chickens like this, and sells the meat....

How amazing! Who knew so many small farmers are producing such wonderful foods so close to our home? We know about an award-winning goat farm and boutique cheese maker out in Anderson; today we met more small farmers.

We also ran into some friends - Robert and his wife Katherine, who was one of my sponsors for membership in the Greenville Kennel Club. They raise Rhodesian Ridgebacks and compete with their 7 dogs in agility, obedience, Rally and the breed ring. They had two Ridgebacks with them this morning. We had a fun time visiting and catching up. We've had classes together off and on for a long time, but not currently. We had a good time catching up with each other.

A local artisan bread company was there, as was a local restaurant selling shrimp and grits and baked goods. A coffee vendor was there, too, of course. And a dog bakery - Rowdy and Tillie rated the product Excellent. I'm trying to feed us more fresh produce, and now that it's home....well, I wish I'd bought a little more. Next weekend, we plan a trip to the big Farmer's Market, so stay tuned.

The busy time of the year

This time of the year is always busy. But it somehow seems busier. The only ones who get to lay around and be lazy are the Aussies. Of course, that lasts about 3 minutes.

Dog training

We have decided to take on two classes a week, and to be aggressive about earning the Rally titles with Rowdy. Our motto is going to be "Just put the titles on the dog" instead of our usual "Stay home until we're ready to SCARE 'EM." So we're starting to (re-)train the Advanced and Excellent level Rally exercises, and making plans to enter shows. If we can just get that green ribbon (for a qualifying score) and move toward the title, we'll come home thrilled. You don't get a title "cum laude." You just get the title. So....we're going to try hard to remember that and go in the ring feeling like it's a little dicey and we'll just have some fun. Rally is all about demonstrating an enthusiastic relationship between the dog and handler, and we can light up the ring with that.....even if we're not lighting up the scoreboard!

Gardening

Jane and Don got the bids on their home renovation project and flipped out. They decided their home is beautiful just as it is! So - this means there will be no need to move the rose garden to our backyard. Oh well. Mike and I think we need a few roses anyway and are looking forward to spending the fall trying to make up our mind and place an order.

Cooking

We shudda bought a bigger freezer, and that's all I'll say about that. We're considering a second freezer for the garage. Mother and I are going to the downtown Farmer's Market on Saturday morning; I hope to take a picture or two there. It's a fun thing to do. I recently read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (check out the website www.animalvegetablemiracle.com) and continue to get more and more dedicated to the idea that eating all these chemical residues, outright chemicals, perverted foods (ie food ingredients that come out of a chemistry lab), antibiotics, and hormones just can't be good for us. The book is fantastic - extremely well-written, a joy to read as well as very informative.

Knitting

The stole is almost done! Will post a picture this weekend. It's still a snarly-looking mess, as lace always is before it's blocked out, but it's a BIGGER snarly mess now. I'm starting to think about the next project....whatever it is.....

Up and running again

We're up and running again...no thanks to some squirrel damage high up on the pole.

Billy Donovan is back at Florida. Whew. So now we can look forward to following Florida football AND basketball.

We are edging into a drought here. Mike mowed the crispy lawn, and we've been watering all weekend. I ran the garden hose directly onto the base of our Joseph's Coat rose, for over an hour, and the water never ran down the hillside. It just kept sinking into the ground, like watching water go into the sandy Florida soil. Temperatures are in the 90s, but the humidity is below 25% and a breeze is blowing. It's like a convection oven for plants. It was actually nice enough even until the middle of the day that we enjoyed lunch on the deck, though.

There is one way to beat the heat:

Temporarily experiencing technical difficulties....

Please be patient while wait for Charter cable company to solve our connectile dysfunction problem at home. When I called last night and they remotely checked our system, the guy suddenly said, "Oh Wow! WOW! Wow. You have a major line problem - must be some serious damage there. " Mike thinks it's that cute chipmunk who hangs around our yard and digs little holes all over the place and eats sunflower seeds. The techie comes out on Sunday afternoon to get us up and running again. So - no pictures on the blog until Sunday night (hopefully!).

This means geneology work is stymied, too. I am really enjoying ancestry.com. It is just great to be able to do a little census-browsing for 20 min at 10 pm in my PJs.

Meanwhile, our dog training center, www.speedypaws.com, sent out the new class schedule.

So we are trying to decide whether we want to go to dog classes one night a week, or two. And do we want to aim to move up and enter a July show in the Rally advanced class and start working toward our next Rally title, aiming simply for a qualifying score at the same time as we're working that last push to get competition-ready for Novice Obedience? Probably. We'll see. Last year was Canine Nutrition, the year before was TPLO and canine rehab...looks like this year will be Rally and Obedience.

And remember - check back here on Monday and (hopefully) there will be pictures.

Carol

Waiting....waiting....waiting

We are waiting:

For Billy Donovan to wrap up all the Magic and return to the GATOR NATION!! CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP What a roller-coaster he's had us all on! Mike and I follow the story all day, and compare notes at night. It's looking like it's all over now but the shouting. Can't wait to get this over with so we can on building NCAA basketball history at the University of Florida!!

For our dog training class to start back. We took a month's hiatus in May and start back next Monday night. We're taking Advanced Competition Obedience - doesn't that sound impressive??? Only until you see me and my dog!!! LOL!! Then you wouldn't be so impressed. I guess this is why my Atlanta teacher has us planning to enter the Novice ring late this year - how long can we train for Novice before we actually enter the ring? I think we might be working on a record. Sigh. At some point, I guess you have to stop obessing over perfect (particularly when you're a long way from it) and just aim to put the title on the dog so you can move up. And now that we see how much more fun the Open level is than the Novice level....well, I'll let you in on a secret: I LOVE to complain about how hard obedience is to train, or to learn how to train, or both - I'm not sure.....but actually, it is really, really cool when you and your dog do this dance of precision and teamwork well enough to meet the qualifying standard. Rowdy loves to train obedience because it's so mental. He loves to think, and to work as a team. Obedience offers that in spades. Mike is also looking forward to reclaiming Bachelor night.