Thursday nights with Jenny...

After a long day at work (and I mean L-O-N-G), nothing is more fun than running agility courses with Jenny. We're in the advanced group from the kennel club that trains at Camp Li-Wa.  It's a small group, and Joelle designed a lovely fast jumpers course for this evening.

Jenny did best on the first run, then started improvising and running her own sequences.  Apparently she thinks she can read numbers.  She had some brilliant moments (nice weaves), but I see we're going to need to work on control a bit.

In any case, it was big fun...and helping with the intermediate class following our class is always a treat.  What a nice group of handlers and dogs!

So this brings to mind this layout I did for Jen as a puppy. For the record, this is my first and only layout published in a national magazine.  You may have seen it in Scapbooks Etc. "Reader Gallery" in the October 2010 issue.  Yup, I'm "rdagdag."  Not really. I'm not sure where that came from.  In any case, back for an encore...

Doesn't she just look like she's going to be trouble? At nearly two, she's turned out to be a fun little dog...quite a handful, but a joyful little thing.

And a second layout -

After a heart-to-heart with Dr. vonPfeil at Veterinary Specialists of Alaska, I decided it was time to retire Chena from agility last month. She still does well at the search work, but in that discipline I'm not asking her to "jump this, then turn that way."  She can direct her own movement and do what's comfortable. We did a trail with John and Jane Aspnes on Tuesday and she was great. Hard to believe she has a compressed disk in her neck.  But as I said to Dirsko - she's doing too well for surgery, but she's not sound enough for agility. So I did this layout using a photo Pat Randall took at Chena's last trial last summer.  She double-Qed that day. Just training Jenny in agility now is easier on my brain and pocket book, but I do miss running Chena.  We had an awful lot of fun.

Rites of Spring in Fairbanks

Today Jack and spent the afternoon at Ice Alaska in Fairbanks...locally known simply as the "ice park." Jack wasn't sure he wanted to go, but opted for the outing rather than take a nap.  Do I know how to negotiate or what?

For the first time he was willing to look at the magnificent sculptures with me. The warm weather has taken it's toll on several, but they were still amazing.

It didn't take much convincing to get Jack onto the "big kid" ice slides.  I've been waiting for this all winter, so poor Jack really didn't have a choice. We did the first few runs together in the little plastic sled (my hips are still bruised). Then, miracle of miracles, Jack decided to go it alone. He had a blast!

Check out that grin! Pure little boy bliss -

The winters are long, but the spring is so worth it. Until next year...good-bye Ice Park.

Out from under my rock-

So I've graduated from a flickr gallery to a real blog.  I'm pretty clueless, so this isn't to fancy...but I'm ready to learn! Now, to figure out how to post a photo.  Wish me luck!

Ooh!  Check it out! The photo worked!  This is my favorite layout of January. Isn't Chena cute in her booties?