Christmas Coats and More

Last night we had agility league practice. We were doing a faux Wildcard run and a Standard run. Standard was first up and the dogs both had completely different reactions! I think I got a little too overly worried about Heffner glancing at the other dogs and it stressed him out. He went off course at one point, completely ignored me, and did some stress sniffing. I've been trying to make a conscious effort to control my voice better with him. I realized that at trials I tend to get tenser and yell my commands at him. I don't do this in practice, so it's probably not a great idea to react that way at a trial. He was a lot happier when called him back in a happier voice. And an actual happy voice at that. Bess was just plain wound up! She didn't quite break into zoomies, but there were a couple times that I thought she would. She was VERY excited to be out on the course!

Wildcard went a lot better than Standard. Heffner did really well on that run! Nailing everything and totally staying with me. And I KNOW that I kept the happy, quieter voice going, so I'm thinking maybe that had a little to do with it.;o) Bess was less excitement prone and also listened really well. She just REALLY likes to zoom through those tunnels, which can catch me off guard if I'm not totally paying attention and realizing which dog I'm running. I know that may sound weird, but it's totally true!

Now on to today! My mom came up this morning and we headed out on our traditional kick off to the holiday season shopping day! We started off at Moonstruck Chocolate to get some yummy goodies and a Mexican hot chocolate. Then it was off to Hallmark to pick out some ornaments. The new tradition since getting Heffner is to get a Christmas Scooby Doo ornament each year. I love it! Next it was time for some lunch at Honey Baked Ham. LOVE their sandwiches! After that we were off to Sleigh Bells!!! Oh how I LOVE that store!!! I could spend so many hours there just looking at everything! There were quite a few people there and we were on a mission. I picked out a couple of pieces to add to our Christmas village and a few other things and then we were on our way to Jo-Ann's Fabrics to pick up some holiday fabric to make the dogs some coats. I really wanted to have the dogs properly attired in Christmas apparel for this year's trip to PIR's Winter Wonderland holiday light show! They close down the track one night each year so that people, and their pooches, can walk through the show and have a lovely time. We've gone the past four years and I really enjoy it. Naturally I wanted the dogs to be decked out in attire that was appropriate for the event.;o) My mom was gracious enough to cut the material out for me to later turn into the coats. I used a coat that they already have as the pattern. Here's my mom cutting out the fabric with Heffner supervising:

The Rudolph fabric is going to be Heffner's and the Peanuts fabric will be Bess'!

While at the fabric store I came across a short string of battery operated Christmas lights. And you guessed it, I bought two sets to act as lighted collars of sorts for the dogs!
The coats are now cut, I just have to add the edging material, the Velcro, and the belly straps and we'll be good to go by the 30th!

After my mom left, it was time for me to get back to the serious business of bagging the ridiculous amount of meat that I picked up on Thur. Enough had thawed that I was able to make a dent out of it tonight. What I have left still needs to thaw further so that I can pry apart the individual pieces. For whatever reason this time around the turkey tails are really small and the chicken backs are really meaty. Just seasonal variation I guess!

Tomorrow Bess and I (Heffner really isn't thrilled with pulling for long distances like Bess is) are meeting up with Kennedy and Vegas to do some bikejoring for the Dogs Across America event! Unfortunately it appears that they haven't updated the web site for this year at all and I still haven't heard back from the people in charge of the event. And as far as I know, Kennedy and Vegas are going to be the only ones running with us. I didn't want to really promote the event too much when the primary web site isn't even up and running for this year. I did put out some notices in different areas, but haven't received any interest otherwise. I would have happily put a lot more effort into this event if I knew for sure that I could send people to this web site to sign up, but I hate doing that when I have no idea if there's going to be any follow through. We'll see how things go. If nothing else, we'll have a good, albeit wet, time!