Hello World!

Ouch!  Have meant to get on here many time, but it's the same ole story.  Too much going on and not enough motivation to actually write anything.  I've been in a bit of a slump with regards to training the dogs and getting myself to actually work with them on the variety of things that we need to work on has been trying.  I've been feeling incredibly unmotivated and I don't like it.  I've been keeping up on their physical exercise, so no fatties here!;0)  Business at work has also caused my schedule to jump all over the place as well.  Like I said, same story, different day.  However, I'm going to make a commitment to get back on here at least once a week.  I don't want to set the bar too high and burn myself out before I even get back into the swing of things, so we're starting with lowered expectations.

I don't even know where to fill things in.  Currently all three dogs are in their summer time off.  We won't be doing any competitions again until the fall.  I'm actually pretty happy about this.  I was getting a bit burnt out.  I have more weekends free and I feel like I'm getting more stuff done around the house (because I am) and seeing more of friends (because I am), which are all good things.  I'll still be showing Elizabeth's girl Ruby in conformation, so it's not like I'm disappearing completely, I just won't have my own dogs to juggle, which is immensely easier.

I believe our last big show that we did was the Great Dane Club of Northern California's fabulous specialty weekend!  I still absolutely love that show, love the trip, and love getting to see everyone.  They also pulled off an awesome addition to their fabulous show this year and had dual obedience and rally trials!  Totally awesome!  Naturally, I entered Heffner and Bess in everything.  Without going into too much detail (and because it's been long enough now that my mind is a little foggy on the exact details), Heffner ended up doing way better than I expected and Bess did way worse than I expected.  While Heffner still had his moments of distraction in the ring, I was incredibly pleased and impressed with how well he did even as things were heating up!  Bess, well, she had a rather stressful day and admittedly I didn't handle it very well.  I ended up scratching her from the second trial all together.  She ran out of the ring during her Graduate Novice run and completely stopped moving during her Rally Advanced run.  Not great.  In all, she only qualified in Rally Excellent.  Heffner earned to qualifying legs in Beginner Novice and one Rally Excellent leg!  He would have had a second Excellent leg except that I screwed up one of the new stations TWICE!  Ouch!  In conformation I got to take Bess' sire into the ring in the veterans class.  On Saturday he took best veteran in show!!

After the show itself was over, we all (Ruthie came along as well for Monday's activities) headed down to San Jose to stay with my friend Megan, who was gracious enough to let us stay in her house!  And the reason we were down that way was to go to a Denise Fenzi obedience seminar!!  I was able to get three working spots so that all three dogs could get worked!!  It was awesome!!  She had some good ideas of stuff for us to work on and I was pleased with what advice she had.  A lot of what she mentioned with Bess totally made sense.  In a nut shell, I'm often way too much for Bess when I'm praising and verbally rewarding her.  It's basically causing her to shut down a bit.  There's a whole lot more, naturally, but I don't want this post to get too long.

And that pretty much leads us up to now.  Just this past Tuesday Bess got spayed and also got a gastropexy.  She is recovering beautifully, though the inactivity is starting to wear on her and therefore me. 

All in all, things are good, I just need to get my rear in gear on a few fronts and get out of this funk that I've been in.  Hopefully my posts will become more frequent than just once a week, but we'll see how things go.  I really look forward to trying to catch back up on everyone's blogs and see what's going on.  And the new Blogger format is creeping me out a bit.  I don't do with change that isn't mediated by me!!!lol