15 Months

Wilson Wishing on Wordless Wednesday!

Blue Sky Day

Switching Seasons

I certainly haven't been posting much lately. No excuses, I've just lost that blogging feeling. When last I posted, it was mild and fall was in full force. With not much effort, Mother Nature moved on without me!

I don't mind a snowy day or two before Christmas comes along. The photo-ops are always appreciated! The other day we had one of those gorgeous heavy wet snows that coats everything and is gone the next day.

We didn't need to walk far to get plenty of pretty shots!

I live in suburbia and a nice snow can sure do wonders for the natural beauty!

My pretty boy!

And later in the evening, things were still pretty awesome! My neighbor's bush looked so festive under a layer of snow!

A view from the front yard...

Peeking in my living room window on the way to the back door....

I of course took Christmas themed pictures of the boys. I couldn't let the opportunity pass me by! But those are for another day and another post closer to Christmas.

Wilson Went to the Waterpark, but Wasn't Wanting to be Wet on Wordless Wednesday

September is Our Month!

I have definitely posted about this before (here  and here), but now that it is officially our month, I had to get pictures of it in real time......

As reported before, both my boys made it into separate Corgi wall calendars, both for the month of September. The cool thing about that is September is my birthday month so it sort of feels like a gift!

Here we are posing with the calendars yesterday, a very rare blog occurrance with me in the photo!

Calendar photos were taken by professional photographer Dwight Dyke.

But even more amazing......Wilson made it into the Corgi-A-Day desk calendar for September 4th. What's so amazing about that? He landed directly on my birthday!!! It doesn't get any better than that!

Taken on the day......

This is such a great piece of the A Tail of Two Cardis storyline!

Because I'm Lazy....

We went away for a long weekend over 4th of July and of course Jimmy and Wilson came along. I took plenty of photos but never posted any here. Today I finally put together a Shutterfly book and since I am feeling a tad lazy (and that book was alot of work!), I am going to share the book here instead of creating a whole new post. Hope you enjoy it!

Click here to view this photo book larger

Wishy-Washy Weasel Words Won't Work When aWarding Wilson's Winner on Wordy Wednesday

The week has whirled past and it is time to announce the winner of my 1500th post giveaway! There's no way I can do that in a wordless manner!

Now, first I want to talk about my title today. I had never heard the phrase "weasel words" before I read it in a Clive Cussler novel I was reading the other night. Of course my Wordless Wednesday radar immediately alerted to something new I could use so I looked up the meaning of the phrase. It certainly wasn't something that would be easy to set to a photograph, but I think it works well in today's contest!

So, last week, I asked you to identify or guess what painting I thought my photograph resembled. Many of you picked up on it right away!

It was, of course, Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World......

Here's mine again for comparison......

So there you have it! Many thanks to all of you that played along with my game and left a comment!

And now, the moment you have all been waiting for......

Wilson's Winner is.....

JAN !!! from the Poodle (and dog) Blog!

Congratulations!

Drop me a line at my email address: taryn.tipton@gmail.com and give me your current email so I can send the gift certifcate (or you can leave it in the comments if you are comfortable with that).

Wilson's Glory Run

So when last we met, before Wilson's Wordless Wednesday and Jimmy's 10th birthday,  we were talking about the agility trial held as part of the National Specialty. At the end of the agility trial,  eight senior dogs were going to try their hands (paws!) at a modified agility course. An easier course would be set up and as each dog ran, a bio would be read. Well, as they say, the best laid plans of corgis and women (to paraphrase a well known expression!).....The trial was held at an indoor soccer building, which the club had rented until 6PM. But for some unknown reason, the building management rented it out to someone else starting at 5:30! You can see where this is going. We needed that last half hour for the Glory Runs! Things got a bit tense,  and the management actually kicked us out! That's right! Despite having the building for another 30 minutes, we were unceremoniously sent packing. Things went from tense to ugly pretty quickly. There were a lot of emotions involved as people had waited all day for their oldsters to play! We had all been looking forward to this part of the day and now it was not going to happen. I would be lying if I said I didn't hear a few FU's thrown about as well as see some one finger salutes. The manager did not back down and we were out in the parking lot in short order!

Of course if you saw this week's Wordless Wednesday, you may be thinking, Wait! I just saw a bunch of photos of Wilson playing at agility! What we did was re-group back at the host hotel, borrow some agility equipment, and set up our course in the ballroom! I have to admit the carpet makes for some very interesting photo shots! Not your everyday soccer turf!

This didn't have quite the feel of a true agility run, but I don't think the dogs minded. Wilson certainly had lots of happy expressions in the photos. I know he felt special because Jimmy was left behind in the room!

Here is a video of his run! I certainly wouldn't miss catching that on camera!





And just as special, maybe even more, the CWCCA had gorgeous ribbons made up. Each one was printed with the dog's name and the Specialty information.

Close-ups....

And finally a group shot of all the participants! Look at the size of the smiles on our faces! This was a very happy group. All's well that ends well!

I still have one more post to do on the Specialty just to wrap up a few loose ends. I don't mean to drag it out, but I want to cover it all. I am hoping to make a Shutterfly book as well, but in case that doesn't happen, my posts will help me remember it all!

My NacBook!

Most  of you have probably heard of a MacBook. It's what Apple calls its laptops. Well, I just got a NacBook! I organized all my photos from the Nat'l Agility Championship, plus the photos from the professional photographer (Great Dane Photo), into a ShutterFly book....My NacBook!

Take a look!

Click here to view this photo book larger

Visit Shutterfly.com to create your own personalized photobook.

Chewy.com: Find it!

We have had an absolutely amazing weekend weatherwise here in the mid-Atlantic. That made reviewing my February Chewy.com product a lot more fun!

This month I chose Acana Mackerel and Greens Dog Treats.

These definitely had a bit of a fishy smell so I though they would be great for a game of "Find It" out in my yard. We had an incredibly warm day on Monday so playing in the yard was the thing to do!

First, here's a close up of the treats so you can get a feel for their size.......(sorry, just a tad blurry)...You could cut them a bit smaller with a sharp knife if you wanted....

These Acana brand treats have very few ingredients with Whole Atlantic Makerel being the primary one and spinach greens number two. Good stuff!

Being a tad smelly, I thought a game of finding these treats out in the yard sounded like a fun thing for Jimmy to do. I video'd his efforts (with my cell phone) in the bright afternoon sun....





You can really see Jimmy was gung-ho to find these tasty morsels! He wasn't happy when the game was over. He wanted me to spread the whole bag out there! Of course, it was only fair I save some for Wilson.

Now for my December review , one of the things I mentioned was the easy-open bag. Well Acana was not to be out-done on that as their bag too came with a nice pull tab so you didn't have to struggle to open it....Bonus points for this!

I am picky about what my guys eat so when I picked this Acana product I was pretty sure they would be pleased and so would I. Jimmy and Wilson were both very excited about this treat. I would put it in the "high value" category for training treats.

Thank you Chewy.com for letting us try another one of your great product offerings! Eight paws and two thumbs up on this one for sure!


And now it is disclamer time: The opinions expressed in this post are purely my own and my dogs. Chewy.com is not in any way responsible for what I wrote! I was not compensated other than being given this food at no charge in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, Chewy!

Home Alone

When I got home from the agility trial on Saturday, I pretty much turned right around and went back out to have dinner, leaving the boys home alone.We didn't go far and were probably gone an hour at most. When I walked into the kitchen, this sight across the room made me laugh out loud! Wilson had one of his "happy rolls" like he does with his carpet , flipping and flopping the pillows this way and that. I've posted about this scene once before but I find it so endearing, I'm going to post about it again! And then of course, there was the time we came home to this! Some people come home to the trash strewn around or the bread stolen off the counter. We come come to the remains of pillow fights!

Black and White Sunday: One Up

Jimmy! Catch!

Have a great weekend, Everyone!

Just Jimmy

Because he's so cute.........

Have a great weekend, Everyone!!!

Synchronicity

Blue Light Special!

Two Corgis for the Price of One!!!!

We were at an indoor flea market the other day. It was pet friendly just so long as you carried your pet (not gonna happen with a 35 pound corgi!), or luckily, drove them around in a cart. The boys were skeptical at first, not sure they should trust their moving "crates", but settled in pretty quickly. And it sure made it easy for us. No sniffing, no risk of eating anything off the floor, and especially no shoplifting at the pet store booth! It was pretty disappointing as flea markets go, but so worth it on the photo-op front!

Wilson Went Where Water Once Was on Wordless Wednesday

We need rain!!!!!!

The Sphinx at Sunset

There's no need to travel to Giza  to see the Great Sphinx when I've got one in my own neighborhood!

Fortunately, the nose is still intact on this one!

Have a great weekend, Everyone!

The Weekend Report: MACH Try #3

This weekend was the Potomac Valley Golden Retriever Club agility trial. I only signed up for Saturday, reserving Sunday for the Easter festivities. As I've mentioned before, every trial from here on out is a try at earning our MACH (Master Agility CHampion) title. This weekend was our third attempt at getting double-Q #20. Alas, it was not meant to be quite yet. The day started with Standard. It was a tricky and tight course. I could feel I was a bit more nervous than usual as is common when you are sitting on the edge of your MACH. Maybe my edginess is what affected Jimmy. He made a very rare weave pole error, pulling out a pole too soon. I can't tell looking at the video if I started to pull away a step too soon or if Jimmy was just distracted. I made him do the weaves again to get it right and he almost pulled out a second time. He looked at something outside of the ring so maybe something was messing with his focus. He also missed the table, instead heading for the further away tunnel/dogwalk combo. I never said "table!", so that one is on me! There was a very tricky part from the dog walk on, and Jimmy aced that! Also, he kept all the bars up, even with the course ending on a triple to a double!

Here's our run....




Of course NQing on the first run of the day means no chance for a QQ this day. All my jitters eased away. The Jumpers run a couple of hours later wasn't too bad. It had one very tricky spot that messed up a lot of dogs. We made it through OK and qualified! Jimmy was quite speedy and came in in 6th place. That doesn't earn us a placement ribbon but it is VERY respectable on a Jumpers course! No video for this one. In hind sight, since Jimmy did such a nice job, I wish I had asked someone to run the camera.

I have another day of agility next Saturday and then nothing for a long time. If we aren't successful next weekend, I'll have lots of time to try and get the limp out of my stride!