I finally brought in pictures of the boys to work. It makes me smile everytime I glance over and see their pictures. Now to bring in a picture of the husband...
Cisco (GS Dakotas Secret Mission, NA, NAJ, CGC) turned 4 yesterday. Happy Birthday to my favorite golden!
Cisco and Berkley got Christmas presents from Mom and Dad Gifford yesterday that said to be be opened immediately. Here they are modeling their new presents. I've decided Cisco takes after Chris and HATES having his picture taken -- he sat exactly like that for the almost 10 pictures I snapped. No emotion. Nothing. Hey, at least he sat!
Here are some of the pictures from last weekend. Click on the link and then use the next arrow to scroll through them:
Berkley got his first Novice Standard Preferred Leg today! This weekends trial was in Leesburg and they're never that close to home so I figured it would good experience for him to get used to being in his crate and yes, he still did have to stay in his crate and behave when I came to get Cisco (we had major issues with this the first time I took them both to a trial). And if he was a giant pain, it was close enough I could take him home. Well, he did great! He dropped a bar and had weave issues in Jumpers, but did beautifully in Standard. Not only was it his first leg, but it was a clean run and he got first. Whoo Hoo!
Now Cisco, is another story. We had moments of brilliance and then we'd spaz out. Oh well tomorrow is another day...
It's been a while since I've updated this. Lets see... My hair is now brown. I hadn't been happy with my last couple sets of highlights so I really didn't want to pay to have them touched up and my roots were coming in dark, so I went dark -- maybe I can get away from coloring my hair. probably not.
Last weekend Cisco qualified in Starters Pairs and Jumpers at the TAG trial in Sterling.
The first week at the new job was overwhelming. I started off the week in tears and ready to quit, but now it might be ok. I'm going to give it a chance. We'll have to wait and see how it goes.
Starting work on the family calendar this weekend. Thanks to everyone who sent in submissions.
Just some randomness:
- Dad's visiting his mom, that's why the family website hasn't been being updated daily. I think he took along his laptop hoping to find a hot spot and be able to get on and update it occassionaly. Maybe they don't have hot spots in Oklahoma? I hope he's having a good time out there.
- 11 days and counting until the pictures/recipies/submissions/whatever are due for the Stracensky Family Calendar. That's not a long time. So if you're sitting on your submission, better put it in the mail. Otherwise I fear we'll have the same picture of my brother eating his first birthday cake for every month. No offense Dave, but I'd love to see more of the family included! If you need my address, send me an e-mail.
- I've got a new job! Yay! It's going to be more responsibility and back into doing what I enjoy web development! I don't start officially until the 31st of October, but they've asked if I could start working on somethings now, so my official/unofficial start date is today -- they'll count today as my first day of employment even though it's only part time for the time being. I'm thinking this will be a great opportunity, I hope I'm right.
- Two friends lost dogs last week. My friend Kathy lost Ladybug who had gotten so weak that should could no longer get up on her own, so they had to put her down. And my friend Robyn's mom lost Pipen, a 14 year old poodle that was killed by another dog. My heart goes out to both of them.
They were back on Friday with our new door to stain it. Well Friday ended up having a lot of moisture in the air and the stain never dried. We ended up Friday night with a single screw being the only thing to keep the front door from opening. As the stain started to dry, we noticed a bunch of areas that are going to need to be touched up. So hopefully in one one day we can get the stain touched up, the door poly-ed, and all the walls and trim touched up too. But the color is a lot closer to the original color.
They also had to replace the hardware as the previous painters managed to sand off the finish. Well, we had already replaced the hardware with a better set than what the builder installed. Fortunately, they ended up replacing it with the better quality stuff than what the house came with. (The builder is billing the painters.)
Friday Cisco's official NA certificate came in the mail. And his pictures are finally online. I haven't decided what, if anything I'm going to get. You can find them on Karen Hocker's Website. Go to this page and scroll down to the bottom, the one's that say Cisco are him.
We took Berkley to the internal medicine specialist yesterday. Our vet suspects that he may have inflamatory bowel disease. In her exam yesterday, she said he looks great: his coat looks great, his heart sounds great, everything feels good, and he's got great muscle tone.
She told me that we seem to be doing a fairly good job controlling everything with food and that we'd want to get our money out of the procedure and don't want to do it until he's having a episode. Based on our conversation, not only does she recommend the endoscopic biopsy that our vet recomended, but she also recommends doing a colonoscopy.
She sent us on our way with instructions to add a little fiber to his diet (either canned pumpkin -- not the pie filling or unflavored metamucil) and to call and schedule the proceudre if/when things flair up again.
I've been looking multiple times a day at Karen Hocker's website hoping that the photos for the Golden Retriever National Speciality Agility Trial have been posted.
I'm really hoping that she managed to get a good picture of Cisco. We have such great pictures of Berkley Tien Tran from the Bernese Mountain Dog National Speciality Agility Trial that we'd love to have something close of Cisco. I'm still debating about getting the Superman Cisco picture from Stewart Event Images.
Cisco and I spent Saturday at the Mid-Atlantic MADness USDAA trial with Kathy and Clint. He was somewhat of a wild child all day, missing contacts, running a little crazy. But we did manage to get a 4th place ribbon in the Standard Course (we missed qualifying by blowing the contacts) and a Qualifying ribbon in Starters Pairs (yay our first Q in USDAA).
We spent Sunday and Monday at the Golden Retriever National Speciality Agility Trial. Sunday started with a beautiful Jumpers run (as I was told by many people), only for me to send him into the wrong end of the tunnel! I sent him, and as I soon as I did, I questioned it, looked at the numbers, and knew I had just blown his first open jww leg! Doh!
Well, that set the theme for the weekend. He blew his dog walk contact and took a jump out of order in standard Sunday afternoon. Monday I'm not sure what happened on our jumpers run, but it was bad. And our Standard run Monday afternoon including popping out at pole 10 and blowing the a-frame contact. Other than that, it was a good run. These were our first Open level standard runs and overall I was pretty impressed with our performance.
Well Cisco finally got his Novice Agility title. It only took a year after we got the first leg to get the other two. A year that was full of teeter problems. No clue why, but he just started doing it again.
He had two perfect runs. They were beautiful. Both were around 47.5 seconds with course times of 74 sec. No faults on either course. It was great! We came home with two first places and two new toys. Now our open jumpers runs were something else. Yesterday he started off all pokey (it was the first run of the weekend), but then it's like he realized what he was doing and took off. I wasn't prepared for that. Todays' jumpers run we were stuck at the starting line while the fixed some problems with the timing equipment. By the time they were ready for us to run. He was a little on the wild side. Oh well we'll blame the delay for his wild run. I had quite a few people come up and tell me not to do anything to squash that drive. He may be a little on the wild side, but he sure does have a lot of fun out there. He's now: GS Dakotas Secret Mission NA, NAJ, CGC
Yesterday I stayed home for the plumber to come and install a gas line out to the grill, california closets to come and install my new closet and for the builder to come and do warrenty repairs. The builder moved and in the process never scheduled the subcontractors to come out to do the work. So now Chris has to take off Friday to get the rest of the work taken care of. The gas line is installed. The plumber is scheduling the inspection for Friday too. And my closet looks great. (Before and After pictures coming once everything gets put back in.)
Saturday we patched the walls in my closet from the old stuff and painted the walls coffee in preparation for yesterday. Here is my totally empty closet:
So here are some of the things I learned on my day off:
* Some people are very afraid of big dogs
* We have no place on our main level to coral a puppy 
* We need to vaccuum out beneath the fire place (where the pilot light is lit) on occasion. Dog hair likes to collect there and there was a pretty serious fire around here that started with the hair in there.
* I can be a lot more productive working from home
* Keeping two dogs in your office with you all day is not a lot of fun.
* Reheat fajita components separately, then combine.
Poor Cisco has another ear infection and hates having medicine put in it. And not only that he's now got a hot spot from scratching at his ear. Today he ran all over and decided between the couch, the wall, the coffee table, and the tree there was no way I could get to him. Of course he did put the bad ear to the wall. We had to go get him an e-collar as his hot spot doubled in size while we were at work today.
