Tommy's a rock star!

Robbed from Betty on Facebook:

Weekend Wrap-up - First Dog Show in 10 months!

Heidi and I loaded up the Element and my new little "Cardi Party Wagon" and headed up to Richmond VA this past weekend.

Mama Scout and Sally in one crate, Papa Rush and Alley in the other. Uncle Grump Spencer reclined on his (my) king sized tempurpedic pillow right behind the front seats - he loves being the special boy.

On Saturday, Miss Sallywags picked up her first CH point. She also came home from the show with a new tag for her crate, her very own Show Octopus, and a very blingy new show lead.  Mama Scout was BOB, too.

After showing Saturday morning, Ann Taylor graciously invited all of the cardi folks to her home for lunch and cardi play time.  We got to spend time with representatives of the Red Horde, an international man of mystery, "Dwayne" and JF, and their respective people.

Sunday was Rush's day to shine and boy, did he - with a Group 4 placement.  (Also congrats go to Dewi (Dwayne's alter ego) who earned his CGC certification at the show!)

And as usual, we always find a way to enjoy the local fare when we travel to shows.  Saturday we had a fantastic dinner at Pescados, a latin-caribbean seafood restaurant.  On Sunday, we hit the Edelweiss Restaurant in Staunton VA on the way home, a place I have always wanted to visit - wonderful home-style german food and charming as all get-out.

We made it home today, and got a chance to rest up a bit before heading back to work tomorrow.  Oh how I have missed going to dogshows!  Don't forget to sign up for Southaven MS shows - they close on Wednesday!

More points by an Ocho girl!

Alli, the pretty red girl, went out today with her pretty red headed junior handler, and was winners bitch, crossed over to pick up another point as best of winners, and also best of opposite sex! Congratulations Madison and Alli!

Yesterday Alli was reserve winners bitch, Best puppy, and Puppy Herding Group 2!

What a great start!

The Spookiest House on the Bay

These pictures were shot from the back deck of our vacation house in Fort Morgan AL. Our house had decks on both the east and west side - almost all day one or the other had a delightful breeze and view.

This house, however, kind of skeeved me. Is it not the spookiest looking thing?

(These pictures are actually a bit misleading - the house looks like it is in a fog, but actually the fog was on my camera lens - after I brought it out of the air conditioned house to the high humidity outside. But I think the fog just illustrates how creepy this place was.)

One thing that was strange about this house was how it changed colors during the day. In the morning, it was a yellow-y beige, but in the late afternoon and evening, it turned gray.

One night I noticed that there was a sign over the front porch which I figured was the name of the house.  (The name of our happy house was "You are My Sunshine" which was a perfect name for it.)

There was a pair of binoculars in the house, so I got them to see if I could read the name.  It was . . . .

"Journey's End."    How creepy is that???

One last video postcard from the beach

Wish we were still there!

Lowri is the First with the First!

Look what Princess Lowri did today:

Congratulations to Penni, Susan and Cheryl!

Sally's Beach Report

From Sally:

Hey everybody! I see now why that lady I live with was so excited about going to the beach! It is really fun. We go to the beach every morning and late afternoon when it is not so hot. We run and play in the water. Sometimes the water chases us, and sometimes it runs away from us. I try to catch the birds that are flying low over the water. I haven't caught one yet, but I have one more day to try.

We are always on our flexi leads on the beach, because that's the law, but sometimes we see other dogs breaking that law, in particular this one German Shepherd Dog who is staying at a house right on the beach. His people just let him do whatever he wants, and whenever he sees us, he wants to run up where we are.

As you may know, my Uncle Grump has "issues" with GSDs. This goes way back when a crazy GSD tried to get our lady, and Uncle Grump didn't like it one bit. Ever since, he thinks all GSDs are up to no good.

Yesterday we were walking towards the water, that GSD came up behind us. We all decided to protect our lady so we all ran back to try to get to him. In the process of doing this, we managed to wrap our flexible leads all around our lady's legs. Of course, we were barking very loud and she was yelling at the GSD's people to come get their dog. About that time, there was a large gust of wind that blew somebody's big beach umbrella right on our lady.

This caused her to yell out a pretty ugly word for all to hear. A man came and got the umbrella and asked her if she was ok. Finally a woman came and got the GSD, but for some reason, she didn't feel like she needed to say anything to our lady. We finally got ourselves untangled and went on to have fun playing in the water. Today we did not see the GSD - we hope he went home.

We only have one more day here - it has gone by so quickly!

This time next week . . .

I'll either be serving drinks on this deck:

or lounging on this deck:

or walking the dogs on this dog friendly beach in LA:

And by LA, I mean Lower Alabama, Fort Morgan to be precise. 

 A jillion things to do between now and then - but knowing this is on the other end of the week makes it bearable.

Blogger Problems update - and the workaround that worked for me

Found this.  Widespread panic.

There are some suggestions for fixes, but sounds like Google Engineering is stumped.

I logged into google with "keep me logged on"  unclicked.  After that, I was able to post to Susan's blog.