Snowballs

The pups day - in and out into the snow and then they took breaks to melt their snowballs onto the floor.  Thank goodness for heated floors - I'm sure that's what the dogs were thinking LOL!

My floors are now very clean!  And I have lots of wet towels to wash.

Dhali was really busy today.  Cabin fever?  He unrolled the toilet paper not once, but twice!  He's only done this once before when he was a little baby and my Mom was watching him.  I realized today that he doesn't really care if I get after him - uh oh!  He's like, "What?!?  Did you want to unroll it too?  Let's play!"  He also chewed up one of my shoes!  Sad, because I liked those shoes and they were only a couple months old.  Also sad because I didn't think he would chew up my shoes!

Good reminder that he is still a little baby puppy :)

Show Day 2 - Ruined

Didn't happen - boo!

So we were supposed to go back today for a 2nd day of showing and then it started to snow late Sat. night and it is still snowing more than 12 hours later.

The people that stayed in the hotel connected to the show site - smart.  Me?  I decided to drive the hour home.  Tibby was at home any way and some one has to take care of her too!  

So now we are stuck in the house.  Very sad.  Tibetan Terriers were supposed to show at 2pm - the city finally had one side of the road plowed in front of my house by 1:50pm.  So yeah.  Oh, well it has been an OK day.  Just sad that we missed the 2nd day of the show.  So far we have played in the snow a lot, I have cleaned up tons of snow from the floor and then we took a nap.

The dogs are having fun, except there is too much snow even for my snow-loving pups.  They can't even run, because it's too deep!  I made them a little path and a potty spot.  They need some snow pants!

8am

Tibby says, "I changed my mind!  Let me back in!"

Dhali's first snow face - awwww.

10am

Snow monster!

"I can't see!"

Snow ball armor.

"Where did my yard go?" 

So it's almost 3pm now and the snow is coming down even harder.  It's looking like a blizzard!  Glad we are not out on the road, even though I'm sad we are missing the show.

Show Day

Our first real dog show!  What a day.  I'm tired!  It was fun and I met a lot of nice people.  I learned so much.  Dhali was a super good relaxed boy.  He put up with tons of fussing/grooming for hours and thought all the people and dogs were OK.  While we were waiting to go into our ring he laid out totally flat on the floor, put his head down and just chilled in the middle of people and dogs walking every where around him.

He is such a good even tempered little guy.  Later he decided to lay down on his side a take a little nap in the middle of every thing.  If he can relax at a dog show - he can relax anywhere!   It was crazy.  Very over whelming!  I'm glad there was a little Tibetan camp set up and I could meet some other TT people.  It would be very scary to be all on your own at your first show.

I know flooding isn't always a good training idea, but I don't think today hurt Dhali at all.  In fact it made me realize that all the work I have put in to taking him places has been worth it!  Really proud of my little man :)

I told him this morning - I don't care what happens.  I love you no matter what and you are perfect and the best puppy in the world.  Let's just have fun. (and I gave him a bunch of kisses on top of his little head)

And we did have fun.  Maybe not the most amazing showing in the ring LOL!  The judge said Dhail, "was really sweeping the floor."  Dhali was basically sniffing the floor the whole time and I was trying to get his head up and dragging him along in the process.  The judge also said,  "Practice a lot with her (him)."  Oh well!  We did it and it was a good experience.  The judge kept calling Dhali a girl- not sure why??

Now 15 or so pictures and then more writing at the bottom.

Little bit of snuggle time.

He stood and leaned into me for the longest time.  A little zen in the chaos.

Dhali's cousin Sweetcorn.

Dhali's brother Nickle.

Dhali is smiling!  

That's Dhali's daddy in the crate behind us.

Dhali was a little bit tired from the whole experience :)

Good job little Dollar-boy.

This is the dog of the woman who was really nice and helped me at the open show in Oct.  She was set up across the isle from TT camp.

 "What?!?"

Over The Bridge

"Trip, trap, trip, trap who's that walking over my bridge?"

Busy week starting today.  Let's see - tomorrow I'm taking Tibby (and Dhali) to her appt. (our appt?) at the U of M.  Yes, we got moved up from our appt. in March.  Whoo hoo!  And I'm also super nervous.  I not a big fan of driving in the Cities and our appt is at 8:30am, so driving right into rush hour.  We'll have to leave very, very early, like 5am.  Then the appt. - not sure what we are going to do or how it will work.  I want to be able to answer all their questions and get things figured out, but I am so NOT a morning person plus stress of getting to the appt.

Then on Sat. Dhali has his first real show!  Very exciting!  We are going both Sat. and Sun.  Tibetan Terriers show after 2 on both days and it's in St. Cloud for any one that is interested in seeing a dog show.  The entrance fee for visitors is a food shelf item.  There are just under 800 dogs entered on Sat. and over 800 dogs entered on Sun.   There are 7 TTs entered and one of those is Dhali's litter mate Nickle.  Can't wait to see him again and see the boys together.  When I was looking for a TT puppy one of the things that I wanted was to be able to see their family every once in a while.  I don't know why, but that seems kind of nice - maybe because I don't have a big family, I want my dog to have a family?  

Speaking of family:  My Grandma has taken a turn for the very worst.  She was baking cookies, doing mental memorization exercises and took a marching walk around the block on Wed.  Wed. night she started vomiting blood and since then she has been in bed heavily medicated and mostly sleeping.  The Hospice nurse checked on her Friday and prescribed a liquid form for of one of the meds.  She hasn't eaten since Wed. and has only had tiny sips of water for the last 4 days.  My Mom is doing an amazing job taking care of my Grandma.  I hope I can do as good of a job when it's my turn to take care of my Mom.  I have taken a few turns sitting with my Grandma, but mostly my Mom has been doing everything for her.   

Dhali's First Show - We Got Ribbons!

We went to a dog show yesterday!  It was fun and we learned a lot.  AKC has a new 4-6 month puppy class and Dhali is 4 months old now.  

It was an Open show, so there were people like me, who had never been to a show before, but there were also a lot of people who looked like they showed their dog all the time and maybe this was just a practice for them.

I'm pretty sure we were the least prepared of the entire show - I didn't even have a show lead for Dhali!  I just used a grooming loop attached to his regular leash.  Totally ugly, but it worked - sort of :P  Everyone else had pretty leads and I had leash envy.  

We met some very nice people.  Everyone was extremely friendly and tried to help each other out.  I'm not sure if this is what a 'normal' show is like or just because it was an open show, but I was surprised at how friendly everyone was.  After watching 'Best In Show' you would think they were all cutthroat and mean LOL!

The show ran very smoothly, even though they kept changing which breeds were going to show in which ring.  There were 3 rings.  Everyone was ready to go, except at the very beginning there was one girl showing 3 dobermans and she kept having to change her arm bands to show the next one.  Pretty much every class had just one dog in it.  Except there was a group of 4 Briards that were all from the same litter, so they were all in the same class.  It took the judge FOREVER to decided how to place them.  She kept sending them around and around the ring.  One was darker, but otherwise they all looked the same to me.

Anyway, I knew nothing about showing.  I thought that Dhali would be competing against other puppies, but nope.  Silly me!  

He got first place and best of breed, but he was the only Tibetan Terrier LOL!  And then for group (non-sporting) he got 2nd out of 3 dogs.  I wish I knew why the judge gave the poodle 3rd.  I should have asked when I was there, but I didn't think about it until I was home again.  

The judge seemed to like Dhali.  She said he was a good, good puppy.  :)

It was fun and I think we did better as we went along.  Dhali was adorable, of course.

I did it for the socialization and exposure to a trial environment.  And also, because I have always wanted to be in a dog show!  I mean I organized a neighborhood dog show when I was 10, so it's always been a dream of mine :P

It was very good for Dhali, because for about an hour he just laid in his crate and watched dogs walking back and forth in front of his crate.  There was one little shih tzu that its owners almost walked to death.  Back and forth and back and forth for an hour BEFORE the judging started.  

He got a little antsy at the 1 1/2 hour point when I had moved his crate 3 times - to get near the correct ring where we would be showing.  And after we had shown he didn't want to sit around any more.  He was pretty bored.  I should have brought something along for him to chew on, but I didn't want him to get bully stick breath or mess up his coat!

It was an interesting experience.  I wish we could find more open shows or b-matches or fun matches.  It's very good training for a puppy.  Easy, because you can have food and they just have to walk around.  Easy for me too!  I've always thought that conformation dogs were very laid back when it comes to hanging out in a crate or working around other dogs.  That's what I want for Dhali!  So he sees it's not a big deal.

Here is our video!  Feel free to laugh - I'm sure I made every mistake possible!

All handsome and brushed out.  He was VERY tired when we got home.  

He is super, super good on the grooming table.  I'm always prepared for him to freak out, like Tibby, but he just doesn't!  I'm always happy to be 'disappointed' by him LOL!