Busy, busy, busy!

Jake has been doing well, he got a blue ribbon in Open Puppy at the Central Florida GSP Field Trial on Nov. 4, and last weekend he almost placed in Open Derby with 15 dogs, only 4 were V's, and there were some top 10 Derby dogs in there. Jake only got bumped out of the placements by the lone dog in the last brace, I always thought there should be a 5th place. ;) It was his first time being handled off horseback and it was also his 7 month birthday.

Lady has been doing well too, Mark is right on the verge of entering her in Senior Hunter, I think he will in the Spring.

We've been out hunting every weekend, Jake has a hunt test this weekend.

Last night we went and played with a recent 5 month old V rescue we placed, Jake and Lady had lots of fun with Sally, especially Jake! They wrestled for hours, they play so well together. Thanks for inviting us over Alisa!

Oh and Lady started her Agility class, we go on Thursdays, just basics for now but I know she's going to love it!

Just a reminder--get your entries in for our upcoming Field Trial, deadline is November 26!

Oh and some JH legs!

How did I forget to mention that Jake went 2 for 2 on his JH legs last weekend? Only 2 more to go, good job little man!

Trick or Treat!

This was Jake's first Halloween, so of course I had to dress him up! Mark says that manly hunting dogs don't wear Halloween costumes, but I think that maybe they do, when they're 6 months old at least! This will most likely be the last year Mark lets me dress Jake up, so I enjoyed it while I could.

Jake was so great for the trick or treaters. Lady was made to stay in the living room because she gets way too excited, she is butt wiggles and kisses for the kids, and some of the little ones are overwhelmed by her. Jake--was the perfect gentleman. The doorbell would ring and he would walk with me to the door, where he would stand politely and quietly in his costume and hat while I handed out all the candy. I didn't have to hold him back at all. Most of the time the kids would want to pet him, so I would tell him to come forward and he would just stand there and politely tail wag while all the kids kissed and hugged and pet him. What a good boy! He's a CGC shoe-in. Even the kids couldn't believe how calm he was.

On an un-related note, Jake has outgrown the soccer fields. We've been running him in several soccer fields in a row (I think 4 or 5) near our house to teach him independence, but he's been running all the way out of the soccer fields the second we set out with him. He'll turn in a second if we call him, but the idea is that we don't want to call him back, we want him to go out. So now we'll be searching for another extremely large open field where we can teach him range, that shouldn't be hard in Sarasota right? *sigh*

Right now we also need to be working on ranging when he can't see us. So far that's been a much bigger challenge, but I'm sure that will come with age too. He hunts so hard when he's in the field, the judges comment to us on how serious he is about his job.

Lady is doing great, Mark got his Citori White Lightning and has been shooting over her with it. She's much more consistently steady when he is holding a gun, so he's going to buy a fake gun to bring out to SH with him.

Check out our brag for Dart on the main page! Jake is so proud of his momma. :) She had an awesome time at Nationals, First place Field Trial Bitch, First place Open Standard Agility, and Award of Merit for the NA Field Trial, congratulations Dart! Now that's a Versatile Vizsla!

Good Job Dart!

Big Congratulations to Jake's mom, Dart!

This weekend she placed First at the Rothan Dual Challenge in Amateur Limited Gun Dog for the Miami Valley Vizsla Club in Ohio. She got 2 more of her retrieving points, and was honored as Dog with the Most Potential. Only 2 more retrieving points till her Amateur Field Championship!

Great Job Dart!!

Today was Labor Day and we had off, so we headed up to Lake Wales for training, crossing our fingers that they had birds. The only quail Jake has gotten to train on since he got home were at the Fun Day, other than that there have been none in the state. We got there at about 7 am and were happy to see Paul Hermes and Chris OBrien headed out with their shotguns, so Jake got to have his first training day.

Mark set out 4 birds for him on the first run. The morning was nice and breezy, about 75 degrees, but we knew it was heating up fast and we needed to run him early. The first bird he ran past and then turned on a dime, on a staunch point. Ear flipped of course. He held the point for about a full 5 minutes before he repositioned himself, only after about 10 minutes of pointing did he finally jump in on the bird. Mark joked that we should go get some breakfast and come back. Once he did flush the bird, it flew for the fence and hid in the bushes. When he got close, it jumped up to fly over the fence and hit a branch and fell right back into Jake's mouth. He happily ran it back to us, but he didn't want to give it up right away.

We continued on and he did well on all of his other finds. The third bird he couldn't find, and of course Mark couldn't remember exactly where he had put it, but it was getting hot so we continued our run. The birds were walking today, they had a lot of gusto for 97 degrees and 90% humidity.

We let Lady run on a checkcord afterward, she did well and found the bird Jake had missed, it had wandered about 100 yards to the east. By the time we brought her in it was just too hot for any more training, she healed the last stretch which she never does.

We also got to witness "birdapalooza" with Jen and Paul, the puppies were doing great on birds, what cuties!

Next weekend is NAVHDA and Mark wants to work Lady on some pheasant. Last NAVHDA training day Lady and Jake both worked on a duck, Jake was a little duck crazy. Jake will need to start learning to track the pheasant for his test in February.

It was a good weekend!

Jake is home

Jake is home, and I just love having a puppy in the house. That puppy smell of puppy breath is intoxicating. He and Lady are best friends already, it's really so heart warming to see them roll around together all day and then curl up to sleep. Lady is so gentle with him, she lets him have the upper hand. She needs to start correcting him more but hopefully that will come as he gets bigger! Here are just some random comments about him:

--He has to go outside much more often than Lady ever did, we have to take him out every 15-30 minutes or else he will pee in the house. Woody had to go out a lot too though, so maybe it's a male thing?

--He is definitely dominant over Lady, he humps her a lot, will go right up to her and take things out of her mouth, will race her to a ball, all things she would never do even now. I don't want him to grow up and completely dominate her, so I'm hoping for Lady to step it up. ;) We knew Lady would be gentle, but we thought she would be the dominant one.

--Wow, what a hungry little monster! Every time we go in the kitchen he yells for food. We thought we were going to have to keep Lady from eating his food, but it's the other way around, it's a race to finish and he tries to take hers. When we watched the puppies grow on Jan's website, we joked that we needed the pushiest eater so that he would be able to keep up with Lady. Not a problem with Jake!

--Speaking of yelling, Jake is very vocal. Not in a bad way, he goes in his crate fine at night. But he's always whimpering and whining and barking and making little growl sounds, it's so cute. He likes to tell us a story.

He still has a lot of growing to do (we can already see him getting bigger!), so we'll see what the future has in store for our little mongrel (Mark's nickname for him is food mongrel, if you don't know us well, we are the family of a million nicknames).

I'll keep adding pics and videos!

Memorial Day Weekend

We had a long and tiring weekend, lots of fun and glad to be home!

Saturday we went to Lake Wales for hunt training, Jen and Paul H. went out of their way to work with us and help us out, thanks so much guys! Lady got her first opportunity to chase Mark on an ATV...that was interesting. She was so upset that he was leaving her that she ran along side it barking nonstop for him to get down. When he stopped (so as not to run her over), she tried to climb up on the seat with him. After a few trips around the lake she figured it out for the most part, and ran ahead with Buffy and Shooter, who were probably wondering what all the commotion was about. Looks like we're going to have to try to run her on horseback before we go horseback riding with the dogs at Primland this year, or we'll probably have the same result! Jen let me use her SLR camera to play around and take some pictures of Lady running, we are in the market for one now so it was neat to get to use all of the features.

After training we headed up to visit my parents for the weekend. The first day Mark met my parents was in 2001 when he came home for our Memorial Day BBQ, so the tradition continues! We ate a lot of good food and had a great time, Lady especially--she loves my parent's backyard! I added a picture to the "Pictures" page under Miscellaneous. :)

15 more days until Mark heads up to Indiana to pick up Jake, we can't wait!

Walkin

Jen Hermes (www.socovs.com) and I have been doing a great job keeping up our lunch walking, it's better than the lunch eating we had been doing! Today I forgot to bring my gym clothes so I walked in high heels...that taught me a lesson! We also went to this great little pastry shop in downtown Sarasota, I'm learning about all kinds of places down there.

Lady is counting down the days till her new brother comes home. Or maybe I'm counting down the days for her. Ever since Woody left, she has wanted so much more attention. Before he came, she was content to nap on the couch after a few hours of playing. Now she's content much less often, she whines at us to pay attention to her, brings us all her toys, she got so used to having him around to play with that she's letting us know how she feels about him leaving! She was so happy when he was here, I'd go to say hi to her when I came home from work and she would just run to his crate and paw at it, "Let him out mom!" It sounds so silly, but we've always known that she would like a "sibling" even more than we would, she lives for getting to see her friends. I'm excited to see the kind of dynamic that she and the new puppy have, I know they are just going to have the strongest bond.

She and Mark ran to the dog park so I'm off to pick them up!

First Post

Sometimes I update my myspace blog, but I've realized that I have nothing to talk about other than Vizslas anyway, so I might as well make it a part of the Vizsla website.

For those who don't know us, I am Crystal, my husband is Mark, and Lady is our first born and the light of our lives. She is very social and lives for spending time with her friends, so when she was almost 2 we decided it was time to get her a friend (and us a hunting companion!) After deliberating over names for weeks, the only name we could agree on is Jake, so that will be our next baby's name.

We live near Sarasota, Florida, and obviously spend a lot of time at the beach--most often our local dog beach. We are a bit (ok, more than a bit) crazed about Lady and talk about almost nothing else. Even on date night (Friday's) our entire conversation is dogs...most people think we've gone a bit mad. I spend hours (days, weeks, months) researching dog food ingredients and health nutrition for Lady. (and then we go out for pizza and beer) We both obsess over her care--her teeth, her coat, her energy level, whether or not she is tucked in snug enough under the covers of our bed when we leave for work--you know, stuff that is important. Suffice to say, we love our dog, and she is not "just a dog."

Anyway, I'll try to keep this blog to dog-related topics, with updates on training, titles, and events. Thanks for checking it out!