NEW YEARS EVE DAY

HAPPY

NEW

YEAR

 

FROM ALL OF US TO YOU

THE NEIGHBOR

 

The top three are me with his dog, Prince.

The horse is his horse, Queen.

He lived next door to me when I was growing up and he taught

me about dogs and horses and art and authors and played tricks on me but never in a mean way.

My parents taught me those things, too, but differently.

 

He died tonight at 10:13

I hope he and Prince are together.

TRAINING DAY

Doc is fine at home but not so good outside the yard. He is getting better but while my knee and then my toe were healing, he decided to be afraid of everything except us and Basset Hounds.

 

You can almost see the doubt in those pretty brown eyes and that nervous lick.

 

But he is doomed because he is a show dog and I plan to get him back into the ring. The problem is I have re-socialize him a bit and get him relaxed so we have been going to training and trying to get him to remember how much fun showing was.

 

Here's the REAL problem.

Doc has a handler who is barely trainable.

Doc has a handler who gets so nervous in the rings that it runs and vibrates right down the leash to Doc who immediately reads that message and begins looking around for the danger. He has decided that the dogs behind him must be the problem and so he looks over his shoulder and tucks his tail, just in case.

 

This began one time when the dog behind him was a Briard, a huge hairy thing he had never seen before, gaining on him, or so he thought.

 

The 12 week old Havanese puppy behind him at training did not bother him.

He was so friggin cute.

 

He looked....wait a minute...he looked a lot like...

 

NO DOC! It is a puppy, not a Squirrel. Stop turning around. How many times can one say "watch me" in a row without being ridiculous?

Finally, he decides it isn't a squirrel at all that it is just a puppy and he got back to work.

So I figure as long as we don't have a Briard or a squirrel behind us, we might be able to get around the ring without mishap.

                                    He's done it before.

 

SNOOD WEATHER & OTHER THINGS

My Van won't start. It goes " Clickclicklclickclicksnickyclick." and the gauges all go berserk. The day before we jumped it and it started and ran fine but yesterday I went out to do an errand and it repeated the clicky routine.
If we can jump it again I will run it up to the service station but otherwise I will have to call the tow truck. Phhhffft.
Also I have the cold I have been fighting so hard not to get. It is pretty cold. I got the snoods out, that's how cold it is.

This was taken after I sent Llewis and Conley out without their snoods and they came in shaking like mad.So I covered them up  nd Conley stuck his nose under the blanket, too.

 

Conley is the one who gets the coldest the fastest.

Doc doesn't seem to get cold except for his feet. It might have something to do with shaving between his pads when I groom him and do his feet.

I don't shave my feet but they are one of the first things to get cold on me, too.

 

AND

The pretty red tow truck just towed my truck away. Van. Whenever I say "truck" John says "It's a VAN".

 

I woke up this morning thinking of a line from THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN. So I fed the dogs and sat here at 5 in the morning and watched beautiful Robert Redford and listened to Willie Nelson.

I don't mind Jane Fonda no matter what she did or didn't do during the Viet Nam war. She did what she thought was right and that's all any of us should do, is follow our conscience and do what we believe is right.

(It doesn't make it right but it's what we do.)

 

 

 

These are the stretchy bracelets I made to sell for $20. Just thought I'd throw that in.

HORSES

I have been watching the NFR rodeo finals which stretch out over an impossibly long week. I don't usually watch NFR but I do watch the PBR bull riders. However the PBR doesn't really do much horsie stuff and the NFR is all about the way man and horse interact to do a third thing: mostly roping calves. (And no, sorry, I don't worry about the calves.)

So I have, after nearly a week of kind of on-again, off-again watching, begun to note serious differences in the horses even though I would guess that 99% are Quarter Horses.

              Stolen from Google

This is a Quarter Horse so named because no horse is faster over a quarter of a mile than one of these.  What you see is those huge hips and shoulders. This is a working horse. He is also the Labrador Retriever/Golden retriever of the horse world.

He is friendly. (Understand, this is a general statement and not true of every single living Quarter horse.) He is easy. His gaits are nice and he can be trained to do just about anything you want him to do.
He can herd cattle or carry three little kids bareback around a pasture without spooking. He can shoot out of a little box and when his cowboy ropes a calf he can stop on a dime and keep the rope taut by backing up. He can carry a flag in a parade with drums and music and people yelling.

He can carry a kid who does crazy things without shying or bucking.
On the other hand, when asked to do cow things by a rider who knows what he is doing, the Quarter Horse is amazing.

He herds cattle. He ambles along quietly with a dog at his heels watching the cattle.

 

And when asked, he moves.

And he can REALLY move. And he can stop so fast that he can flip a calf at the end of a rope.

But mostly, he is just an amazingly versatile, comfortable horse. Love him and cherish him and you will receive loyalty and affection in return. The American Quarter Horse. What a guy.

 

 

DOC

Mika Keokuk Medicine Man of Liswyn.
Doc.
Named after a statue done by Mr.Biskit's great Aunt Nellie Walker that stands on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River.

 

 

The Doc. Twelve weeks. Newly arrived. Flew in from Dallas to O'Hare  and walked out of the crate as if he owned the world.

                                            And Now.

CONLEY

 

This is First Class Tonic With a Twist. Aka "Conley" He has several AKC points toward his Championship and then he decided the ride was over and quit putting his tail up. The rule is "no tail, no ribbon".  Bassets, like Beagles, are supposed to appear overwhelmed with joy at being in a dog show. Conley's opinion of dog shows was NOT joyous.

 

He will be 5 or 6 the 29th of this month. Of the three Bassets, he is the only with testicles and while he has never had the opportunity to use them as intended, it does a lot to explain his attitude. And he has one.

 

 

 

This is also Conley in one of his favorite places and one of his favorite positions doing one of his favorite things. There is that song, "These are some of my favorite things" and there are only two or three things:

eating

sleeping

tormenting the Belgian

ignoring commands, demands or suggestions.

 

Not necessarily in that order.

 

As a puppy, Conley had a Thing for knives and scissors which he would take off the counters and carry around the house, daring Nigel and Llewis to play with him.

Conley Scissormouth.

 

 

He has a Thing...

 

 

...for the backs of furniture.

This is the couch. He has fallen off that perch several times and been trapped behind the couch, but has never gotten hurt.

 

Conley is the most photogenic of the dogs. (Ssssh. Don't tell.)

He has an ego that demands that he be in front, on top, up high, first in line. This has recently caused some abrasive incidents between Conley and our still-growing Belgian, who also sports  testicles and is just beginning to grow into them. As yet, Doc the Belgian tends to give way, but I can sense that this may easily change someday soon.

 

 

Conley, not a big fan of really cold weather, nonetheless loves to play.

 

 

 

Puppy Conley. He was a real cutie.

 

Meeting the Black Dog before he became a BIG black dog.

 

Things were not always good even early on. Doc had baby teeth.

Conley did not care for them.

 

Conley discovers the advantages of stairs. This is one of my favorite photographs of him. Barely visible, he had been up and down the stairs several times and finally, refused to leave the top. It was quiet, and it made him, literally, TOP DOG.