Finally an update

Sorry for the very long delay in between posts. We have bee quite busy preparing for Christmas with a 3 year old around! As many of you may know a nasty ice storm hit this area a couple weeks ago. We were lucky that we just had a few large branches that fell down, no damage done. We only lost power for about 15 hours. Most of Mike's family lost power for much longer. His brother just got power back last Monday, so a week and a half after they lost it! How much we have come to rely on the comfort of electricity! You don't realize how much it affects your life until you don't have it.

On other notes, we are hoping to be able to get Rogue (now officially Forest King Upland Tsunami, we got her papers back) on some birds this winter so that we can start entering her in Junior Hunt tests in the spring. I think our biggest issue will be her trainability, as she very much has a mind of her own!

Here is a video of her today.

Holy cow! This was the first real bird work that we have done with her. I was shocked at how nice her points were and how long she held them. It was the first time she has pointed a "real" bird. She has always shown a tremendous interest in birds, but hasn't had much of an opportunity to point them yet.

Then here she is pointing a Chukar. We were trying to get a good flying bird that wasn't tied by a string, so she will learn that they fly away and don't always land where she can see them. Sadly, for whatever reason, this Chukar could only seem to get about 3 feet off the ground. Not really what we had in mind...She was as intense as she looks in this photo. She holds her points really nicely.

If you look closely at this photo you can see the pigeon on the string. We had Rogue on a cord as well, so that we could control her to a certain extent. Our fenced training area also has some fence down due to the storm, so we don't want her to run through it to the road.

Cedar and Kyler are doing well. Cedar's foot is healing very well! It will probably always look a bit funny, but overall it really is healing as well as can be expected. His new brace from Ortho Pets arrived 2 days before Christmas, and we are slowly acclimating him to it. It should hopefully allow him to have a mostly normal working life. It is a bit cumbersome for him, and he is still getting used to it. He still gets the toe part caught on the stairs when he is going up. Ortho Pets makes all sorts of braces/orthotics and prostetics for dogs and cats who have injuries. They can even be used by a dog with a torn cruciate who is not a good candidate for surgery, to make them more comfortable. The owners of the company are very nice and helpful. I highly recommend them if you have a dog that could use some extra support.

As far as the holidays are concerned, here is Jaida enjoying getting ready to decorate our tree. It has been a tradition in our house to listen to the Muppets Christmas album with John Denver every Christmas. (I had it growing up and decided to continue the tradition with Jaida) It is still one of my favorites.

Happy Holidays to all and I hope that you all have a Happy New Year!