Pictures!!

Ok, so I have been too busy to do much with anything besides puppies, work and kids...I aplogize! So, here are a few pictures of the babies! Jaida is loving having them here!

Finally, PUPPIES!!

So, we finally have puppies here at Forest King! Kyler whelped a beautiful litter of 4 girls on January 13th! All 4 are spoken for. 3 of the puppies are going to nice family hunting homes and the 4th is going to the dad's (Duke) owner, Carrie Syczylo's owner. Carrie will be campaigning this puppy on the field trial circuit, so hopefully we will be able to see her on occasion if we are out at trials! Here is Kyler with 2 day old puppies. "Mom, would you stop taking pictures of me, please!?"The red and white (or now more like, tan) puppies sleeping. Red puppy was actually nursing in her sleep, it was quite adorable!

Here are all the babies eating! This was taken at about 5 days old or so. They are much bigger now!

So far the yellow and white puppies are the tanks of the litter. They both surpass the biggest male puppy from the last litter we had (of the same breeding) They are little piggies! The pink puppy gained the pink collar as this was Rogue's collar last year and this puppy reminded us of her when she was born! She came out screaming! As I was helping Kyler to get the sac off of her head and clear her mouth and nose she was already yelling about it. She was basically still attached and was letting us know she was here! Time will tell if she becomes the next Rogue. The red puppy is quiet and peaceful so far. She is about the same size as the pink puppy. Even though smaller than their sisters by a few ounces, they are still bigger than the girls from last years litter, so I guess they are doing alright!

Rogue is doing well in New Mexico from what I hear. Chuck and Diane have started some ground work with her in preperation for her to be broke this summer. It apparantly took a little bit, but she is starting to get it. (she doesn't like to sit still!) She has been on a bunch of wild birds and apparantly also found a jack rabbit! Vizslas were bred to hunt fir and feather! So, the plan for her is to continue to train and then compete at the National Vizsla Association national field trial in Missouri in mid-March. We aren't sure yet if we are going to make the drive down or not. 21 hours each way with a 4 year old and a 5 month old might be tricky! We'll see!

Puppies!!

We found out this week that we are expecting puppies!! Kyler was bred to Duke, Rogue's dad in early November and we found out on Wednesday that we will be expecting at least 4 puppies, possibly 1 or 2 more. We will find out a more accurate number when I take a radiograph in a couple weeks.
Hopefully I will be able to post her radiograph pictures after we take them!!

Stay tuned for more info!

When does God sleep?

The title was a question that Jaida, our 4 year old asked me yesterday...My answer, "um, I don't know honey, good question." I thought it was too cute not to mention.

So, we are back from Virginia and the VCA National field trial! We had a wonderful time and met some very nice people. We finally got to see Rogue and had a great time watching her run! She ran big and bold and I swear she had a smile on her face the whole time! I was not able to get any pictures of her run, as I was on horseback for the first time in several years and needed to concentrate on what I was doing! I had also never ridden a gaited horse before, it was an odd an interesting ride!

Our campsite at Nationals...We had a view of the breakaway and a bunch of the property! Sweet!

Sadly, Rogue had 2 false points, which I have never seen happen with her before. Carrie Syczylo of Durite Vizslas, where Rogue has been for the last several weeks, was handling her. She was confused by the false points as she had never seen Rogue do that either. Well, it might have been explained the next day when Rogue came into heat(females coming into season will often do wacky things outside of character)..So, due to that, no placements. (she also had a bracemate that tagged and bumped her about half the brace, annoying) People who saw the brace though, said it was the most interesting one of the day!

Jaida on her first "real" horse ride. Carrie took her out for an entire brace, so Jaida rode for 45 minutes! She is now trying to convince Daddy to get some horses!

We didn't get to do anything outside of the trial as we had initially hoped, we had truck trouble on the way down and our Suburban spent 2 days at the shop being looked at. The mechanic was unable to find the problem, so now, yet again, our truck sits at the repair shop nearby. On the way home we did have a lovely dinner with my cousin, Amanda, whom I haven't seen in several years and who had never met Jaida. It was quite nice to see her, she only lived 20 minutes from where we were all week!

While in Virginia Kyler decided that it was time to be bred, as opposed to the week before, as originally planned with a more local stud dog. So, we ended up breeding her to Duke, Rogue's dad, who we had originally planned to breed Kyler to this summer for one last litter. Carrie likes Rogue so much she is hoping to reproduce a similar dog from a repeat breeding! If this breeding took she will be due in early January. We have a list of people anxiously awaiting the news of their future puppy!

So, today, Mike took Rogue out for her first "real" hunting trip. We weren't sure if it would go well at all since she is essentially a trial dog and bred and trained to run from horseback, not foot. However, our little red girl surprised us with a great morning! She ran big, but manageable, per Mike. (we had the Garmin Astro GPS collar on her, of course!) She had 2 pheasant finds, one that she was just narrowing down when it flushed and a second one that she pointed solidly and held until Mike flushed it. He was able to shoot it and Rogue ran out to retrieve the bird. This was the first official bird that Rogue has had shot for her. We have done retrieving practice in the yard with a frozen bird, but never the "real" thing. She did just what was expected of her! She ran around for a minute with the rooster, extremely excited about it all, then nicely brought it to Mike's hand and went on her way. Couldn't ask more from a young dog and her first bird! She now sleeps nicely on the couch! Yeah!

Here is Rogue with her rooster in the yard. Mike had put it down on the porch to unload some things and Rogue found it.

Pretty decent size rooster for her!

The new addition!

So, after a long and trying summer, finally on October 17th, our daughter was born! Kalyn Ann Barry decided to come into this world at 12:53am on opening day of bird season here in Massachusetts. After all the threats of her coming early, she waited until just 23 hours before her due date to arrive. She is happy and healthy at a whopping 8# 12oz. Let me tell you that no one was expecting such a large baby! Even the midwives were shocked at how big she was!

Big sister, Jaida is enjoying holding Kalyn and so far really likes being a big sister! Of course, she hasn't had to share anything yet with her, so we'll see how long that continues!

After being out of work for so long with the complications of pregnancy I have to return to work full time after only 6 weeks. My maternity leave is up then and having had to have used all my vacation time before my "disability" payments could kick in, it will be necessary financially. So, as of now I plan to return to work for December 1st. I have missed work a lot, so I am hoping it will be a good thing to go back! Since I started working at age 15, I have never had so much time off in my life...Sadly, because I was on bedrest all summer I didn't even get to enjoy it!

In other news, Rogue has been out in Indiana with Durite Vizslas for the past 2 months. After her first derby run this fall they made an offer we couldn't refuse. Carrie (the mom of Durite) offered to take Rogue for a couple months and train several days a week off horseback and run her in several trials. While it was a hard decision emotionally, there couldn't have been a better situation for Rogue at this point in time. With us very busy preparing for the baby and Rogue at the point in her puppyhood where some more serious training would be beneficial, we decided to send her out. So, Rogue got to experience her first plane ride! (I was a nervous wreck, as I personally don't really care for flying) She arrived fine and began training with Carrie's other dogs several days a week.

After being out there for a week and a half she was entered in the Midwest Shooting Dog Championship. She ended up taking 2nd runner up in the Derby Classic! Not bad for only having been out there for a very short time! Then the weekend of Oct 10/11 they traveled to Ohio for the Miami Valley Vizsla Club trial. Rogue was entered in both Open Puppy and Open Derby. She ended up winning both stakes! The judges made comments that she was the most mature puppy they had ever seen and another judge was quoted as saying "she gave me goosebumps"! What wonderful comments on our girl! We are so proud!! There was even a paragraph in the Vizslak Sentinel about her!

Now she is off to the VCA National Field Trial next week to run in the Derby Classic. We will be making our way down to Virginia to see her run and pick her up from Carrie. We are very excited since it has been a while since we saw her last.

Hopefully the next time I post it will be with the results of the National competition. There are some big name dogs and bloodlines running in all stakes, so Rogue will have some tough competition! We're keeping our fingers crossed for our girl!

Weekend of Glory!

Well, no photos to post, sadly, but...

Kyler took her 2nd Master hunter leg at the VCCNE hunt test on Sunday! She hunted well and had 2 retrieves on course with a nice honor...Mike has been working on her retrieve at home diligantly the past week and it paid off. She returned the quail to hand beautifully!

Rogue also was entered in Junior hunter and she passed the final leg for her Junior title with flying colors! She can now officially be known as Forest King Upland Tsunami JH! (well, once the AKC receives the paperwork)!

Cedar had a good showing as well in his Senior hunter test. Unfortunately, for whatever reason the judges were expecting more of a Master hunter level dog in a senior test, so they didn't pass him. He had a perfect retrieve and one nice honor, which they made turn into 3 honors...Finally 45 minutes into what was supposed to be a 30 minute brace, he decided he had enough and stole the point on the other dog's bird...Oh well... He has still come a long way!

On the home front, I have now made it past 35 weeks of pregnancy! I told the midwives that I was leaving the couch next week, once I hit 36 weeks...We have a "limited" time frame of when this baby would ideally be born, silly as it is! My sister is in Greece for the next 10 days, then about a week and a half after that my parents are out of town for 10 days...So, ideally, somewhere in between this baby can come so my family can be there! (I might have to push a truck up a hill to get it that way, but if that is what it takes then perhaps I will do that!) :)

Summer update!

(Jaida on a boat ride, July 4th)

So, after a long hiatus I think I finally have some time to update things here! It has been a rough summer since my last post. After being pulled out of work at the beginning of June things apparantly took a turn for the worse and I have now been hospitalized three times for pre-term labor issues...I have spent a total of 18 days in the high risk labor and delivery ward at Baystate Hospital's Wesson Women's Center. I have been on strict bed rest since the beginning of July. I am "allowed" one shower per day and can get up to use the bathroom, nothing else.

Mike has been busy taking care of all the animals here at Forest King, from the dogs to the chickens and tortoises. On top of that he is working full time and taking care of all the shopping, housework plus Jaida and I. He has been extremely busy!

Dogs are starting to grasp the concept that mommy doesn't feed them right now and have finally gotten the idea that Mommy doesn't take them for hikes right now. Rogue is finally getting to the age where she is beginning to settle down, luckily!

We are looking forward to the fall field trial and hunting season. With me being essentially out of commission until this baby decides it is officially time to come, I am not able to compete with any of the dogs. So, lucky for us, Andrew has kindly offered to run Rogue, the little nut-ball, in several field trials this fall. Since Mike doesn't ride and the majority of trials that Rogue will be running in will be from horseback, we need her to be handled by someone that is comfortable on a horse. I am hoping to get into the saddle perhaps by late fall. Time will tell!

Hopefully soon I will have more pictures to post soon, with staying at home all the time the camera hasn't gotten much use!