Winter Storm Warning!!

Our first snow of the season, as a Nor'easter moves up the East Coast. Kind of perfect as today is the 9th birthday of my girls, FFire & Ggrail. Their litter naming "theme" was  "Winter Storm Warning".  These pups were the most unexpectedly colorful crew ever! When Ffire (FKA Frost) was born in the middle of the night, I was so tired that I kept looking at her and asking myself, "what the hell color is this?" I knew there were people intentionally breeding the "pretty" and weird colors, but I didn't know I had dilute behind their Dam. Live & learn. 

I knew Ggrail (FKA Ice) was staying, her happy little face and keeness to interact and learn early on, made that clear. And, Ffire also made it pretty clear she wanted to stay too. So she did! And, how lucky am I, they are both great dogs and have blessed me with an amazing future in their pups. From agility, to working stock, to therapy dog work, they are the best girls! 

Ffire's son, Zinc debuted in USDAA agility this past weekend. We did a couple runs in UKI this summer, one Q and one NFC to get his feet wet. Love those courses, looking forward to more next year, with more local trials hopefully! So, just a few runs at the USDAA trial over 2 days (lots of driving), to see how we would do. Really only started sequencing and jumping full height @20" the last couple months. Work has been so incredibly busy this year and the weather miserable thanks to climate change that apparently some in our country don't believe exists??? 

Hello...super long winter, record high heatwaves for weeks, torrential rain and flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, Spring and Fall lasted a week, then straight back to winter-nope no effect of global warming, HA! So other than the do your part to reduce carbon emissions, etc. PSA: basically just not as much time as I would hope to focus on training. 
So, we did well! It was FUN!!!!!! My past injury is making it hard to run, but we ran! Perfect startline stays, worked on some contacts in Gamblers, the boy measured up and had to jump 22" for the first time-geeZ a triple spread looks HUGE to me at 22", he gracefully sailed right over it! Good pup. 4 runs/3 Q's and placements-2 blue!! But, most importantly the connection I feel we have. He is a high drive dog, but a sweety too-his listening ears were on, he can look calm even as I see the sparks shooting out of his eyes and think in drive, which is a beautiful thing. We were out there navigating the slightly tricky courses Together. What a great feeling. It has been awhile since I have wanted to compete, but I am looking forward to the next trial. We will only do a few runs, no rush to overdo it as he is still maturing mentally and physically, this will be a fun journey!