Day One

Well, I finally got around to trying out raw feeding. I decided that I'm just going to do Pallo first, since he is less picky and has an iron stomach. I spent about an hour chopping up a whole chicken into portion sizes for him, so that all I have to do is reach in and grab a chunk of the correct size out of the fridge.

Last night he got a rather large chicken leg for his first raw meal. He looked confused for a while, licking it and gently picking at the skin and fat on the meat, then finally grabbed the whole thing and took off into the yard with it, where he took a good 45 minutes to eat the whole thing.

This morning he seems much more up to speed on the whole raw eating thing, as it only took him about 10 minutes to eat down his morning section of chicken. Since the single chicken is enough to feed my boy for roughly 6 days, we will be sticking with chicken for about a week, then introducing other goodies, to be determined by my visit to the store today.

We are gearing up for a flyball tournament in 2 1/2 weeks, so it might not be the best time to be making this change, but Pallo is a tough little guy and seems to be doing great so far, and I always have the option of switching him back to kibble until after the tournament if he doesn't do so great on the raw.

On the training note, Koira will keep coming to practice with me. I spent some time talking to our trainer, and we came up with some ideas of improving Koira's drive, like throwing the tug out for her instead of holding onto it, so she really drives off the box and over the jump (we are only using one jump right now with her). It seemed to be improving her drive a lot last practice, so I am eager to try it again, but have to work tonight, so will be waiting for next week's practice to get to try it out good.

Right now the snow is hampering our outdoor activities. My dogs aren't used to it, and while it isn't deep, it is cold and slippery to run on, meaning they slip and slide like crazy. We still go out to play, but I try to take it easy on them. Koira doesn't understand the meaning of taking it easy, and did her first ever frisbee catch with all four feet in the air.

The day after Christmas

Well, its the day after Christmas. Me and the dogs had a good one, traveling to my sister's place. She did a big Christmas Eve dinner with her inlaws, me, and our mom, and then Christmas morning was just us.

It was Pallo's first Christmas with me, since I got him last February.
He is getting a good deal better at posing for me.


He is also a first class present opener. The pets always get presents in my family, so each of my dogs had four toys wrapped up as well as a bully stick each. Pallo got the hang of unwrapping his presents really fast, pinning them down with his paws and ripping up pieces of the paper. No pictures of it since I was supervising making sure the paper pieces were spit back out, not swallowed.

Koira has always been a great model for pictures. She sits still, looks straight at the camera, and seems to enjoy it for the most part.



Of course, you get even bigger pit bull smiles if you take pictures right after running the dogs at the dog park for an hour.



Koira is getting really good with the frisbee lately since we have added it to our playing routine. We've made a pretty big fool of ourselves for the past two years in frisbee competitions, but this summer I think we might actually do pretty good.

And of course, the dogs played tug with one of their new Christmas toys, ripping the tiny little Santa hat right off the hedgehog it belonged to. Meaning, of course, that I had to put the tiny little hat on the dogs and take pictures.



Hope everyone had a great holiday!

To train or not to train

I have a debate that has been on my mind for a long time. Do I keep training Koira in flyball just because it is a sport I enjoy and want to be part of?

In the basics of it, I just don't see Koira enjoying the sport. She certainly gets excited when we get out there, she likes working with me and tugging and playing. But she has little to no interest in the game. She doesn't get excited by going to flyball practice, seeing the building, walking in there, etc.

I didn't see how it could be with an excited, engaged dog until more recently with Pallo. He has always been jazzed about flyball, but he recently has gotten to a point of intense interest. He is always engaged, he looks to me for direction, and he has a crazy amazing time doing his favorite sport.

Pallo's behavior has emphasized a problem I have seen for a while with Koira, and it seems like I will have to make a decision. Do I keep working with Koira in flyball, or do I retire her from it after almost two years' training and only one (very disapointing) tournament?

I feel like I have done a lot to try to get Koira back into the sport. I switched teams, have done a ton of research, talked with our teachers and other people in flyball for tips. But despite it all, we seem to be at a stand still.

Bad ideas

Making candy in a rainstorm is a bad idea. It didn't occur to me at first that it would be, which is why I started my candy cooking at 7 pm. The recipe calls for about 2 hours of cooking time, until it reaches soft ball stage.

Now, this is the recipe that we try and fail to make every single Christmas. We decided last year that it must be because of our increased humidity in Oregon versus Minnesota in the winter, and decided that cooking the candy to medium ball stage would probably compensate for the humid problem.

What I didn't anticipate was the storm adding greatly to our humidity. Which, in turn, means that instead of two hours of cooking, the candy took a full 6 hours to reach medium ball stage. Yup, that does mean I was up until 1 am checking the damn stuff.

It started as a white mixture, turned tan, then brown, and finally, in the end, was a dark brownish blackish almost burned looking mixture. Yeah, 6 hours later.




I let it cool overnight when I finally went to bed, leaving it loosely covered with a lid that would let steam escape to that dog hair didn't have a chance to settle into it.

The next key stage after cooking is to stir, stir, stir until it turns light in color and is able to be formed into balls. This is the part we always fail at every year, spending hours stirring a mixture that obviously does not want to be stirred. It is thick and hard to begin with, like mollassas except harder.

This year, it worked. And after a mere 20 minutes too. Maybe it was trying to make up for taking so long to cook?



Once the balls were able to be formed, I melted up some chocolate, rolled the candy into balls, and began the final stage of candy making.


The entire dipping sequence is pretty fun, but after a while it gets really boring. Especially once the chocolate gets low.



In the end though, I have some beautiful chocolate cremes, and look forward to surprising my sister at Christmas with them.



I did also make some toffee later that day. The weather cleared up enough that it was not the worst idea ever to make more candy.

Toffee is super easy though. Equal parts sugar and butter over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the smell makes you positive it is burned to a crisp, then poured in on a cookie sheet to cool and covered with chocolate.



And then broken up onto a plate for serving.



And now all the remaining candy is hidden so that we can't eat it all before Christmas comes.

Silly looking beasts, anyway

Well, I took the dogs out for a long walk down to the railroad bridge yesterday, but of course forgot my camera. Probably a good thing with how hard it started raining before we got back.

Over the summer though I got some amazingly stupid looking pictures of plenty of dogs.

Koira, in her infinite grace and wisdom, tried to catch a frisbee.



Raffles the golden retriever, because we know they are always noble and intelligent.



Again with the noble golden dogs


Although Pallo is not immune from looking stupid either
In fact, he spends a lot of time doing this. Driving me nuts with the itching and scratching.



And of course being the over excited puppy he is


So basically I'm cheating by sharing old pictures. But at least they are funny old pictures. And Keon says she'll bite you if you disagree

Black Beans

I had a number of peppers in the fridge that needed to get used, and to me, peppers mean black bean soup. So after work yesterday, I picked up black beans and red beans while in town, and set them to soak over night. This morning, they were well soaked and ready to cook.



So I took some a couple of onions, four bell peppers, and four peppers of kinds I can't ever recall the names, and a whole ton of garlic. Everything got chopped up (bell peppers in rather large pieces, hot peppers in tiny little pieces, since while I love hot foods, I don't much care for getting an entire huge bite of spicy) and then added to some hot oil in the soup pot. Tossed the veggies around in that for a while, then added the beans, vegetable broth, and water and set the whole mess to simmer for two hours while I got ready for work.



I decided that it must be done, and served myself up a bowl with a dallop of plain yogurt (we were out of sour cream, a problem I have since fixed while in town). The final touch on seasoning was sea salt, cinnamon, and cocoa powder.



The soup is almost all gone now, having been served with a great response to the people working booths at the holiday bazaar down the street while I was at work.

The cheesecake from a few days ago, made with the surplus of yogurt we had, is just about all gone as well. It turned out pretty good, though it could have used a bit more sugar mixed in. That problem is solved by tossing some strawberries with sugar or honey over the top.



Tomorrow I plan on eating nothing but leftovers, and taking the dogs on a long hike. Working and cooking for the past couple days has left them with nothing more than a few games of fetch, meaning they are waking me up by bouncing on the bed like mad in the morning.

Merry merry Christmas and a really big hat

A few days ago I decided we needed to get some Christmas pictures done. It is Pallo's first Christmas with me. He has already choked on an ornament from the tree (he's fine, just spit it back up) and tried to steal the really large ornament ball on the coffee table.

Koira knows how to sit for proper Christmas pictures


She even kind of seems to enjoy doing pictures


At least until I start taking a few too many. Then she gets bored, but still photgraphs very well


Pallo on the other hand hates having to sit still for pictures.


He hates having stuff be put on his head, and does his best to eat it while ruining the picture


My favorite picture of him is when he finally gave up fighting it


And I can't leave out the cats. Martha wouldn't deign to have her picture taken, and Kitty was no where I could find, but Sassy loves all kinds of attention, even if it does involve giant, oversized Santa hats


Silly doggies.

Surprisingly underwhelming

While the spices all smelled amazing earlier while grinding them up, and especially after being tossed in the blender with yogurt, onion, pepper, and garlic, the end product was pretty underwhelming. It was good, just not amazing. Part of it might have been that the elk did not fully thaw out, so didn't accept the marinade as fully as it could have, but I don't think that was the whole problem. If I make it again, I will probably over spice it like mad, cut the meat thin, and sear it quick over a hot heat to get a good crust of flavor on it.





The cheesecake is currently sitting on the counter cooling, waiting to be stuck in the fridge over night. The yogurt became quite firm, which I liked. I mixed up four eggs, some sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove, then added in the yogurt. With no crackers in the house for the crust, I used some cereal with a bit of sugar and spices added to it.

Baking didn't add a lot of color to the cheesecake, but it does look tasty. Top two are before baking, bottom two are fresh out of the oven.



I'm looking forward to getting a good slice of it. Glad I had some cherry pie left over from the flyball Christmas potluck last night otherwise I wouldn't be able to let this sit in the fridge as long as I know it needs to.

Food Post: Tandoori Elk, Raita, and Cheesecake

Somehow we ended up with a ton of plain honey yogurt. I asked on FoodFo for some yogurt using recipes, and Werda suggested doing Tandoori Chicken and a cheesecake. I'm out of chicken, but decided to use some elk steaks instead.

Since I don't have a spice grinder, I decided to do things by hand to make my garam masala. I already had some of the spices powdered, but the cloves and black peppercorns had to be smashed up. Then I added the rest of the spices already powdered and mixed them up.



I roughly chopped the onion, garlic, and half green pepper since they would be going into the blender.



By the time it was blended in with the yogurt and spices, it was smelling pretty damn amazing.



The elk was frozen, so I pulled it out to thaw a bit, then unwrapped it and tossed it into a bowl with some lemon juice and salt, then back in the fridge to thaw a bit more while the yogurt sauce was being made.



It was still pretty frozen, but thawed enough to put a couple deep slits into it for the marinade to get into. Poured the yogurt over the top, then back in the fridge.


While the elk was marinating and thawing out, I worked on the raita that was suggested to go along with it. I used onion, mint, cucumber, yogurt, garam masala, and a bit of tumeric. Diced everything up fine and decided to add some dried mint as well as fresh for a bit of added minty flavor. Mixed it all up and put it in the fidge for the flavors to blend.



I also checked on the yogurt I've been straining out for using in cheese cake. Its a bit gross to see how much liquid comes out of it, but it is firming up really nice.

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Now it is all sitting in the fridge, the elk absorbing the marinade, the raita combining flavors, and the yogurt draining. And I'm off to take the dogs out for some running time, since they have been staring at me sighing the whole morning while I prep the food.

Two flyball titles and a ton of pictures

Pallo is now a Flyball Dog Excellent. He has officially earned his FD and FDX titles, and is well on his way to his next title. One of my awesome teammates managed to get a good picture of Pallo coming back during the tournament. He may not have run clean in every race this time, but he did awesome for being a green dog racing outdoors for the first time, in the hottest weather of the year.

Yay Pallo the Viking.


So took the dogs for a hike today. I wanted to try out my new (new to me) camera. We hit the water in a quarry pond on the way back to the car, and got some fun pictures.
Koira shaking, right next to the camera.And of course looking noble. Or, waiting for the ball to be thrown. One or the other. This picture is so typical of these two dog beasts. Koira, paying attention, posing, and looking beautiful. And Pallo's butt, looking silly, as he runs off to do something else.

Though, I did manage to get a nice picture of the Pallo dog for the first time ever. Looking all noble and everything.

More pictures to come. Over the next two weeks, Koira will be filming for Animal Planet and modeling for RuffWear, so we are excited and busy.

Tree frogs and chiropractors

Yesterday Koira and Pallo went to the chiropractor for the first time. I've never been to one myself, but someone suggested they could use an adjustment, and I figured why not.

Pallo was a bit weird about it, as he is with pretty much anyone but me touching him, but the chiro worked with him about it, so he did pretty good after he relaxed a little. Koira just wanted to lick the chiro, but did get her jaw and neck realigned, so hopefully that will help her with catching the ball out of the flyball box.

Then, this evening, Koira came walking in the house with something green on her back. Thinking it was a leaf, I gave it a flick, realizing as soon as I made contact that it was not a leaf, it was a tree frog. I searched all over where I thought it had gone, and didn't find anything. Then, a few minutes later, sure enough, there was a tree frog hanging out on my door. I took it out and let it loose in the front yard in some bushes. Now I just wonder if its the same tree frog Koira had hitch a ride in with her a month or so ago. Does she have a tree frog friend, or is she just tree like to the frogs?

Canada, here we come!

I just got an email this morning from a team looking for a dog to run both days of the Black Creek tournament, so looks like me and Pallo have our ticket to Canada.

I just made a vet appointment for him to get his health certificate, so that we can actually cross the border both ways, because it would suck to get most of the way through the drive and then not get over the border. Now I just need to look up where we need to get a ferry, what it costs, and make sure I've got the money to do this.... I better have the money to do this, I've been looking forward to it for a long time.

Counting

Well, apparently I can't count. The points for our tournament in Seattle were posted on NAFA's website, and Pallo only has 17 points from the tournament, which means he didn't get his first title yet. I'm pretty disappointed, but know it was nothing he did that kept him from getting the title.

On the other hand of things, I got an interview for working at a humane society for tomorrow, so I'm pretty excited and nervous for that. It would be awesome to not have to piece together multiple part time jobs and hope I made enough money by the end of the month for rent and such.

Flygility

Today I discovered flygility, which is exactly what it sounds like, a combination of flyball and agility. Instead of just having 4 jumps to the flyball box and back, there can be jumps, tunnels, contact equipment, basically anything you would see in agility.

New Zealand seems like the only place where it is a sanctioned sport, but it looks like a fun thing to practice and make flyball more diverse and interesting to the dogs sometimes.

I'm debating going out tomorrow (if the weather smiles on us) and setting up a course with a tunnel instead of the middle two jumps... I wonder if that would confuse Pallo too much, or if he would enjoy it. It might even be the key to getting Koira jazzed back up about flyball.

And so I started blogging

First I guess let me introduce my dog beasts, as they will likely end up being the main content of this blog.

My oldest dog, Koira is about 2 1/2 years old, and I've had her since 8 weeks old. She was being given away in a Craigslist posting for free puppies up in the Portland area, and I fell in love with her martini face and bat ears. She was an adorable puppy that I just couldn't resist.

My little bat eared dog has grown up to have normal sized ears, but does retain her martini glass face shaping, setting her apart from most tri-colored dogs I've known.

We started flyball a year ago, more for me to have a sport with my dog than because Koira wanted something to do. Generally she is pretty content laying on the couch all day, as long as she gets a chance to get out and run.

I now have a less than great view of our starting training techniques, but I believe that is something pretty common with people when training their first dog for their first dog sport. It takes the training process to learn how to properly train, and I may have ruined my first flyball dog while learning myself how flyball should work.

We used lots of props in front of the box, including a cone and jump, and started by forcing the dogs up onto the box while running by it at a very wide angle. Often our knees were used at this point to help nudge the dogs up onto the box. The ball was introduced quickly, and always used as the reward. We trained wide, sloppy, low turns, and basically didn't know any better.

After nine months of training, we entered our first tournament. It was bad. No box turns were in evidence, and Koira was running around the jumps on her way back every single time, unless she bobbled the ball. She never left our lane and always came back to me, but that's about the best I can say about that. Basically, we weren't ready.

Despite our fail at the tournament, I went home excited about flyball. So, what else was there to do but to go out and get... another flyball dog. A height dog, of course. And it just so happened that the local shelter had this thing in as a stray, up for adoption that Monday.

Yup, its a bad picture of a funny looking corgi mix. This is actually the picture animal control had up of him, and it is, as you can see, not very flattering. Admittedly, not very many shelter pictures look amazing, but this is still one funky looking dog.

In any case, I called in to the shelter, and had them measure this dog at the shoulder, and toss him a tennis ball to see if he was interested. They told me he measured 14 inches, and was nutso about the ball. I went in to meet him, bringing Koira along as well, and left with a flyball height dog prospect. He was predicted to be between 8 and 12 months, so I called it middle of the road and officially made him 10 months old, making his birthday April 1st.

I adopted Pallo at the beginning of February, and after he was neutered and rid of a huge load of round worms, we started a CGC obedience class and flyball practice at the beginning of March. And I realized I had gotten lucky with this one. He was a natural at flyball, and a fast learner in obedience. Being highly food motivated helped at CGC class, but at flyball, that ball was all that mattered to him. So I trained him to tug.

Pallo the Viking (as he is registered with NAFA) earned his CGC at the end of a single 8 week training course, though I am sure he had little or no training before that. And then, just one week ago, only three months into his flyball training, Pallo ran his first tournament. And ran clean in all 15 heats that he ran.

He still looked like a goof the whole time though. I don't think anything will ever make this dog look noble, or agile, or graceful, no matter how well he can actually move.

So then we have now. Pallo earned his Flyball Dog title at this past tournament, and had the rest of our team run as well as he did, he would have earned more than that. He is still in training and is gearing up for a trip to Canada in June (partly for flyball, and partly because I have never been up there). Koira is retraining her box turns the other direction, and while she is doing really good with that, we are taking a break from flyball for a while. She gets bored easily.