Swiss Lick Swissies

Wordless Wednesday

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010 | Indigo | No Comments

Tags: Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, Indy the Swissy, Swissy

No fence!

Monday, June 7th, 2010 | Beowulf, Indigo | No Comments

I must tell you about all the fun this weekend. We’re having a new fence put in this week, so the old one came down on Saturday, and the new posts were sunk in concrete. They need to dry for another day still, so we have no fence right now. Which means that we have to take Indy out on a leash, and she is not always quick about doing her business. That, and she’s extremely interested in the other yards she can see. I can’t say I blame her – those yards have dogs, and she’s never seen them before. Lucky for us, Beowulf can go out off leash. If he bolts, we can catch him without even jogging. He’s old, you know?

The absolute best part of this whole deal is that it rained on and off the entire weekend. Let me tell you how great it is to go outside with your dogs in the rain at 5am on a Sunday morning. It is freaking fantastic.

That’s all for now.

Tags: Beowulf the Basset, Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, Indy the Swissy, Swissy

GSMD National in Springfield

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 | Indigo, Litter Mates and Swissy Friends | No Comments

Yes, the National event was last week. Yes, I am just writing about it now. Yes, I am hanging my head in shame.

The event was held in Springfield, Illinois at the fairgrounds. Because I have a few things coming up that require me to take vacation, I wasn’t able to make it for the entire week. That’s ok, though. I didn’t have any dog to show, and we haven’t been competing in any working events. (Yet.)

Indy and I drove down on Wednesday night and made it early enough to see some of the Top 20 event. The building was quite warm, and the area outside was very wet and muddy from all the rain they’d had during the week. We stayed for a little while and spoke to a few people, then headed back to the hotel.

Getting into the hotel room for the first time (with Indy) was rather interesting. I had already carried our stuff into the room before I took the last load (computer bag, purse) and the dog. Well, we got to the room, and Indy decided she didn’t want to cross the threshold. She braced herself on the ground, pulled, and was out of her collar. As she ran around the parking lot freaking me out, my hotel room door was wide open with her leash and collar on the floor. In hindsight, I should have picked that up first and then hauled arse to get Indy, but I wasn’t thinking too clearly. I just reacted as I was worried about cars in the lot. We played chase for a bit. I caught her by the scruff once, then lost her and caught her again. My (cheap but favorite) Crocs sandals were muddy and ripped. Yup, ruined. But I did finally get her in the door after much embarrassment and perhaps a bit of anger. Go figure, nobody helped.

After things calmed down a bit, we wandered around the grounds and ran into a few people. We met a cute Entlebucher named Kip. Yes, I want to steal him. And I learned that his breed is pronounced “entleebucher.” I still want to steal him.

The next morning, we showed up for the “how to” weight pull event, and then watched the weight pull. I’ve never been able to make one of the Lake Shore Club pulls before, so this was great. I was able to try on a harness and determine what size Indy wears. I wanted to get her to pull the big cart since we’ve tried tires and other smaller things, but I didn’t want to do it during the event because I thought that would stress Indy a bit too much for her first time. Well, that never happened. I’ll get her at the next Lake Shore event…

It was a lot of fun to watch the event. I took some pictures (to follow) and pretty much passed Indy around to strange people as much as possible. Well, I guess only one of them was actually a stranger to her. She did very well. A wonderful Swissy named Bridger (check out the skijoring article for more about him and his human), won the event pulling 4009.8 pounds, which is over 35 times his body weight. It was fantastic watching the two of them–they are a great team.

So, I did take a few pics. The lighting was poor, and I have been too lazy to touch them up. My apologies. But I don’t want to wait any longer to post, or it just won’t happen.

Here’s Monty in the “intro to” part of the day. They start them off on a smallish tire to get them used to the harness and having something move behind them.

Indy and her nervous ears posing.

Our friend Tank resting between pulls.

People will do all sorts of things to get their dog to pull.

Moose Moose talking back.

Here’s Louie and his human. Brian is trying to convince Louie to pull. It was Louie’s first weight pull event.

Here’s Bridger and Teresa after the record breaking pull. I cannot take credit for this picture…

That’s it for now! Thanks for reading.

Tags: Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, Indy the Swissy, Swissy