Tons of fun!

Tons of fun literally going on around here!  ha ha!  Ava is now up to 60 lbs at 14 weeks old but she feels like a ton!  I'm really enjoying her.  She's such a sweet heart.  We've been working on her training and I figure I need to get her going on breaking her into her leash training soon or she'll be dragging me since now she weighs more than half of what I do.  Amazing!  So we got out the leash and did a little work.

 Everybody was clean so they were given the cherished living room privileges..  Whoopie!  Talk about running around like a chicken with your head cut off.  It was pretty wild! 

Where's that weiner dog??

 

After some craziness we settled down to do some training.  Ava is looking pretty good!  I'm looking forward to it warming up so we can start going to open ring and going on PetSmart field trips!  Yes!  But for now, we are stuck in the living room.  :-)

Lookin Good!

Watch the fingers!!

 

Ultimately we all crashed and fell headfirst into the bed!  Funny! 

Cyclone Dog Show

As you know, my original plan was to take the entire winter off from dog showing but I couldn't do it.  I missed it too much.  So we signed up for the Cyclone Kennel Club show in Des Moines.  Oscar hadn't been out for awhile and I was nervous we both might be rusty so thought a show in February wouldn't hurt anything before Oscar heads for Ohio this spring.  We stayed at a very dog friendly hotel in Johnston.  Oscar loves the hotel life!  It was a nice place.  Oscar still snores something terrible though.

The first day I thought maybe it would be cool to have a professional handler take Oscar in the ring so we had a handler take him on Saturday.  He looked pretty good but we still got 2nd.  Phooey!

 Oscar wasn't so sure he liked this judge.  We did a little training with our friend Mark to try to avoid this situation but even Mark isn't as big as this guy was.  Oscar wasn't so sure he wanted this judge touching him..  But he did stand long enough for the judge to finish his hands on evaluation.

Red Ribbon!

 My first thought was it would be great to have a professional handler show your dog..  I thought it would be more relaxing just watching but it wasn't the case.  I was a nervous wreck!!  It was worse standing out watching instead of actually being in the ring showing your own dog.  I couldn't take it!!  So I decided Sunday it was me and Oscar again!  After Oscar's class, we did relax and finishing watching a few classes that were going on.

Oscar has this horrible habit of not eating when we travel.  I'm not sure what his deal is...  He just refuses to eat, so we went out and got him a Burger King Hamburger on Saturday night.  Yep!!  He can't resist one of those..  We retired early Saturday as our classes started again early Sunday morning.

We patiently watched the dobermans show for awhile until it was our turn. 

Stand handsome Oscar!!

 

Good job Oscar!

Ultimately we still got 2nd place on Sunday as well but it was a lot more fun and a lot less nerve wracking!  :-)  Oscar did great and it was a good weekend.  Thanks for joining us for our dog show!  I'll see ya when I see ya! 

Smiley!

I don't know what it is...  Ava always has a smile on her face.  She's one of the happiest little creatures I've ever been around.  Doesn't matter what's going on, she's got a smile for you!  :-)  Saturday we spent the day trimming nails, bathing, doing some training, and then we got some living room privileges that aren't given very often. 

51 lbs of adorable :-)

175 lbs of handsome!  :-)

Let us in!!

Looks like the weiner dog is in trouble!

Nope!  The weiner dog is smart!  :-)

Belly rub!

Then of course after all the excitement it was nap time!  Over and out til next week!  Big dog show!  Send us your good karma!

To Grandmother's house we go! :-)

Kelsey will be moving into her new apartment soon so we headed to Quimby to load up some furniture for her.  I thought I'd take advantage of the travel time to get Ava a little windshield time.  Helps getting them used to traveling when they are 40 lbs as opposed to 140 lbs..  that's for sure!  So we jumped in the truck and headed south!

Are we there yet?

When we got to Grandma's, we got the trailer loaded up fairly quickly.  Grandpa wanted pizza so we ran to Washta for a supreme...  And then spent the rest of the afternoon watching little miss center of attention...

We even got in some practicing.  Looks fabulous doesn't she!!

I decided maybe I needed another show dog..  Hmmm..  Maybe Katie would work...  Mom's poodle mix...  Katie!  Come here!

You look Ma-va-lous darling!

A star is born!

After all the pretend dog show, the girls decided to blow off a little steam before we headed home.  Katie and Ava had a great time romping around in the living room!

poodle 1...  Mastiff 0

poodle 2....  Mastiff 0

We hung at Grandma and Grandpas for a couple hours after lunch then headed home.  Gotta run some errands to get ready for the Superbowl tomorrow!  I'm like a lot of people..  Game doesn't matter so much...  it's all about the food and the commercials!  :-)  I do love Superbowl Sunday though.  See ya when I see ya!  :-)

Monkey see monkey do!

Sleepy Saturday morning at the ranch.  :-)  The dogs spent the morning in their toy box in the kitchen.  Oscar decided on his favorite bone to chew on.  Ava, copying her role model decided she wanted to do the same.  It was pretty cute.

Bone chewing quickly changed to wrestling.  Lately Dora has discovered that these two are much more fun to wrestle with than Apple so she jumped right in the middle of it and had a blast.  I, on the other hand, was still trying to wake up!

On a different note, Mike surprised me with a late Christmas present on Friday.  He got me personalized plates for the car.  Kinda neat.  Ava liked it too.  :-)