Video Thursday

Because it's Thursday and because it's the video of the day....

Bunker and Moxie the Springer we were puppy sitting for a week and of course a special appearance of Don the Couch....

Boxing Day

Happy Boxing Day!!  Boxing day has a weird history and I'm not sure why it's even printed on US calendars anymore.  But, who still uses a  paper calendar?  We have one hanging up, but it's from the year 2010.  No lie.  It's still stuck on December 2010 and I look at it every day.  It doesn't have boxing day listed on that one.  I checked.  Of course I designed that one with custom puppy pictures, so I'm thinking Boxing Day wasn't one of those strange holidays I needed to list.

We had a wonderful Christmas.  We're so blessed.  It turned out to be a wonderful time with wonderful people and a house full of wonderful puppies.  (hmmmm who went overboard on the "It's a Wonderful Life?")  My parents came to celebrate Christmas here.  My brother also came with his Golden Retriever.  Add our three pups and the two that we're puppy sitting for a couple of weeks and that makes six dogs and five people.  Do you have any idea how much dog hair that is???  I have to say, my parents exercised extreme patience with this house full of four footed furry ones.  I'm impressed.   I suppose it helped that Cally didn't eat my mom's breakfast this time....

Bandit and Simba

Cally and Skid

Bunker and Mulligan

We enjoyed  some wonderful presents (people are totally supporting my new running habit), a few games of Smear and wayyy too much food.  (Honey baked hams should be outlawed)

After the people and one fur kid returned to the cold tundra of the northland, Mr. P volunteered to watch the pups while I got some things cleaned up.  I think everyone was tired because this is what I found....

Can you find the five pups and one person?

 We had a nice evening talking with the In laws in Ohio (gotta love Skype!)   and hanging by the tree enjoying our wonderful family.  

We pray you had a wonderful Christmas too!!  

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!  I pray that you are able to enjoy the blessings of the season and remember that you don't have to be rich to have a rich life.   Thanks for reading this silly little blog!

The Night Run and Presents for Me!

Since it's the whole Winter's Solstice thing today, and my brother's birthday (Happy Birthday Bro!) I thought I'd mention something I like to do but really don't get to do that often.  Eat Chocolate.  HA!   Just kidding.  That happens daily.  I'm talking about a night run.

We've been blessed this winter with some super duper nice temperatures.  This means very little snow.  This means dry roads.  This also means I can run outside.  Yeah me!!  And since the other day my running coach had me running a sweet three miles after work and since Bunker still needed a walk,  I thought, "hmmmm, two birds, one stone-I'll do a night run with the Bunker!"  Bunker loves to run with me but we don't go together that often because, a) I can't keep his pace and b) when I let him run off leash I worry that he'll get hit by a car.  But, the moon was big and the weather was great, sooooo I thought I'd give it a whirl!  

My night running outfit:   (complete with goofy grin)

All you male readers out there, try and resist my hot-ness.  

And Bunker's running outfit:

He wore his Nite Dawg LED collar.  Other than that, you can't see him one bit.  He's sneaky that way....

Any-who.  It was a great run.  Three miles of running bliss and Bunker is still very alive and well.  The only complaint, and I mean, only complaint (besides the darkness) was that my head lamp kept fogging up all my hot breath.  I don't like to admit it, but it was actually hard to see the road at times because of my humid, heavy heaving.  That's kinda annoying when you're huffing and puffing like a freight train.  Maybe Santa will have read my Christmas list that I gave Mr. P and a pair of these will magically appear.... Maybe.  

Onto other news: 

I already got a Santa gift!!  Liz from Southern Charm was my Secret Santa and she sent me some awesome loot!!  (I totally opened it, as I'm not good with actually waiting until Christmas!)   Thank you Liz!   Hop on over to her blog and get tempted by someone who actually makes real food.  Whoa.  That's so cool.  And see how good it looks too!!  And super thanks to Jill for hosting the gift exchange!  I don't know how she organized it all, but it was amazing.  I'm in total awe!  

Those are not just socks.  Those are Champion socks.
How totally fitting...  :)

Did you participate in a gift exchange this year?  What do you use on your night runs?  Do you run with your dog-on leash or off??

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

At the Hounds for the Holidays trial, they always have a Christmas decoration contest.

Several years ago, we picked up these crates that we could use when going to shows.  They fold up super small, about the size of one of those bag chairs.  But when they're set up, they look like this.

I've had several comments from people who think these look like some kind of space age crates or something. I've tried to tell them that my dogs are really secretly working for NASA but the people never seem to believe me.   And ever since we started going to Hounds, and ever since I've had all this time to think of crazy things while running a bazillion miles while training for my upcoming half marathon,  I started thinking that maybe they kind of looked like Christmas trees.

You don't see it?   Maybe with some green fleece...

And maybe some ornaments, garland and lights...

And don't forget the star. That was an experience in glue and glitter.   We'll probably be finding glitter all over my kitchen for the next twenty odd years.  I'll have to make up a cool story involving Vegas showgirls for the Christmas company that notice all the glitter from here to kingdom come.  Bunker was black and glitter gold more than once during this creation and it made Mr. P question my sanity.

Glitter Head Bunker

So I kinda got them all figured out and we stuffed them in the car (the dogs, the crates and the covers) and we set them up at the Hounds trial.  

Yours truly setting up the crates...

From left to right:
Bunker, Cally and Mulligan
(but you probably could tell that)

Needless to say, we didn't win the decoration contest.   These people did and they do the same thing every year-(yawn): 

Mr. P says we got robbed, but  I don't care.  I was there when they announced the winner and tons of people commented, "Did you see the Christmas tree crates? Those are cool."  And on the inside I was thinking, "Doggone it, people like me!"   I even saw a lady taking a picture of them, I'm not really sure why, maybe we'll end up on her blog someday...

Gone to the Hounds

Whoop Whoop!!  We're back from one of my most favoritest trials EVER.  Hounds for the Holidays.  Three agility rings each able to host 330 runs per day.  A whopping potential of 1,320 runs over four days.  It's mass chaos.  It's also a total freaking blast.

So, in no certain order, here are some of the awesome features of the Hounds trial that made it worth having Mr. P drive us 5+ hours!  (Gotta love that Mr. P!)

We were able to sees our Wisconsin friend Ro and got to see her run her super duper fast Labbie that is Bunker's half sister.   Team Zoe had some amazing runs.  The kind that make you ooh and ahh and say "Uff Da!"  They're  an awesome team no ifs ands or butts about it.

The puppy part of Team Zoe

The shopping.  LOVE the shopping.  Different vendors, different stuff, same retail therapy!  Didn't qualify?-go shopping.  Won the class?-go shopping.  Notice the theme??

Bunker and Cally got new reflective AND glow in the dark jackets for the extreme cold.
Notice how they make their eyes glow too?  AMAZING!

The food and friends.  There is ALWAYS a group dinner somewhere.  This time it was the Cheesecake Factory.  Didn't consume any calories that night.  Nope, not one bit!

This group had a reservation as Mr. P's harem...

And of course, running with the pups!  That's always a highlight.  We managed to squeak away with three double qualifying days.  That's huge in the agility world!  Go Prickett Pups!!  

They don't just hand these out for showing up!

We're on a small break now until mid-January.  Then we'll go play some more!  Soon I'll post some pics of our crating set up.  It rocked.  Like totally R-O-C-K in the USA, rocked.  

And-I finally got my secret santa blogger gift in the mail!!  Who is it going to?  Is it you? or you? or you?

Christmas Belch

You've all seen it.  You might even be one of those people that has a home that resembles it.  A home  in which Christmas threw up.   Decorations everywhere.  Sometimes I have a house like that.   Not this year.   I don't have time to support the Christmas vomit this year, so its more like a Christmas belch.  Today while Bunker was quiet after our five mile run and Cally was still a bit groggy from her "sleepy pedicure" I decided to drag up the tree and a couple of decorations.   

Don't they look awesome!?!

I was going to do some strength training today but decided that dragging our tree upstairs would amount to the same thing.  After all I can't carry it.  So it's more like a hug and drag the box.  That should count as some kind of workout for sure.   

Our tree is a Martha Stewart tree.  I don't care if she's a convicted felon, her trees rock.  We bought it a billion years ago on a black Friday.   I learned at that time that Christmas trees look a lot smaller in the store than they do in your house.   A lot smaller.   And there is some assembly required with this thing.   

It came with a spare branch or do we have someone else's branch? 

I don't know how long it took me to set it up, but by the time I was finished I'd listened to the entire Jessica Simpson Christmas album, Gayla Peevey's I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas, and part of the Elvis Christmas album.  For those of you that like to psycho analyze people based on their music choices, have fun with that one.

Last year I decided we should have a themed tree this year.  Since my high school colors were black and gold, and Mr. P's college colors were black and gold and our dogs are, well, black and yellow (it's close to gold) wouldn't it be super cool to have a black and gold tree?   So after Christmas last year I snatched up a bunch of gold ornaments for this year’s tree.  The only snafu with the themed tree plan is that it's uber tough to find black ornaments.  Well it's tough to find them when you're cheap frugal like me.  I found one on clearance.  One.  So then I decided I'd make my own and took a bunch of cheap silver ornaments and tackled them with black paint and black glitter.   Let's just say it's not recommended.  It's a paint and glitter nightmare.  AND they're not tree worthy.  Really.  So we ended up with an all gold tree this year. 

Not bad, but I won't be quitting my day job to decorate trees!

So the tree is up as well as a couple of other decorations and maybe, just maybe I put a couple of snowmen in the guest bathroom.  I figure it balances out the fact that there isn't ever any toilet paper in there!  

Stay tuned for our Hounds update!  Try and keep your pants on until then....  :)

Christmas threw up on my head