Spring has sprung!

It's officially spring!!  

This means the roses are blooming--

This tree is showing off it's yellow balls that smell super good!

The blue bonnets are blue bonneting....

This thing is blooming...

Mulligan had his birthday on the first full day of spring!  My rolly polly boy turned 12!  

12 years young

All the dogs got bones and with the mild Texas weather, they were supposed to be good puppies and eat them outside.

 Except for Bunker, who decided to take his to the couch...

Where's the clean up crew?

Happy Spring Y'all!!

Nationals 2013 "recap"

Well, it's over.  The National Agility Championship for 2013 is done like my cooked chicken.

What's truly amazing to me is how totally different this national was from the one in 2011.  It was in Oklahoma verses Virginia, but that's not what I mean.  It's how everything went, and how I feel today.  That's what's totally different.

Two years ago, Cally made it to the challengers round (like the semi finals) and Bunker did super well but didn't do well enough to make the final rounds.  Those spots usually go to border collies anyway.  This year, Bunker had a qualifying round in Time To Beat and picked up 7 points, Cally took 7th place in Jww.  Those were our only qualifying rounds going into Sunday's runs.

The top dogs were a pretty close pack and I knew that going into Sunday's hybrid course.  This means that it was time to run "balls to the walls."  Partially because we had nothing to lose, but mostly because that's what is super fun.  And my dogs rock.  We didn't qualify on Sunday, Bunker's teeter got called and he shot through an off course tunnel, Cally took a bar and took the same off course tunnel.  But it was FUN and we both left the ring happy.  Ok, the dogs were happy and they wanted their cookies, but whatever.

This is the amazing part that gets me: Two years ago, after nationals I was exhausted.  I felt like I'd been hit by a truck.  My entire body ached and I could have just slept for days.  This year I feel great.  In fact, I'm totally inspired.  My mind is turning and churning and I have a bunch of training "what if's and why not's?" rolling around in there.  I'm super excited to see where these ideas take us in our training and I'm thrilled to finally be mature enough to know that our runs were perfect even in their imperfections.  Just like Arnold says on the Dick's sporting goods commercial.  We ran our runs, nobody else's and I won't let the lack of placement or ribbons determine the worth of my dog.  They are amazing.  Thank you Tulsa for such an awesome experience!

Living on Tulsa Time...

The Prickett Pack has arrived in Tulsa! We're here for the 2013 AKC National Agility Championship. Bunker and Cally will be running this weekend. We qualified and went back in 2011 when it was held in Virginia. It was awesome.

Of course back then we also practiced a couple of times a week and took weekly lessons to make certain we were ready. This time around-um not so much. Practices have been few and far between. In fact,half of my equipment isn't functional right now.

Back in 2011 I'd sworn off caffeine and ate salads en route to make certain I was in tip top shape to run the pups. This year I'm skating on Chick-fil-a, Starburst jelly beans and diet Coke.

I'd be lying if I said that I don't care how the dogs do this year. Who enters a competition but doesn't care how they do? Ok, probably somebody but not me. I care. But I think my standards have changed for this year. This year my prayer is that I handle my dogs well and make good handling choices. The chips (not bars!) will fall where they may, but then I can walk away from this with joyful memories of two labs and one handler having the time of their lives in an agility ring.

Wish us luck!

The missing chicken mystery....

Mr. P was out of town the other night and I was hungry (or bored, or just plain like to eat) and I had a whopping ONE chicken breast left over in the fridge from the night that Mr. P decided to cook AND do the dishes.   I won't brag, but I'm so lucky.  Oh, and him doing the dishes was a direct result of me pointing out that because he didn't line the pan with any aluminum foil there was now enough crud baked on to keep a ship barnacle cleaner busy for a decade.   I decided to put that chicken breast out of it's misery living in my fridge and serve it up as my supper.  I'm super kind that way.

Besides the fact that I can bake practically ANYTHING, I admit that I'm not the best thing that's ever walked into a kitchen.  Not even second best.  Although I like to think that I'm so dang cute (HA!) that my looks instantly improve any room-including the kitchen-they don't necessarily make the food taste good.  A girl can only go so far with that.  (I've tried)

Anywho....  My first thought was to slap ol' Fog Horn Leg Horn on the grill.  Easy. Peasy. And just the amount of clean up that I like to have. (aka-almost none)  The problem was that while the grill physically made the trip from Minnesota, it didn't really fare that well.  In fact, it now has some "extra" pieces and doesn't really want to function in even the barest sense.  So no chillin' while grillin' for me.

My second choice (and the one I totally went for) was to crack out the counter top grill thing that we used to use fairly often back in Minnesota.  Kinda like a George Foreman grill, but the grill plates pop out and totally go in the dish washer.  (Not the Mr. P type of dishwasher.  The other kind, silly.)

awesome grill thingy

 After I slapped my chicken on into the griddle thingy, I busied myself with super important things like Facebook and Pinterest and watching silly cat videos on YouTube.  It occurred to me that I might be burning my precious dinner eats, so I decided to check on my clucker.   This is what I saw:

Chicken MIA

I am not kidding.  (as if I'd kid about supper/food-sheesh)  I freaked.  Do you want to know what my first and only thought was?  I thought I'd cooked it so long it disintegrated.  Seriously.  I thought it just went straight to chicken dust.

And two seconds later it fell from the top plate of the griddle.  It was totally stuck to the top plate.  And I DIDN'T cook it to smitherines. HA!  Take that evil non-baking gremlins of the kitchen!  Cooking success!  It was good.  So good that I shared it with the begging pups.  (I refuse to acknowledge the fact that they'll eat just about anything.  I don't need that kind of rain on my meat cooking parade right now)

chicken cookin' evidence (and I garnished it with a knife!)

So the moral of the story is this: if you're missing your chicken-LOOK UP!!  

And you thought this blog never gave you any useful information....   :)  

Western Dressing, but not Western Dressing.

Here is Texas there are a ton of people that dress in western fashion.  In other words western dressing:

How am I going to find a horse to match this?

BUT (there's always a but) they don't have Western Dressing (a common Minnesota staple).  Seriously.  How is this even possible??  I checked all the stores and online and there isn't a bottle within 50 miles of me.  Not funny.  I brought one bottle from the great state of 10,000 lakes.

 But when that was getting low, which didn't take long because I eat a salad with Western dressing almost every day. I started to panic.  I found I could buy it online but it was like $16 a bottle!  What??   I sent an SOS to my mother who hoofed it to the store and sent me three BIG bottles of Western dressing!!  Whoop whoop!!  I'm all stocked up again!!  All's well again in the Prickett household!