Quiet Friday at the Shop

Fridays are usually pretty quiet around here. It's a good time to get a lot of what I call "thinking" work done. That's the design work for the Golly Gear website. I keep telling myself it's good for my accountant's brain to turn things around and do something creative. Use the right side of my brain instead of the left - or vice versa! It's not easy and not what I was trained for, but I have to admit, it's lots of fun! Writing product descriptions isn't something I saw myself doing in college. Turning pictures of our dogs - and our customers' dogs - using the products we sell into web pages is very rewarding.

Life with Ceilidh isn't getting any easier

Ceilidh is a dear, sweet Boston Terrier girl. She's also, as has been mentioned more than once, not an easy dog to live with. Her vet says she's not wired right - she described Ceilidh to a friend of ours as living life "double time."

Her two speeds are full and off. There's no in-between with Ceilidh - she's either running a mile-a-minute or crashed. She never just "hangs out."

And it's not getting any better. Ceilidh turned 8 years old in April. And she was diagnosed with a fairly serious heart condition in the last year. And now, as her most recent development, she's terrified of thunderstorms. And fireworks.

Needless to say, this weekend wasn't much fun for her. The official fireworks celebrations were bad enough - we can hear three of them from our house. What was even worse was the neighborhood idiots shooting off illegal firecrackers until the wee hours of the morning. Every time we thought it was over, another one would BANG right outside.

Ceilidh was beside herself. She couldn't settle, couldn't find a good place to hide, refused to be comforted and was generally miserable.

We felt so bad for her - and there was nothing we could do. We tried some herbal/holistic thing, but it did nothing. Because of her heart medication, our pharmaceutical options are limited. I do know that next year, if we're lucky enough to still have our Ceilidh, we'll ask our vet to figure something out. I'd rather she spent the holiday knocked-out sleeping than quaking in fear. Poor baby.

Happy Independence Day!

How great is this! A long weekend to celebrate our nation's birth! The Cubs are in town. Not much rain in the forecast. Steaks ready to grill. We'll set up a couple of jumps and the weave poles in the back yard and do a little agility with Dax and Ceilidh. Golly and Roc will get in the way - that's what they do! Catch up with friends. Sounds good!

We'll miss you, Gunny

When I started doing agility with Dax, quite a few people came up to us and said we had to meet Gunny - the only other French Bulldog most people knew doing agility.

Finally, in January of this year, we did get to meet Gunny and Andrea, his handler & "mom." It was one of those wonderful moments in life - we connected instantly and had a wonderful time getting to know each other. Dax wasn't quite sure at first, she gets a little jealous and I was so enthralled meeting this agility legend (Gunny was 11 years old!) that I forgot and made too much of a fuss over Gunny for Dax's liking. But she warmed up after a bit and we had a great time. Andrea was kind enough to give me some agility tips and Gunny was just wonderful.

I'm sure you know what's coming - Andrea lost her wonderful Gunny to some horrible stomach ailment that she did name, but I can't remember. It doesn't really matter what took him from us. It matters that he's gone, we miss him, and Andrea's heartbroken.

You can see more pictures of the amazing flying Frenchie on Andrea's Flickr stream here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bullmarketshogun/

The Girls Like it Hot!

This is our fifth day of 90 degree heat here in the Chicago area. We had below-normal temperatures all spring, but but did summer start with a bang! (Literally - thunderstorms the day before summer began knocked out our power for a few hours at home.) Dax, Ceilidh and Golly all love to lie in the sun and bask! Silly girls - this is the last thing any of them should be doing. French Bulldogs are prone to heat stroke, and Ceilidh and Golly both have heart conditions that make basking kind of dangerous. So I've been carrying Dax and Ceilidh into the house - that's how I've been getting my bicep work in. Golly can be persuaded into the house most of the time with a yummy treat!

She did it!

Dax and I have missed a few weeks of Obedience training, between me having the flu, moving the shop, and then Dax eating rat poison. Yesterday evening we went for the first time in a month. I didn't really feel like going - but I knew I should, so I did. And I'm so glad I did! It's so easy to forget how much fun it is to get out and do stuff with your dog.
It helps, of course, that Dax was having fun, too. We've been working on her Retrieve on the Flat with her dumbbell and she's really getting pretty darn good at it. We still have to work on the end of the exercise - she's not crazy about coming to front and sitting while holding her dumbbell, but I'm trying to keep it fun.
She does love jumping, so I thought I'd try a Retrieve over the High Jump. And she did it! First time, every time! Who knew! We're discovering the bits of obedience that Dax loves.

The joy of moving

We're back!
And if I'm ever tempted to move again - please someone remind me that it took six days to get internet access again. I'm amazed at how much the world has changed in the last 10 years. Now, a day without the internet feels like the dark ages!
Of course, we had some literal dark ages lately, too! Two power outages at home in the last four days. The first one lasted a couple of hours and was understandable, we were in the midst of one heckuva thunderstorm. We weren't happy about it, but we understood.
This morning was just bizarre. Clear, sunny skies and all of a sudden the power goes out at 6 a.m. Weird, but at least in the daylight you can find your toothbrush.
Hiring movers was an interesting experience. They came. They dumped everything into large boxes. They hauled it to the new location. They dumped everything on the floor. (We thought ahead and actually had tarps for stuff to get dumped on.) That was 12 days ago.
Today, at last, everything is off the floor. It's nowhere near as tidy as we'd like, but we can find everything with minimal effort, and the leash spaghetti has been untangled.
It feels really good to be getting back to a semi-normal routine. And we're going to love the new space - we have room to breathe!