Saturday, November 17, 2007

Friday November 16, NEW CONTEST ON AUTHOR ISLAND

Chance to win a book and a surprise gift.

Read the prologue (at the right of the screen) and answer the questions that are posted on "Author Island." http://www.authorisland.com/index.php. You might have to check on the contest section. I'll also need a day or so to formulate the questions. (Uh oh. This entails thinking.)

I went to a dog show tonight in Champaign, Illinois. It was a rally obedience trial and was really a lot of fun. I didn't show my dogs (I'm taking a long hiaturs from dog showing) but my friend Bruce showed two collies. Best of all, Danville's dog obedience lovers came to cheer us on. Rally is an interesting sport. It's great for the dog. Most of them love it. And, it's a great way to bond. Cards are set up around the ring with instructions for the handler and dog to follow. You might start off with "sit." Walk forward, circle 350 degrees, forward fast, normal,
pivot, maybe a side pass and a left about turn (hard because the normal is right about turn) When you get up into the higher classes, they add jumps, walking around filled dog bowls--no, the dogs cannot eat the food. Anything past novice entails the dog working off leash.

I trained and showed my dogs for years. The little sable and white collie "Annie" (on the right) was my first collie and my obedience dog. We went all over together, including Canada and got obedience and rally titles. If you don't know what obedience classes entail, I'll go into it at another time. It's one in the morning, and I'm exhausted.

I will say before I sign off, if any of you have dogs and are looking for fun things to do with them, you might think about joining an obedience dog club. They have agility, obedience, rally practice, fly ball, and a bunch of other stuff I'm to tired to note. Also, you might think about you and your friend volunteering at hospitals and nursing homes. there are several organizations that sponsor this--wonderfully altruisic endeavor.



Oh yeah, then there's Halloween and dressing the part. Annie came as a high society lady. She lost her costume in about three minutes.

Later folks. It's bed time.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

haha!! i loved the idea of your dog annie as a high society lady!!! hope your new release is doing well! :)

Unknown said...

Thanks Anne. I loved that personal guessing game you left on my email that rivaled a seven hundred page novel. LOL

Annie did look cute. The scarf was too slippery and Annie was too slippery for anything else to stay in place.

Stay well.