Winter Wonderland

Totally. All last week it was snowy (but the university didn't close b/c they didn't want to have to cancel the students' finals...grrrrrr.) Then over the weekend, we got freezing rain. There was 1/2 inch of ice over the two inches of snow, and when the dogs ran out onto it, and their 16 paws broke through, it sounded like thunder!

Last night we lost power for about 5 hours. But it was kind of fun, seeing how resourceful we could be. Lots of candles, the fireplace and lots of wood (courtesy of summer before last when DH downed the 8 apple trees that crowded our yard), our habit of buying batteries at Costco so we always have a lot of all sizes, all of our camping gear--including 2 propanes stoves, a propane heater, clothing, sleeping bags, etc., etc., etc. So we had a nice fire going, candles all around, and music playing before we went to bed last night. Almost (note, I said almost) disappointing when the power came back on at 2am.

Here's the dogs playing in the snow. They're all completely puppified by it.

Hmmmm.....

Gee, he reminds me of someone. Let me see...who is it?

Oh, yeah, I've got it!

DH gets credit for initally noticing the similarity in appearance.

(Not necessarily similarity in personality!)

Death to Stuffies!

Wyatt says, "Life is good, I have all the toys."

Sheila says, "My ass, you have all the toys. Must DESTROY!!!"

And Wyatt must be content with the deflated leftovers.

Sheila says, "My work is never done."

Holiday Strategy

While it's not actually working very well (I'm eating everything in sight), my food strategy for the holidays is to make sure I have plenty of happy low-carb snacks on hand, to counter the temptation of all the high carb snacks that seem to ooze out of the woodwork this time of year. To that end, I've been making:
*low carb eggnog,
*sugar-free hot chocolate (1 1/2 T cocoa powder, 1 1/2 T splenda, hot milk),
*low carb crackers (I use almond flour instead of flax meal b/c flax meal tastes like shit.)

My own creation is the Low Carb Almond Joy. This would also be good to make at Halloween, when all those nasty candies invade your home.

Start with a sugar-free macaroon recipe, make the macaroons into little oblong shapes:

Add a raw almond to the center of the macaroon; reshape if necessary.

Bake as directed for the macaroons, until wonderfully golden brown.

Now for the fabulous part. Melt a bag and a half of dark (semi-sweet) chocolate chips. Get the good ones, not the crap ones. Once the baked macaroons are completely cooled, dip them in the chocolate. Set on waxed paper to cool.

Wait until completely cooled to eat them. Heh. Riiiight.

Now, if you try this and aren't successful, it could be that you need a Constant Kitchen Companion, like I have. Sheila is my little Helpy-Helperton.

Wy-Fi and the Cheerleaders

Wyatt and I finally got to be a part of the Portland Trail Blazer half-time show demo. Our Flyball team is asked to participate a couple of times a year, but I've never been able to make it before this...and I've always desperately wanted to go.

Wy-man thought the cheerleaders were the BOMB.


It was the Weds. before Thanksgiving, and the show was sold out--which meant there were 20,000 cheering fan for us! Also, it was just before Oregon's big "Civil War" football game (OSU vs. UofO), so the organizers asked if the Flyball teams would dress up in Civil War gear. (Yes, not being from Oregon, when I first saw that request, I thought, "We're supposed to wear blue and grey?" No.....) OSU colors are orange and brown, UofO are green and yellow. We complied. The crowd went wild.

He was such a pro. Some of the dogs were a bit put off by the crowd noise (it really did sound like thunder...good thing Sheila wasn't there.) But Wy-Fi didn't even notice. He saw the ball at the end of the lane, I said the magic words ("reeeeady, ready, GO PUSH!"), and he was off.

I honestly don't know if I'll ever have another dog as ab-fab as Wyatt. He is sweet. He is quiet. He's a machine. He's a horse, while being graceful and cat-like. He's totally predictable (albeit, given that I'm human, sometimes only in retrospect.)

Flyball Kees

Call me psycho, but I'm taking another run at getting Raff to be a Flyball dog. This has been an on-again/off-again, work in progress since fall of 2005. We've worked through a lot of issues, and when I last had Raffy at practice, he was able to do a full down and back cleanly, as long as no other dogs were around. Not exactly tournament-ready. In the presence of other dogs, he gets distracted and crosses over to the other lane, or chases the dog he's supposed to be passing. I had started working on overcoming those distractions--and was making some good progress--only to see that his box turn was going to hell. At that point, I backed off and pulled him from training...for like, the 5th time in his life...to concentrate on Agility instead.

But I have a dream. There are only 37 Keeshonden to have ever been registered with NAFA. There are currently only 2 Kees active in Flyball. I want Raff to be the third. I think it would say a lot about how wonderful and driven he is, and it would say not-so-bad things about me as a trainer, too. I also would love to be able to bring Raff along with me and Wyatt to tournaments and practices--for a real purpose--because he really can play. (Not that Wyatt would like it so much, but he'd get over it.)


So I'm thinking of taking another run at it. Each time I've tried, and then backed off, I have made better progess than the time before. Maybe I need to give up the "all or nothing" (i.e., complete commitment OR completely quitting), and just look at this as a series of advances...knowing that with each try, I may have to back off and take a breather before making the next run at it. Eventually, with that philosophy, Raffy and I might push over the top!

This run will consist of working in the backyard, starting from one jump only, sending Raff while at the same time adding the distraction of throwing Wyatt and Sheila's balls/Wyatt and Sheila fetching their balls. We've been doing this all week, and this morning Raff actually maintained his focus and successfully completed these short runs 11 out of 12 times. I'm not upping the ante at all this week, except for to move the position of the box to different places in the yard. But no further distance challenge until he's equally successful in all places, and with Wyatt and Sheila running on either side of him...also with no degradation of his box turn.

After that, in each successive week, we'll try adding more distance. Perhaps only one foot at a time, depending on how it goes. When he's doing the full 51 foot distance with success in all criteria, THEN I'll start taking him back to practice...where we'll close the distance to one jump only again, and work our way back to the full course slowly, and only when he's able to be successful with dogs running on either side of him.

After that, we'll work on passing.

Or, somewhere in the process, I'll fizzle out again, and have to wait for the next burst of Flyball Kees Enthusiasm to revive my drive.

Meanwhile, for inspirational purposes, here's a video of one of the Kees currently running in Flyball. He is Casanova, who runs with 2 Lane Highway in MD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KIMnhNormw (his team's run starts at 1:14).

Low Carb Snickerdoodles

Another happy low carb baking day. These are Low Carb Snickerdoodles from a recipe on Recipezaar.com. They're quite tasty, I'm happy to say, except that my almond flour seems on the verge of going bad, so there's a bit of a tainted taste, dammit. Not too bad...not enough to keep me from eating these bad boys. Still, it's annoying. It's a new bag of flour, and I've kept it refrigerated, so it must have been old to begin with. Fred Meyer doesn't keep the almond flour in the refrigerated section. Guess we'll be buying it elsewhere from now on.