It has been an embarrassingly long time since I’ve updated this website, but since we are just home from a really good National, I guess a brag is as good a post as any to start to get caught up. I hope to have some photos soon to post as well – stay tuned!

Our National week got off to a great start at the ASFA lure coursing trial, where both Jonah and Seven finished 3rd in their respective open stakes. Jonah ran particularly well in a deep competitive stake, finishing behind the eventual BOB winner and her litter brother, both of whom were FTEs. Seven needed 13 points to finish her Field Championship and her third place finish in her stake put her over the top in style.

Seven and Jonah celebrated their third birthdays on the Monday of the National week and got the very best birthday present: normal cardiac echos! Later in the week they both had normal CERF exams and their brother Hokum also passed his cardiac exam with flying colors.

On Friday, Tiercel won the racing dog class and Seven won the racing bitch class. What a thrill! Both went back into Best of Breed on Saturday. While Tiercel was excused fairly early, Seven made it down to the very final cut and while she didn’t make it into the final ribbons, it was a real thrill to be in there until the bitter end. Best of all, although she can be a difficult and impatient show dog (she really would rather be racing!), she gamely hung in there, tried her very best, and worked hard for me for the entire long class. I was very proud of her!

I showed Jonah in Bred-By Exhibitor dogs, owner Mary Downing showed Hokum in Open dogs, and I showed their mother Lark in the Open bitches class, and while none of them placed in their classes, they all showed beautifully and received many compliments.

We had a great week in Eugene and are already looking to next year’s national in Maryland. I was inspired by watching the obedience classes so I signed Jonah up for obedience class in hopes of having him ready to participate in the triathlon. We can’t wait for 2014!

While the thought of our impending Pacific Northwest winter isn’t quite as foreboding as the evocative “Stark words” from George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, the title seemed somehow apropos to describe how bereft the whippets and I feel to be stuck at home without any more racing until spring. But we’ll take advantage of the down time to recuperate and rejuvenate and get caught up on some much needed housekeeping, both literally at home and figuratively on the web!

I am so proud of the Chili x Lark pups’ early careers. Seven in particular was such a superstar and made me so proud! In the first three months of her career, she consistently placed in the top ten and the points at the CWA race meets and in the placements at the CWA matches, quickly racking up 10.5 ARX points and all 5 DPC credits. She is a CWA match winner and placed consistently enough in the matches to secure herself a spot in the year-end CWA Conformation top-10. It will be so hard to wait for six months until the first local CWA meets of 2012 for the first opportunity for her to finish her ARX title.

Jonah, while not quite the superstar on the track that his sister is, improved his performance with every meet and finished the year running a high C/low B grade, coming very close to the points on a few occasions. I look forward to his continued improvement with more maturity and experience.

I did a few quick updates to the website today:

• I updated Seven’s main page with her recent accomplishments and added new 18 month photos to her stacked photos page. I finally got around to creating her ads and running photos pages too.
• Same updates as above  to Jonah’s main page, stacked photos, running photos and ads pages.
• The Litters page was updated – no I don’t have any immediate litter plans but I get a lot of questions about whether or not I have puppies available so I just wanted to add some clarity to that page

I have many more new photos to add, so stay tuned for much more. Luckily the dearth of events in the winter means I have a lot more free weekends and a lot more time to kill, and one of my goals over the long winter is a complete overhaul of this website. I may also hit a few shows here and there, but mostly we’ll be biding our time dreaming of racing in the spring…

I have been extremely remiss in keeping my website updated this year. My only excuse is that I’ve had a redesign/reorganization in mind and I kept thinking I might as well wait to do updates until I have time for the complete overhaul, but now I concede the utter ridiculousness of that premise! What was I thinking? I’m sure by now I’ve forgotten a lot of the big news I could have been sharing all along, but I’ll do my best to get caught up. For those of you on Facebook, I do love the convenience and ease of the one-liner updates possible there, so if you haven’t already, feel free to find me on Facebook to keep up with all the breaking news!

All Grown Up!

Chili x Lark kids at 16 months: (l-r) Jonah, Seven, Skeena, Hokum. Photo courtesy of Stephanie Honey-Gillespie.

The Chili x Lark pups are now young adults and several have made their debuts in performance events with spectacular results!

Seven’s Big Adventure

Seven in the lead in the #2 jacket

Seven made her CWA debut at the July 24 RFF meet in Abbotsford running a grade B score to earn her very first top 10 finish! She finished 3rd in the match behind two bench champions to earn her first DPC credit in her very first match. Her next weekend out, at the August RFF meets, she finished just out of the top 10 on Saturday.

On Sunday, she came back strong and surpassed my every expectation by finishing 8th in the meet and splitting the bottom two sets of points for her first two points towards her ARX. As if that was not enough, she showed like a star in the match and earned her second DPC credit under judge Jeanette Dorsey (Treadway), earning race champion points and the equivalent of show champion points the same day – a dual purpose breeder’s dream come true!

Based on the strength of that finish, although I had been successfully resisting temptation, at the last minute, I decided to fly to the CWA National in Milwaukee with Seven over Labor Day weekend, and boy am I ever glad I did! She handled the flight and every aspect of the trip with her usual unflappable cheerfulness, and raced her little heart out! On Saturday, boxed in with tough grade A spoilers in her races, she finished mid-pack. I couldn’t have been more proud of her strong performance under the circumstances, but she made me even prouder in the match, where she showed like a dream and made it down to the final cut of eight in a huge entry of around 30 beautiful athletes.

Seven winning her final race in Milwaukee by a nose. Photo courtesy of Ule James.

On Sunday she came back stronger than ever with a first and a second place finish in her first two races. Responding to the tough competition, she put in the race of her young life in her final race, winning by a nose in a thrilling upset to vault into 9th place in the 54 dog meet to earn the bottom ARX point. There just aren’t words to describe the incredible thrill of seeing her respond to the challenge and give everything she had to give to pull off such a close win over competition I never thought she would be able to beat. I will never forget it!

Jonah

Brothers head to head: Jonah #6 and Hokum in the lead.

Jonah made his CWA debut on July 23 and now, with three meets under his belt, is proving to be a clean, focused and very enthusiastic grade C racer who has improved his meet score with every meet. While he can’t quite match his superstar sister’s speed, he makes up for it in enthusiasm!

Jonah has also done well in the CWA matches too, with a DPC credit in his very first match. Very much his mother’s son, he absolutely loves the show ring and tries so hard to please. We are going to have a lot of fun together racing and showing!

Echo

On the other side of the country, Echo made his CWA debut at the June RnRWA meets in Ohio, earning his first top 10 ribbon despite scratching after three programs with a sore shoulder. Congratulations to his proud owners Carol and Steve Weber for his successful debut! Echo will make his lure coursing debut this fall, and I can’t wait to hear how he does.

Hokum

Hokum in the ring at LMWA with owner/handler Mary Downing. Ringside candid courtesy of J&E Szabo.

Hokum made his racing debut at the August RFF meets, running a very consistent high C score and gaining valuable experience. Like his mother, brother and sister before him, he finished 2nd in the match for his first DPC credit in his very first meet! Thank you Catherine O’Brien (Curas) for the nice placement and very positive comments about Hokum and his brother and sister!

Hokum also made his debut in the Canadian show ring with his owner Mary Downing of Whimsy Whippets, with impressive results, winning Reserve Winners Dog at the LMWA specialty in July under whippet specialist Chris Abraham.

Lark

Lark, proud mother of all of the above, made a few rare appearances in the show ring at the summer specialties, bringing home yet another specialty reserve at the Cascade Hound Association show in July under breeder judge Wendy Gay (Grand Prix). She has both majors and will continue to make occasional appearances in the show ring looking for her last singles towards her championship.

Other Updates

I’ve done some updates:

• Seven’s main page and stacked photos
• Jonah’s main page and stacked photos
• Hokum’s main page and stacked photos

I have many more new photos and updates but I’m running out of time today so those will come soon, I promise!

Hokum was entered in his first show this past Saturday at the Whidbey Island KC in Monroe, WA, and was Winners Dog for his first point handled by his owner Mary Downing of Whimsy Whippets. I’m very proud of this handsome, sweet and willing boy who tries so hard for his mom, who has him trained to perfection. Congratulations to Mary, and thanks also to her son Chris who handled Hokum in winners when Mary stayed on her bred-by male, and to photographer Les Korcala of Dog Action Fotos for these nice ringside candids.

When I wrote the last post on Sunday and said it would be a few more weeks before I would be able to get more updates done, I was forgetting today was a holiday. So, I do have more updates sooner than expected!

Today I added this year’s Halloween photos to Ellie’s candid photos. This girl knows how to dress up and I really look forward to this time of year when her Halloween photos show up in my inbox.

I also found and published the Lark litter’s “lost album” – 9 week photos taken the last week before the pups went off to their new homes. I was so busy at that time that it took me weeks to even get those photos downloaded from the camera and I just realized I never did get them up on the website. So here they are at long last! Obviously the pups have all changed and grown so much since then but it it so much fun to go back and look at all these photos and remember our last week together. Jonah, in particular, was unspeakably cute that week, and I’m sure he was really hamming it up to the camera in an attempt to persuade me to keep him. Well obviously it worked!

Finally, I finished individual pages for a few more pups from the Lark litter: Skeena, formerly #1, and Duke, formerly #2. Only three more to go! Padme, Fiona and Zara coming soon!

At long last, signs of life on the blog!

I spent most of the weekend playing long overdue catch-up on the website. I did a few tweaks under the hood, and I uploaded many new photos that I’ve been saving up for months to add to the dogs’ photo galleries. You can see new photos on the following pages:

Ringer’s candid photos
Wren’s candid photos
Kestrel’s stacked photos and candid photos
Branwen’s candid photos and running photos

I also finally got started building out the individual pages for all the pups from this year’s Lark litter who recently celebrated their half birthday! How time flies. Unfortunately I didn’t get all the pages finished, but you can now view pages with updated photo galleries for Jonah and Seven, who live here at Serendipity, for Hokum, who lives just on the other side of town with my friend Mary Downing of Whimsy Whippets, and for Echo who lives clear on the other side of the country with the Webers and uncle Brimstone and cousin Ella. Unfortunately I ran out of time this weekend so the rest of the pages for Skeena, Duke, Padme, Fiona, and Zara will be coming very soon. I’m busy next weekend but then will have plenty of time over the next little while to finally accomplish this long overdue task.

I am getting bored with the site’s current design and the green color scheme and am beginning to mull over ideas for a radical redesign, so stay tuned for more exciting updates over the next few months!

Hopefully the first of many!

Jonah and Seven were entered in their first official event last weekend, the conformation match at the CWA National in Aldergrove, BC. He started the day by winning the 3-6 month puppy dog class, beating his brother Hokum. Seven was 2nd in her big class of 3-6 month puppy bitches. Jonah and I went back in for Best Puppy and we won! What a thrill! He showed his little heart out and ultimately lost Best in Match to Logan, a very nice adult champion male owned by our friend Ellen. But I couldn’t be more pleased with his first big win. Grateful thanks to judge Karen Lee of Surrey Hill whippets for the honor!

I had hoped to get more updates done today but the website had a profound but thankfully temporary meltdown and I spent too much valuable time trying to get it up and running. More soon!

Boy does time ever fly when you’re having fun! I guess I was deluding myself when I thought I might be able to reclaim some time once the puppies were all off in their new homes. I don’t know how this could possibly be, but I seem to be more busy than ever! I have lots of news and new photos to post but no time to post them. However, since I get regular inquiries about whether puppies are available, I wanted to post a brief update.

There are no puppies available from the Chili x Lark litter. Except for the two puppies who stayed here, all the others are firmly settled in their new homes, and are doing wonderfully. I am so grateful to have found such wonderful homes for these special puppies! Thanks to all the new owners who have been so generous in sending updates and photos; I am saving up photos and will get the website uploaded one of these days when I have a little bit of time.

Stay tuned for more info soon!

Eight weeks is a very busy age! In the 10 days since my last update, the puppies have had multiple visitors and several outings to friends’ houses. They had their first shots. They were all BAER tested and all have normal hearing (yay!). We’ve had mixed weather but the puppies were able to spend four full days soaking up the sunshine outside in their safe and secure outdoor pen on my back deck, and had lots and lots of wild playtime in the big yard!

All this activity means I’m late getting my website updated. However, to make up for it, I have lots of new stuff to share this week! There are THREE new photo albums in the litter’s photo gallery:

• Seven week stacked photos, obviously taken some time ago but it has taken me some time to get them off the camera and posted.

• Eight week stacked photos. This was a very problematic photo session. The puppies were not cooperative for their Auntie Mary Downing and my camera was even less cooperative for me. I only managed to get one decent photo from the entire session so I decided to switch and try stacking the little worms myself and give the camera to Mary instead. I thought it would be easier for her to videotape instead of shooting stills. With the exception of Seven’s photo (at right), the rest of the 8 week stacked shots are stills captured from the videos, so they are pretty low quality although the puppies were pretty well behaved for me. I know this is the crucial age for evaluating conformation, so I also included short video clips of each puppy stacked below the stills on the photo album, and while they are also not great quality, they might give a better idea of what the puppies look like. FYI, the sound tracks for these clips are muted, so don’t think there is something wrong with your speakers when you only hear silence. You will probably wonder why there are no photos or video of fawn boy #2. Unfortunately he sprained his leg a few days ago and was very uncomfortable during the photo shoot so rather than torture him we decided to leave him alone. However, he looks pretty much the same as he did in his 7 week photo.

• Eight week candid photos, all shot out in the yard on a nice sunny day. During their play sessions the puppies are not just exercising and exploring their world, but learning social skills from the adult dogs. In addition to Lark and Kestrel, who is by far the very best puppy auntie ever born, grandma Wren is now allowed out with the puppies during playtime. She mostly ignores them but will occasionally play with them or more often will don her grumpy grandma hat and very appropriately put a cheeky puppy in his or her place.  Ringer has also been granted puppy playtime privileges but I have to watch him like a hawk because he likes to smack them around, playfully of course. Although Ringer is 8 years old now, in his brain he is still 8 weeks old and he doesn’t realize he outweighs them by 400%. But Kestrel is their very favorite play buddy. She is so wonderful with them. She brings them toys and invites them to play by dropping toys on their heads or shoving them in their faces. Today I laughed when she brought her aerobie frisbee (shaped like a ring) over to one of the puppies and gently draped it over her neck. What a goofball. The puppies absolutely adore her and  worship the ground she walks on. Kestrel has played this role for two generations of puppies now. She is spayed and will never have her own puppies but she is the very best puppy socializer I know and I really enjoy watching her interact with the little ones.

Last but not least, here is this week’s fun video, actually shot a week ago when the puppies were a few days over 7 weeks old. I actually managed to get it uploaded to youtube the next day but it has taken me this long to get it on my own website. Enjoy!

To make up for last week’s appalling dearth of cute candid photos, today I took a whole bunch of action shots of the pups playing like wild animals out in the yard during a brief break in the rain.  My camera is not a fancy digital SLR really suited for action photos but it still managed to do a decent job of it, and I’ve added a new album to the litter’s photo gallery.

I cannot believe the puppies are already 7 weeks old and in just a few short weeks will be heading off to their new homes. I enjoy every second of raising a litter and will really miss the little buggers when they’re gone. They are getting so big and so active now, really interacting with their environment with wild abandon, always making me laugh with their crazy antics. They are out in my smaller side yard three times a day for their meals, potty breaks and playtime, and then get at least one longer play session in the big yard. Branwen would absolutely love to play with them in the yard but she is just too exuberant and rough with them outside, so her playtime with the puppies is strictly restricted to in the house and for the most part I’ve only allowed Lark out with them in the yard. But the last few days I’ve left Kestrel out with them too. Interestingly, she shows absolutely no interest in playing with them in the house, but she loves interacting with them in the yard, and unlike Branwen, is amazingly gentle with them. I guess it is good that they have an indoor friend and an outdoor friend.

This week’s video was actually shot at the beginning of the week, when they puppies were about 6.5 weeks old, but it has been yet another busy week and it took me a few days to get it uploaded from the camera and onto youtube. It features the puppies playing in the yard: running around, chasing the lure, and generally wreaking havoc, and believe it or not, all in a light rain, which you really can’t see in the video. The puppies are pretty immune to the rain at this point, which is a good thing because otherwise they’d never get out to play. Unfortunately, they do eventually turn into real whippets who disdain the rain and are quite sure it will cause them to melt. Enjoy this brief immunity while it lasts…