4th of July Fun

I got a patriotic party collar off eBay for a pretty good discount (which is the only way I could justify purchasing one!) and we went to see Patrick's family in Greensboro, NC for the 4th of July festivities.

Rose the Springer is *very* shy and hid most of the weekend, which turned out to be convenient with two Roses around. Ann has done several levels of obedience with this current pair and is getting into agilty, so her dogs are amazingly well-behaved. Very embaressing when Scarlett jumped on the kitchen table and ate the butter or later when she raided Melva's take home bag and enjoyed some chocolate cake!

The now cakeless Melva:

Before the guests arrived, we took some pictures of the dogs, all decked out:


One more perfect pose . . .

. . . and it was in the crates for the party, so there would be no more food stealing! Rose was beautifully behaved the whole time, but she tends to be overwhelmed by too many strangers, so it was best to put her away as well.

Luckily there were plenty of guests to drown out their sorrowful whimpers and we had the warden, Libby the Cat, keeping an irritated eye on her new charges.

Libby says, "I'm not takin' no guff from them puppies!"

After the food was put away, we took the girls out to play with the kids.

Scarlett, who occasionally pulls like a sled dog on a lead, walked slowly beside 5 year old Morgan. Maybe Morgan can handle her during the CGC test!

Even shy Rose made friends and by the end of the evening was kissing Luke every time he presented his face to her.

I was really pleased with both of them, most of the time. They wandered off and feigned deafness twice when out together in the unfenced in yard, but if we kept one of them hostage in the house, the other would just play in the yard with Stanley.

Rose seemed to enjoy knocking Stanley around to get his toys more than chasing them herself; I guess she just likes the "live prey" aspect of chasing another dog instead of a ball, because she does it at home with Scarlett and Kaiser too. Fortunately, she plays nice when she catches them, even if her chosen target isn't very happy.

I was really pleased with Rose overall though; given her occasional social troubles, she handled meeting TONS of new people, several new dogs (if you include Star and Tara at Margaret's, whom she hadn't seen in a while) and a long car ride with a minimum of trouble or undo anxiety.

Posted by Erin Doyne at 23:17

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