A Different Walking Video

Jan 302009
 

Many bloggers have been sharing walking videos, led by Khyra.  Today, even though it is not “Walking Wednesday,” we wanted to share a special walking video.

One firm rule at Chez Herd is that every dog is walked every day.  On the weekends, the walks tend to be longer hikes on some of the various trails that we are blessed with in our area.  But during the week, we walk a road near our house.  For most of the Herd, this, coupled with wrestling matches in the yard, is enough to burn off week day energy.

But young Miss Cheoah is still in her teenager / late puppy period.  Which means she has energy to spare.  Since she roughly resembles a kangaroo bouncing around the house, we had decided long ago that we needed to drain more energy.  Watching the Dog Whisperer one night, we knew what we had to do.

Yep, Cheoah is a treadmill master:

Treadmill

 

Couple of notes. First, the leash you see in the video is not connected to anything, it is draped across the bar. In the picture, it had just fallen (and I picked it up right after the picture).

Secondly, yes the bear on the table is holding a sign that says, “Spoiled Rotten Dogs Live Here.”

So, we offer today’s walking video:

Fifth Picture Tag

Jan 282009
 

Our good friend Maverick tagged us in a game going around the internet, so we decided we needed to play.  The rules, in case you missed them, are really simple - Open a file folder, click on the fifth folder and then the fifth photo.  Post the photo and describe it.

First, we had a minor challenge.  We are Mac people.  So we use IPhoto which does not really use folders, but we decided to go with events.  That allowed us to pick the following photo:

Sleeping

On the left is Mama Bear Nikita, so named because she adopted young Natasha and taught her how to be a Siberian (i.e., made her into the Queen Natasha the Evil we all know today).  Before Natasha, Nikita never showed the first maternal instinct at all.  And, at the age of 10 years old, we asked her to suddenly take on this 8 week old puppy fluff.

About 3-4 weeks after Natasha came to live with us, a raccoon entered the yard during the night.  Nikita immediately defended “her” puppy and killed the raccoon, a very good thing since it was probably rabid.  When I let Natasha out of her crate in the morning to go to the bathroom, she walked out, saw the raccoon, and looked in total awe at her Mama Bear.  Hero worship was born.

A week or so later, I called Nikita and she can walking over to me.  Hanging from her neck was Natasha who had clamped on and was dangling like a pendant.  Nikita’s look at me was one of, “Please remove this obnoxious object that follows me everywhere.” 

Another week or so went by and we were sitting in the den.  Natasha was, surprisingly, acting like a total pain.  Nikita turned and corrected her, firmly but in a very appropriate way.  Nikita looked at me for guidance and I simply stayed quiet.  You could see the dawn in her eyes – “Ah, I am supposed to teach young grasshopper!”

And the mothering began.  Natasha mimicked everything Nikita did and learned tremendously from her.  When Nikita passed away 3 years later (2006), Natasha became the queen of the pack.

So this picture makes us smile because it shows how Natasha copied Nikita in every possible way, right down to laying in just the exact way on her bed (wrong front leg hooked, but learning).  Close enough to follow her if Nikita moved, but out of reach of that correction when it came.

Ok, so we have lost track of who has and has not played the game, but consider yourself tagged and go do it!

Very Different Working Breed

Jan 232009
 

We have shown you the Sled Dogs and the Herding Dogs from Winterfest, but we saw a very different working breed while we were there as well.  

We were able to get really, really close to him.  We were able to sniff him.  Qannik tried to pee on him.  He seemed very friendly and all of the kids loved coming up to him.  And he was apparently really important because a police officer was with him, but he was not the usual type of police dog.  He even helped direct traffic as you can see in the picture below.  But no matter how hard we tried, we could not figure out what breed he was.

Police Dog

So what is your guess?

A Different Working Breed

Jan 222009
 

We showed you yesterday some Siberians (and others) doing some pulling. Today, we feature a very different working breed. Though I know very little about herding dogs, I thought this demonstration at the Winterfest was fascinating:

And, by the way, so did this Siberian fan:

Siberian Fan

Serum Run Re-enactment Finish

Jan 212009
 

Our visit to Winterfest was a blast and you saw yesterday that we saw some sledding dogs.  We also got to meet Iditarod veterans Bill Borden and Rodney Whaley.

This is a large video file (sorry to non-broadband users) of about 3 minutes, but it is a video of the finishers in the Serum Run Re-enactment – a demonstration run.  

 

P.S., the whining dog you hear in the background of the video is Cheoah, who has her own “special” way of letting you know that she is bored and wants to do something different.  It is one of her “endearing” qualities.

Winterfest

Jan 162009
 

It is a perfect, balmy Siberian day here at Chez Herd, as evident by our hu-dad’s weather station:

Temperature

Two obvious things you learn about our hu-dad from that picture.  First, yes he is one of those “got to have every cool gadget” type of guys. And, second, yes he is one of those “cheap, don’t turn the heat up too high” type of guys.  But this post is not about him.

Anyway, so what do you do in a heat wave like this?  Why go camping of course.  Yep, we are packing up the S-RV and headed off for a weekend.

But this is not just any camping trip, is it Kodiak?

Kodiak

Nope, because we are going to visit our friends at Siberian Husky Assist, the rescue that brought Kodiak (then called Champ) into their fold and eventually got him here to Chez Herd.

Every year, they hold an event called Winterfest in Damascus, Virginia.  Rodney Whaley, the first Tennessee musher to run in the Iditarod will be the key speaker at a dinner on Saturday night, but they also do a Serum Run Reenactment and, on Sunday, they run the Blue Ridge Dryland Challenge, an actually dog sled (cart) race in the Southeast U.S.!

In addition to lots of Siberian Huskies and Alaskan Huskies, there will also be Dachshund races (which we watched last year drooling and our hu-dad, for some odd reason, would not let us get close to) and Border Collie herding events.

This is also the event last year where a photographer took this picture of Kiska, Qannik and Kodiak which gave us the idea for the header on our website we use now.  The picture appeared for a while on the Damascus visitor’s website (which, I noticed today, has a link to this video of the trail used):

HeaderOld

So we are off for a fun weekend and for Kodiak to see his foster family.

Walking Wednesday

Jan 142009
 

In a tribute to our pal, Khyra, here is our own version of Walking Wednesday (filmed on Sunday) as demonstrated by Natasha, Qannik and Kiska. Notice that the walk is interrupted by a really good smell:

And what happens when the dogs come to a tree that has fallen across the trail. They gracefully leap over it. Er, Kiska. Leap. Come on. Leap.
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