Good Friends, Good Food=Good Times

Thanks to Suzy and Stephan for throwing a fabulous get together. It was really a great mixture of people and the food was great. I had a great time. I love being able to share time with all my friends.

Red Dawn Duna What a Good Boy Am I

The dog show didn't quite go as well as we hoped but Duna and Christine represented the Red Dawn Clan well today. Duna took Reserve Winner's Dog. Basically second place out of nine dogs. Christine did a great job showing Duna, He looked terrific going around the ring. Let's just say that the judge wasn't partial to our type dogs though. Last week Fritz took Winner's Dog and Best Opposite Sex over three specials. Today he was last in his class. Go figure. Anyways, we are back for more punishment tomorrow. Let's hope the results are a little better.

Dixy-Where Does the Energy Come From

Dixy is definitely my energizer vizsla. It is no exaggeration to say that she can go hard non-stop for hours. Today we went out to Hastings Island and as she usually does, she found a tennis ball. In order to try and tire her out, I use the water to my advantage and make her swim. She loves to swim and it uses a lot more energy than just running. Lucky for me. I only had a little over an hour today to exercise the dogs so, I had to use that hour effectively. The funny thing about Dixy will do the most unexpected things. Today, for example, I threw the ball and, as she always does, she leaped into the water to get the ball, swimming as fast as she could. Rather than turn around and swim back, she went up the other side of the levy, ran down the road, ran across the bridge and back to me. She did this even though she loves to swim and it would have been a lot shorter route. She is just a goof.

Boy Dog Behavior

This is my sweet boy Grady. He is a little over 2 and a half years old. You couldn't ask for a sweeter boy. He knows his place in the house (girls rule). I will preface this by saying, I have never owned a male dog before. I own three girls so I am unfamiliar with the male behavior. He has been acting pretty silly lately (the last two weeks). He chases Dixy around and acts very amorous with her. He licks her ears, bites her neck, and yes air humps her. Dixy is spayed and 4 and a half. It makes me laugh really. He is so persistent. That is until Dixy has had enough and tells him off. The interesting thing is that he only stops briefly. It is like he has a short circuit with this lesson. The funny thing is that he doesn't even think about behaving like this with Sara (his mother who is also spayed). I am really fascinated with the differences in their behaviors.

Feedjit Flag Update

Here is the update. We have hits in four continents: North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia; eleven countries; and twenty states. The bumper stickers are in and on my car. Anyone interested enough to want one let me know. I will send it to you-free.

Free To Run and Play

Well I finally got the staples out of my stomach and I am free to play! My mom thought it would be cute if she took pictures of me before I went to the backroom and when I came out of the backroom. Me, not so much. But she does love me, feed me, take me on vacations so her nerdiness is a small price to pay. All in all, I have a pretty good life. Okay, back to the tale of having the staples taken out. As you can tell from the photo, I am not too keen on this process. Even though they are really nice to me, nothing good usually comes for me here. I know, I know, ultimately they always make me feel better. That's not the point! Hmmm, what is the point? Nevermind. Once it is all said and done, I am always dragging the vet techs to get back to mom. It was no different today, as you can tell from the pictures.

Mom took the other pictures to show the other creatures that live here. There were the two fuzzy creatures. They are not in the least bit intimidated by me. That frightens me. Then there are the exotic fish that are beautiful. Mom can watch them for a long time. I can only watch them for so long. Then I get bored. What's the point. Sorry again, I need to stay focused. And finally, there is boa constrictor. Mom couldn't get a good picture so the sign tells the tale. Finally, the last picture shows me on my first run since the surgery. FREEDOM!

All kidding aside, I want to take a moment to remember all the folks lost in the 9/11 attacks. As someone who works in the financial industry, we knew a lot of the folks who perished that day. We also know folks who, for whatever reason, were not in the buildings when they normally would have been. Thankfully they made it. Let's hope that, we as a species can start to find better ways of dealing with each other, That is my hope,

Lunch With Tom and Patty

Met with my fellow ex-Schwabbies (actually Patty is still a Schwabbie). Hadn't seen them for awhile. We had a little bit of a spirited political conversation. I guess that is to be expected given the time and circumstances around this election. I've know Patty for years. I used to audit her team. Tom was a co-worker. He has a wicked sense of humor. It was fun. We also had a good time catching up. We agreed to continue to meet periodically for lunch. Let's keep it up you two!

Sights in San Francisco

I thought I would give those of you not living in San Francisco a flavor of some of the sights in the city. The picture of the shoeshine stand was taken as the vendor chased down a European Tourist who took a picture. As you can see from the sign, it costs a dollar. Shortly after, he chased me down. It was worth it. The others are just images I thought were interesting.

New Red Dots-Update

Seems we are getting a little traction. New flags (red dots on the Feedjit Map) are popping up everywhere. Let's keep it up. Remember, there is no requirement to comment (although I would love to have a hello from all). The biggest challenge will be Antarctica. Now let's get even more flags.

Thanks for playing.

Sara Tells Her Tales of Woe

As you can see from the pictures, I still have to wear this funny collar and I still have the staples in my stomach. Mom took me to the vet's yesterday. I was pretty excited. I thought I was getting the staples out and then we would go for a walk. Well, no such luck. They said they wanted to wait the full 14 days before they removed them. Something about wanting to make sure I was completely healed. Whatever...I am ready to run. I am sure I am driving my mom crazy. I can't help it though. I have been very good for ten days. I can only contain my energy for so long. After all, I am a sporting dog and was bred to hunt all day. On top of that, it isn't easy seeing the other dogs leave with mom for their daily walks while I am left behind. No matter, once I get these staples out, I will run the others silly. I have a lot of pent up energy to use.

New Goal-Make the Feedjit Map All Red

This may sound silly but I have a new goal to make the Feedjit Map (located in the upper right hand corner) as red as possible. Each red dot identifies a blog hit location. I would like to see how far-reaching the hits can be. I think it would be cool to have hits from every continent. Currently there have been hits from Europe, Asia, and of course North America. Wouldn't it be cool to make this world a little smaller by having a bunch of people be a little connected through the blog. Instead of "Six Degrees of Separation from Kevin Bacon" it can be Six Degrees of Separation from Red Dawn Vizslas Blog. So your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to pass along the blog address to people across the country and world and ask them access the blog to add a hit location. Let's see how red we can make the map.

Want to clarify-I want to turn the map red in color only. It has nothing to do with making a political statement. Trust me on that one.

Thanks

A Good Day for the Red Dawn Vizsla Clan

Today was a good day for the Red Dawn Vizsla Clan. Red Dawn Mr. Fritz took Winner's Dog, Best of Winner's and Best Opposite Sex. Fritz only needs one more point for his Championship. His brother, Red Dawn Grady's All Wound up took Reserve Winner's Dog. I guess the judge was consistent. I am looking forward to getting all of the boys finish. They are all close so hopefully by the end of the year.

Turning the Big 5-0-Post Script

What does someone do when turning 50? Glad you asked. Seems like most of the time people mark this birthday with some significant event. Maybe a long planned backpacking trip, a big birthday bash, maybe even a long cruise. Well I chose to mark this event by getting a new tattoo (see the picture above). I couldn't think of a better image than dolphins. I love the ocean and dolphins are just cool, intelligent creatures. I had it put on the back of my calf since that will be the last place that will wrinkle on me. I have to say, it hurt like heck but it was worth it. I love it! I guess the beauty of turning fifty is that I don't worry what anyone else thinks about it. That is definitely a change for me. Besides getting a tattoo, it was a relatively quiet birthday. I did take a drive along the river with the pups in the evening. It's a pretty drive.

I received a lot of really cool cards but I wanted to share the above two with you. Each one of them expresses how parts of me feel. The Leaping Lemur card expresses how happy I am to have this life and loving were I am at this point in time. The second card my give you some insight into how I got to the Leaping Lemur card. So I need to thank my family for helping me become a more "interesting adult".

Thanks to all for remembering my birthday and thanks Staci and Sylvia for sending the flowers. As you can see from the picture, they are beautiful.

Advantages of 100 Degree Weather

One of the advantages of daily 100 degree weather is that it forces me to get out of the house EARLY to take the dogs for their walk. I decided to get out early enough to get a few pictures of the sunrise and also some of the surrounding area. Once out on the walk, the dogs really had a chance to stretch their legs. Hopefully that will keep them a little calmer throughout the day and I can relax and read my book. These pictures were taken with a Nikon coolpix camera. It is hard to always carry a big digital SLR.

50! Really! How Did This Happen

Okay-so I am reaching a milestone tomorrow and will be hitting the big five-0. I thought I would share a couple of goofy pictures of myself with all 5 of you who read this blog.

I guess I am officially middle age. One of the things that means is that I have been around long enough to see fashions come and go and then come back again, sometimes not too happily (can you say skinny jeans?). I have seen a lot of technology changes (from Atari Pong to Wii) and, unfortunately, continued devastation to various animals and lands (Polar Bears and the icecaps). Now that I have reached this milestone, I am starting to feel more comfortable in my own skin. I am starting to realize and embrace that I have a creative side to me. I love that I am able to write this blog and try my hand at photography even if I am not great at it. That wouldn't have been enough even a few years ago. If I couldn't excel, it wasn't worth doing. Now I do it enjoy it. Period. I plan on continuing to nurture the different aspects of who I am. I only wish I didn't have so many wrinkles. :-)

One Reason Why We Live in Northern California

Today was just a spectacular weather day at the beach. It was about 75 degrees, no fog, and just the slightest of breeze. I took Dixy, Grady, and Jasper to Ft Funston at about 7:45am and then met up with the Kate, Walter, Susan, Eddie and the rest of the dogs at 9:00. The only downfall of the day was that Sara had to stay home and Colvin kept her company. Prior to meeting up with everyone, I took the dogs down to the beach and walked for a bit. It was so peaceful. Something about the rolling waves and the quiet makes for a really tranquil time. Of course there were the assortment of dead carcasses. Jasper found one particularly rotted and smelly one which he rolled in for a good five minutes. Boy did he stink. I figured I would get him in the water to get the smell off prior to returning him to Kate. I did a pretty good job of it really. He chased Dixy in the water quite a bit. Got most of the smell off and I was happy. That is until we walked back and he found it again. Well, unfortunately, Jasper was returned smelly. :-) It was really an enjoyable day.

UPDATE: I can see that Sara is definitely feeling better. She has a ways to go before she is able to romp around but the pain seems to be subsiding.