A look back at 2010

I just can't believe 2010 is over in just a few hours!  Where has the year gone??  Guess we've been so busy that it sped by faster than ever!

For as light & fun as I try keep our blog, let me take this opportunity to be serious for a change and thank the powers that be for all the blessings we've had this year in our family.  We are so fortunate to have our health and happiness, and take none of it for granted.

So what all did we manage to accomplish in 2010?  Let's take a quick look back at a few things that stand out as big moments in the year.

There the Flat Brutus World Tour, which has raised almost $750 for FBRN to date.  He traveled to over 10 countries and though most of the U.S.A.  Flat Brutus has been on sabbatical for a while, but maybe he'll reappear this winter.

Where have they all gone to since leaving the nest?

Mason turned 12 years old and is still as much of a big, goofy, happy, healthy guy as he's ever been.  Sure, he's got a couple of lumps, but he's a good ol' boy if there ever was one, and who else could possibly put up with these crazy Frenchies??

Honestly, I don't know how I do it...

We went on a few great trips this year.  First there was the Wild West Earlventure, logging over 5,000 miles in our coach, visiting several National Parks and seeing many amazing things in Big Sky Country and around the Rockies.

Dude!  Watch where we're going, Mason...

...there's a huge mountain right in front of us!!!

Then we headed South this fall to visit the "happiest place on earth," Disneyworld.  It was Carmen's first trip in Big Earl, and she just ate it up (um, literally...)

I simply couldn't help myself.  I thought Georgia would taste just peachy...

Speaking of which, we can't forget Carmen being born and joining our family during the past year.  She's such a wonderful little lady, and is the perfect companion for Brutus!  In addition to matching (and often besting) Brute's shenanigans, Carmen is blossoming into a lovely lady- just after turning 6 months old she was already in the show ring!

Mwuah!  Love ya' big brother!

They grow up so fast!

And last but certainly not least, all Brutus' success in the competition ring - can you believe we earned TWENTY titles in 2010 (10 AKC rally/obedience/agility titles, 8 CPE agility titles, 2 APDT titles)??  I never would have dreamed that my little black bulldog would accomplish so much, let alone in one year!

Hard to believe I did it all!  Just think of all the cookies I got along the way!

And that's only the tip of the iceberg.  There are so things to celebrate and be grateful for as we close out 2010, but what makes it even better is that we got to share all of it with you! It's been a great journey, and we can't wait to take you along again for the ride in '11!

From all of us here to all of you out there in blogland and beyond - 

Wishing you health, happiness, good fortune, and that may you realize your dreams in 2011!! 

What we got Mom for Christmas

Hey everybody - hope you are having a wonderful holiday season!  We had a great Christmas here, lots of wonderful pressies all around.  Mom ended up hurting herself using one of them (more about that later), and since she's kinda laid up, Carmen & I are going to do a post to show you all the cool stuff we got mom! 

The tags on all of these gifts said they were from Dad, but you can imagine we helped him shop!  Without our wonderful taste, he never could have thought of such cool things!

First of all, we told dad to get this super-cool picture - it's a Frenchie blueprint!  How nifty is that?  Good thing that Carmen & I measure up to all the specifications (clikc on the image to biggify & check them ou!!

We also whispered in the ears of some of the family (like mom's step-sister Aimee, who blogs about her human pup, Mayna).  She was able to find two different Frenchie items that mom just loves!

What a great bag for toting along our toys and treats!!

Sounds like a good motto to me!

One more gift that mom got had to do with us, but it certainly wasn't our idea - a new Dyson.  Mom has to vacuum ten times more than normal because of Mason, so we're guessing he's behind this gift.  He's the one that does all the shedding around here, after all.  Just when I'd finally gotten used to the old Dyson, Mason has to go and wear it out from sucking up all his furs all over the place...

That's a Dyson canister vac.  Carmen & I (OK, especially me) were leery about this new appliance from the get-go.  Spent lots of time barking at dad while he put the monster together. 

I don't know...  Got a bad feeling about this thing...

Are you sure you put it together right, Dad??

Mom was really excited about her this new torture device canister vac, and decided to put it to work on Monday.  After only a few minutes of enthusiastic vacuuming (accompanied by enthusiastic yapping from yours truly), mom had to put the Dyson away.  Somehow she tweaked her back really badly by using the stupid thing! 

The bad news is that mom spent the last few days on the couch, missing out on some really fun agilities practices we had planned (you know she's feeling bad when we skip agility!).  The good news is that she is on the mend now, thanks to the great nursing care around here.

We don't have "RN" in the titles after our names for nothing, you know!

Mom's misfortune also gave us lots of extra snuggle time, which Carmen and I both took to full advantage.  Don't worry, we Frenchies got lots of cool pressies for Christmas as well!  Didn't want to share the post with Mom, so we'll be back soon to tell you about all the cool stuff we got!

Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

Wishing everyone a very happy holiday!  Hope you all have a safe, relaxing, storybook kind of Christmas!  

                                                       -Michelle, Brutus, Carmen & Mason

Our Christmas Cards

We did do better with one thing this year: sending Christmas cards!  We were ahead of the game for once.  By Thanksgiving we had already done our holiday photoshoot, and ordered a bunch of custom cards from our friends at CafePress.  All I had to do was address the envelopes, the Frenchies took care of the rest.

Uh, oh.  Looks like mom has another crazy project for us.

Ooooh....  Fingerpaint!!!

Hey, I just had a bath....

Pawtigraphs, anyone??

Carmen was a little tentative to try "signing" her name for the first time.  Of course I chose pink for her color! 

You want me to do WHAT???

Carmen liked the color, and really got into the fingerpaint - literally (look closely at her cheek).

I think it's really my color, mom.  Am I too young to wear makeup??

You might not believe this, but shortly thereafter (and with very little mess) our cards were all ready to go in the mail!

I actually ended up having to order a second batch, as we quickly used up our initial supply.  It seems that Brutus' and Carmen's pawtigraphs were in high demand!

So for those of you who we weren't able to get on our mailing list for this year, here is our actual card:

The dogs have received far more cards than I have, and its been so fun getting something in the mail from our blog friends!  Lots of creative people (and tolerant pups BOL) out there!  

I hope to put up one more holiday post tomorrow (some great pictures I haven't gotten around to putting up yet), but in case we don't get the chance to see you again then....

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Michelle, Brutus, Carmen & Mason

Tinkle bells

Nope - that's not a typo.  Not "jingle bells" - I really do mean tinkle bells!!

See the ribbon thingy hanging down from the doorknob?  I bought this ingenious little gizmo made by a company called Poochie Bells.  Got it over a year ago when I was frustratedly trying to housebreak Brutus.  The idea is that the dog goes and rings the bells when they need to go outside to potty.  He never got it.  In fact Brute was almost 18 months old by the time I could actually trust him not to have an accident!

It was my husband's idea to bring the tinkle bells back out this summer to see if we could train Carmen to use them.  I initially spent a few minutes with the bells and a clicker, easily teaching her to use her paw to bat the ribbon to make the bells ring.  She caught on to that really fast, but wasn't so sure I could get Carmen to make the connection that ringing the bells meant she needed to go outside.  

Let me just say that I completely underestimated her.  I set up a video camera the other day so that I could show you all how good Carmen is at ringing her bells.  In the 45 minutes or so that I recorded, she rang the bells no fewer than 6 times.  Here's a few of her best "notifications" (if you look close you can see some pretty snowflakes fluttering down outside as well).

Not only does she get the concept of ringing the bells, Carmen has since become quite the percussionist.  She rings them not only when she NEEDS to go outside, but also anytime there's something out there she feels like checking out!  I can't sit down for more than two minutes without hearing Carmen's rendition of "Carol of the bells".  And if I try to ignore her, she just gets more insistent, slapping at the bells until I can't take the ringing in my ears anymore!

But there is a WHOLE WORLD out there for me to explore!

So the good news is that Carmen is, and in fact has long been, housebroken.  She's thankfully been more-or-less accident-free since she was 6 months old.  Other than some slip-ups recently that were related to her heat cycle (she ended up with a bladder infection in the middle of it all, ugh), it's been quite some time since I had anything to clean up :)  I feel like putting up one of these signs!

The only bad news is that, in the long run, I feel that Carmen is the one training us.  We snap to attention whenever I hear those *@%# tinkle bells.  They can wake me up out of a dead sleep!  Even though Brutus never got the idea to ring the bells himself, he saunters over to the door when Carmen rings them - guess he figures that as long as she's doing the work, he might as well take advantage of the opportunity to go out (you can see this happen in the video).  Below is a still frame from the video, in case you couldn't see the live action footage.

Leave it to my little brindle brainiac to capitalize on what was supposed to be a training tool and turn it into a luxury.  After all, as a four-month old pup she figured out how to relocate her x-pen (see the "Carmentopia" post I did a few months ago), so what did I expect??  As we say on a regular basis around here, it's just a good thing Carmen doesn't have thumbs - she'd take over the world!!

You say that like it'd be a bad thing....

Crown Classic - Agility Brag!!!

We're back!  What a weekend we had!  I am still grinning ear to ear and can't stop blabbering about it.  Brutus, Carmen and I spent the weekend at the Crown Classic dog show.  Brute was entered in four days of agility, and Carmen got to strut her stuff in the breed ring (thankfully minus the Hot Pants, we don't need them any more!), then tagged along to root for her big brother in agility.  So look out, here comes another brag post, laden with agility speak....

Every December, Cleveland plays host to one of the country's biggest dog shows, the Crown Classic.  Every recognized breed (as well as Canine Partners) were represented in rally, obedience, confirmation, and agility.  It takes the hugeness of the Cleveland International Exposition (IX) Center to get it all under one roof, with well over a thousand dogs on site.

This is the biggest agility trial I've dared to enter, with almost 3,500 runs and international-level competitors in attendance over four days.  The sheer magnitude of the venue was pretty intimidating, and as I walked up to the agility rings to check in and pick up our course maps I wondered what the heck I had been thinking to enter!

 

This was also the first time Brutus and I would be competing in the "Excellent" level, where all the big boys play.  I had entered 8 classes (Open Standard and Excellent JWW each day), so we really jumped into the deep end!  It didn't help that we had conflicts between the two rings, with both of our classes running simultaneously most days.  Biggify the following to check out the schedule published by the agility show committee - don't think I've ever seen anything so complicated!!

As we prepared for our first run, I had SERIOUS butterflies in my stomach!  The course was difficult, but do-able for me and my little bowling-ball of a teammate.  No tunnels in this course, so looking out at the ring was like gazing into a sea of jumps!  Here's the course map:

I put Brutus in his start-line stay & got a good lead-out two jumps into the course.  I released him ("okay, JUMP") and Brutus sprung to life - this is always one of my favorite moments!  We negotiated the first nine obstacles without a hitch, Brutus was on his game and turned smoothly each time I asked.  Unfortunately, my brain fell out as we rounded the pinwheel at #10 - I got disoriented just long enough to have to stop Brutus.  Since he was already on the line to the jump (or as we say, engaged the obstacle), this caused the judge to call a refusal - even though Brutus only stopped to wait for my instruction.  Gotta hand it to the little guy, he ended up clearing a double (spread jump) from a standstill, then continued on as if nothing had happened.  

We finished the course uneventfully, so it was a great run on the most complicated course we'd ever run in competition.  Unfortunately in Excellent, no faults are allowed, so the refusal resulted in an NQ (non-qualifying score).  Oh well, chalk that up to handler error!!  The bulldog did his job flawlessly though, and he was FAST!  Even though we NQ'd, the run gave me confidence that we belonged in the ring at that level, and was still a success in my eyes.

Luckily that first run also got the jitters out of my system, and soon thereafter we put in a lovely Open Standard course.  Our run there earned us our first OA leg and second place in the 12" class!!  Way to go Team Brutus!!  And apparently it was no fluke, as we started the second day of the trial by being the only Exc A dog to complete the course successfully, winning the class and 4 seconds under the demanding course time to boot!!  Biggify the following photo of the class results to see for yourself!!

As the weekend progressed, we were able to put in more solid runs.  Nailed every set of weaves, and not a bar down all weekend!  Each day I worried that maybe I was asking too much of my partner, but Brutus continued to amaze me by getting better & running with more focus than ever before.  We went 3/3 in our standard runs, earning our OA (Open Agility) title just 3 days after we started it!!  

And after my shaky debut in Excellent Jumpers, we negotiated three more tough courses to earn our AXJ (Excellent Agility Jumpers) title in our final run of the trial!!!  

We even got to give Excellent Standard a whirl - something I thought we wouldn't be doing for months.  The course was not easy, and I really didn't expect to Q.  We were just going out there for fun.  Here's the map of what we ran:

To my delight we made it all the way to obstacle #19 flawlessly!  Brutus was running so well that I let him get a little ahead of me on our approach to the A-frame - since I wasn't there to collect him & remind him to balance (he doesn't like to hit the ascending contact at full speed), he decided to blow past the obstacle instead.  There was a collective "awwwwww" from the crowd - they'd all been rooting for us because the run was so nice!  Oops, NQ (remember, no faults allowed in Exc).  Still, it was a fantastic and fast run, one I wouldn't have thought us capable of if you asked me.  Guess it's time to raise the ante for Team Brutus!!

So in the end, we had 6 qualifying runs with placements - 3 firsts, 1 second, 2 thirds!!!  And our only NQs were as a result of "normal" problems - no zoomies or even a hint thereof!!  If I had come away from the weekend with even 3 qualifying runs I would have been thrilled, so to have twice that and TWO new titles as a result of our effort....  Can you understand why I'm walking on air?

I'm just so proud of Brutus.  He really is coming into his own, and was such a trooper this weekend.  I'll take the results of this trial as a fabulous early Christmas present from my little guy.  Maybe I'll even let Brutus do a little extra decorating on the tree....

There was a professional videographer at the trial, so in a couple of weeks I'll have some great HD footage of our runs to post.  Brutus and I had the time of our lives, and ended our first full year of trialling on a VERY high note.  

In 2011 we'll be embarking on our MACH quest; earning points in Excellent towards our Master Agility Championship (MACH) title.  I try not to burden all our readers with too many performance-based posts, but I just couldn't help but shamelessly sharing this one.  For more information on our progress, check out the new pages I added:

     "Brutus Title Tracker" to see how we are progressing in all
                venues
       "Brutus MACH Quest"  see how MACH points we've gotten
      "Carmen Title Tracker"  my little girl will be back in the 
               performance ring soon!

This way I can keep my fellow agility enthusiasts up-to-date on our progress without overloading the rest of you!!  But for now, thanks to everyone who has been a part of our journey, I'm so thankful to be able to share it with our fans!!

We'll be back soon with more posts from our more more "normal" daily lives.  Lots going on to get ready for the holiday weekend, so stay tuned!!