Warning: Agility Videos

OK, if you still came on over despite the warning, I guess you are ready some more footage of my fabulous flying Frenchie.  Here we are

I won't bog the post down with text, but will tell you that these are two of the nicest runs we've had to date.  The first run earned us our 2nd OAJ leg.  The second run was nice too, but due to a teeter fly-off (which is conveniently missing from the video due to the camera moving LOL) was an NQ (would have been our NA title otherwise).  

I'm just so pleased with how nicely Brutus is coming along, I can't help but sharing. Really staring to feel like a team out there, and I'm hoping zoomies are a thing of the past.  So nice to be able to handle him "normally" now that he's decided to stay with me instead of having his own agenda out there!  I'm having a blast, and I think you'll agree that Brutus is too!  

Our next time in the ring is in less than 2 weeks, a trial at this same venue for 2 days, then immediately off to our National Specialty in Wisconsin to compete against other Frenchies!  There will certainly be a lot of video footage to come!!

(almost) Wordless Wednesday

Whatever....

PerCYSTence

There are sometimes its tough being a bulldog.  Wonderful little creatures that they are, the package comes with it's share of inherent problems.  Owning a Frenchie is a good way to ensure a close relationship with your vet, although I'll dare to say we've been pretty lucky so far.  Apart from some eye and face-fold issues that we will always have to treat on a daily basis, the other problem that persistently (or should I say perCYSTently?) bothers Brutus are interdigital cysts.

Bulldogs and some other breeds have prickly little hairs that grow in between their toes.  It seems to happen more in the summer, but cysts form around the hair follicles and can get pretty ugly.  They must look worse than they feel, as Brutus is almost never noticeably bothered by the cysts.  That being said, he is more than happy to let me soak the affected foot - he often falls asleep while I'm doing the Epsom salt soak - in fact he's snoring away now as I type, with one foot in the water.  I'm guessing it must feel good!

We're about 2 weeks in to treating two cysts on his right front foot.  Twice daily soaks, plus an anti-inflammatory/antibiotic application.  Lots of activity seems to aggravate them, but just try to convince Brutus that he can't do his usual amount running and jumping.  Easier said than done!! 

If you biggify that photo above, you can see the cyst (as well as the prickly little hairs I was mentioning) on the toe my thumb is holding.  You can't see the second one, but it's right by the nail bed on his last toe.  Poor guy, what a bummer.  Good thing my little Frenchie is a tough cookie, there's a great big world out there, and Brutus wants to be sure he doesn't miss a thing! 

Floating Frenchies (with video!)

Hey everyone!  Brutus here!  

Before I get to the post, mom wanted me to say thanks for all the heartfelt comments on our last post.  Fans of the page may come and go, but we have some wonderful followers who will just eat up anything about me (Seriously, can you blame them?).  The blog will therefore continue as is, posting about what makes me Brutus (and Carmen be Carmen, and Mason be Mason, and so forth...).  Those of you who prefer to read about our "normal" (ha!) everyday lives, there will be more of that.  We will also continue to post about the highs and lows of my agility and obedience undertakings, since it seems that there are enough of you out there that enjoy that too.  I'll try to get mom to title the posts more obviously, so if that kind of thing isn't you cup of tea, no hard feelings if you want to "mark as read" those posts in your readers.  Rest assured we'll post when we can, so no one will have to be treated for Brutus withdrawl!

Ahem.  On to the post.

It's been SO stinkin' hot here all summer.  WAY too hot for walkies.  Every time mom takes us somewhere, she has this whole checklist of stuff that has to come along - a cooler full of ice packs,  thermoses with water for us, cooling wraps/cool coats, as well as our battery-powered fans.  It makes getting ready to go outside seem like we're getting ready for a spacewalk or something! 

Well thank goodness for our friend Courtney.  Not only does she have an awesome house and yard with lots of room for us to run around, but she also has this enormous water bowl that mom calls a "pool"!  Instead of drinking out of it, mom says you are supposed to get IN it to cool off.  And apparently Courtney doesn't mind cleaning little black hairs out of the pool filter, because she's invited us to paddle around in it a bunch of times (we posted some photos a while back about one of our first day at the pool).

So life jackets firmly buckled on (we Frenchies aren't the most buoyant you know), we headed over to Courtney's last weekend.  This time Mason even got to come (although he firmly denies being a so-called "water-dog").

We don't swim very long, as it is really intense exercise for our little bowling-ball bodies - but it is great exercise.  I started by doing few short laps to practice my technique (thanks for the lift, dad).

Then Courtney got the idea it might be fun to watch me & Carmen race.  Being the competitive guy I am, I was happy to oblige.  Even gave Carmen a head start, and I STILL beat her!  HA!

I'm no Michael Phelps, but for a dog who's supposedly sinks like a stone, I'd say it's pretty impressive!  Not that I'm venturing anywhere near the water without my lifevest....  

Hope you got a kick out of watching us paddle around!  Mom promises to be back soon with some new material, including a bunch of stuff from home, as well as some short agility videos.  Gotta go dry off before I get all prune-y!  

Later, taters!

Brutus the Floating Frenchie

Bad Bloggers

We're here to level with you all today.  We've been bad bloggers.  Really bad.  Haven't posted in a week, and have only been around to a few of your blogs to see what you are up to. Blogging has really become a hobby, and I have missed it as the last few months have become increasingly busy.  I feel like I owe Brutus' fans a little explanation, as well as get some feedback from the very folks without whom the blog would be pointless.

There are three things that have resulted in our decreased post frequency.  First of all, my work schedule has gotten quite a bit busier.   Many of you know that I'm a dentist, but in case you don't - here's a picture of me in my element.

I had been a co-ower of an extremely busy dental practice, which I left in September of 2008.  I have since started my own practice, very small by comparison.  I found myself with lots of free time, some of which I filled with Brutus-related activities, including blogging.  Recently my clinical responsibilities have gotten much more demanding, so that I find myself back in the working world for a good part of the week.  I'm thankful to be busy and it feels great to be productive, but it makes sitting down at the computer or following Brutus around with the camera much more difficult!

The other two things that have made blogging opportunities more difficult to come by are the dogs themselves.  Carmen has been the perfect addition, I couldn't ask for a better companion for Brutus.  But having a young puppy around again makes it difficult to sit still.  Ever.  Carmen is ALWAYS into something.  For some reason Frenchies have the tendency to explore the world by trying to eat it.  Brutus went through this phase too (one of his most dubious accomplishments was swallowing an entire pair of my underwear in one piece), but for the next few months anything smaller than Carmen is fair game for ingestion.  Part of me wants to slow down time so Carmen could be a puppy forever - but the other part wants to fast forward though all the more trying aspects of puppyhood (like housebreaking, teething) and restore some order to my home!

Then there is Brutus.  I think for the most part he is finally growing up.  Not that he still doesn't have his moments (OK, lots of moments), but he is actually somewhat trustworthy.  I started agility and obedience to help drain Brute's boundless energy and get him properly socialized, never expecting to compete.  But not only has Brutus proved that bulldogs can be performance dogs, he has shown they can be good!  Our show schedule has gotten busier, now encompassing a few weekends a month and lots of training in between.  You may have noticed that more and more of my posts are performance-related, because that's how we spend the majority of our free time.  It's good for Brutus (he's the kind of dog that needs a job) and good for me too (I need the exercise!) - and I truly think we both enjoy it!

That all being said, here is my question to you all.  

Where does that put our blog?  Is posting about competitions getting boring?  Carmen will be making more appearances here (it's difficult to keep her out of the photos, actually) as well as some occasional words from Mason (our 12-yr old Chocolate Lab).  I'll get around to comment as I can, but I feel sort of guilty about having people commenting here and not being able to get over to their sites to do the same - just being honest there.  And what about Flat Brutus - he's still bumping around out there (lots of summer vacations for him), is that getting old and do people still want to hear about him or host him?  Should the blog go on hiatus and come back we things settle down, or do we just do occasional posts?

I appreciate any feedback and input you all can muster, so tell it like it is!  In the mean time, let me close with a photo of the Frenchies to show you all how we feel about our blogger friends:

Do you see it? Here's some help in case you don't:

Thanks for sticking with us, hope you can understand!

Love-

Michelle, Brutus, Carmen and Mason

Carmen gets some letters!

So to pick up where I left off in yesterday's post, Brutus ended his weekend in lackluster style after I overcooked him in the rally ring.  That left us with not much to cheer about on Saturday, and a lot of time to kill.  You can only shop so much (we came home with lots of new collars and some other goodies), so I thought we'd take a walk to see what else was going on.

Lets go this way.  No I see something good over there, I wanna go that way....

Carmen has tagged along to the last few shows and really impressed me with how well she's handled all the chaos, just taking it all in like a pro.  She's such a smartypants, having learned most of her basic obedience skills (sit, down, stay, come and loose-leash heeling), already and she's just turned 5 months old!  We found that there was a CGC (Canine Good Citizen) test being given at the show so just for kicks I thought I'd see if Carmen could pass.  What did we have to lose at this point?

Test??  Did you just say TEST???

So I walked up to the registration table with Carmen and asked for a test form.  The evaluator asked about the dog I was testing and when I gestured to Carmen she looked at me like I had two heads.  She even had to go ask the other official if there was a minimum age for the CGC test (there isn't), and kind of shrugged her shoulders and handed me a form to fill out.

I warmed up Carmen in the building, hoping that the additional business of other dogs testing wouldn't be too much for her (this sort of thing has been difficult for Brutus to handle sometimes).  But thankfully Carmen shares few personality traits with Brutus and had no problem running thorough all her paces.  During the test she was just as solid and completely floored the examiner.  In fact when she did her stay/recall I even threw an extra little bit of flair and had her finish after the recall (the dog initially sits in front of the handler then on command moves back to heel position).  We actually got a round of applause from the little spectator crowd, and the examiner's jaw literally dropped when she saw what an obedience prodigy that Carmen was!

Hey Carmen, what's that new hardware on your collar?

Needless to say Carmen passed her CGC with flying colors, two days before she turned 5 months old (that has to be some kind of AKC record).  You know I'm not beyond bragging about any of my dogs, but this is REALLY special.  Carmen gets excited anytime she sees the clicker come out (she's learned almost everything via clicker-training), and just LOVES to learn.  I hope she continues to be such an enthusiastic student, amazing me everyday with how smart she is.  It's a joy to have a young mind and clean slate to work with, but a bit of a responsibility too!!   I'm hoping this is only the beginning of a long list of great performances for Carmen

Carmen is officially a Canine Good Citizen!

So with a passing CGC certificate in hand thanks to Carmen, we were able to wrap up our weekend on a high note.  My Frenchies did me proud over the weekend and we had a great time.  We'll never be the most impressive teams in the ring, but like I always say - I love it when we can put a smile on people's faces. 

Yes, you may come and adore me.

So here they are, my little superstars with their official titles (AKC recognitions followed by CPE agility titles in Brutus' case):

Brutus, RA NAJ CGC CL-1 CL2-H

Drama Queen d'Assisi, CGC

Putting all those new letters after our name is hard work, isn't it Carmen?

It's been nice to have some quiet days to relax at home since this week, just letting Brutus & Carmen be dogs and create the kind of ruckus that only two Frenchies can!  After this weekend things will quiet down again for a while, so hopefully I can catch up on blog-reading and commenting while they tear around and wrestle with each other, only pausing to sunbathe or nap gloriously together! Thanks for sticking with us, we'll see you soon!

Finally, we're back!

When we last posted the Frenchies and I were getting Big Earl ready to spend a weekend at our first "away show".  I'm happy to report that it was a great experience, and it's taken us until now to fully recover and post about it!  As you can see from the look on Brutus' face below we have lots to smile about!

First I'd like to nominate Paul for "husband of the year" award for his support during the weekend.  He drove Big Earl about and hour and a half out to Canfield last Wednesday (no Liz, I didn't suddenly get brave and do it myself, sorry to disappoint!) then came back out to get us again on Saturday. He had to go home in between and work (hey, somebody has to do it, right??), but was always eager to get updates on how we were doing, and check in to make sure we were all safe & sound out there.

This show is the biggest in our area, attracting exhibitors from all over the country.  The large fairgrounds it is held at literally becomes a city of coaches and campers, hosting over 2,000 entries each day of a 4-day event.

We got to watch some amazing dogs in the conformation ring (some of who we recognized from televised shows such as Westminster), and I'm happy to say that some of the best were owner-handled by our friends!

As far as the mighty Team Frenchie, I had Brutus entered in rally for three days.  We'd never shown outside before, so the night before the show we spent some time working around the ring to get used to the area.  Thankfully the weather (which has a reputation for being either dreadfully hot or a monsoon) cooperated and we were able to get our runs in early in the day while it was very comfortable.

When all was said and done Brutus and I had two nice exercises to add to our list of Q's.  The first earned us a 96, which won the class as well as our RA (Rally Advanced) title.  The second was nice as well, but due to some handler errors (my brain fell out at a few of the stations) not as pretty of a score - but still it was good enough to win the "A" division of Excellent and our first RE (Rally Excellent) leg.

Our third day was not something to brag about, as Brutus told me definitively that two days of Rally in a row was more than enough.  He warmed up nicely but as soon as we got in the ring and the steward took my leash, it was over.  Not feeling it, period.  Only completed a few stations then I thanked the judge excused us from the exercise - but not without some entertaining moments for the spectators first.  As I've always said, if nothing else we'll always make people smile, and I have no doubt we managed to do that!

 Hey, Carmen!  No slobbering on my ribbons - I worked hard for those!!

Oh well, can't win 'em all, right?  Guess I've learned my lesson to only enter 2 days in the future and quit while we're ahead - gotta play by the dog's rules sometimes when your teammate is a bulldog.  Overall I'm still VERY happy with how Brutus showed over the weekend, especially considering he wouldn't even sit on grass (too scratchy, mom...) at the beginning of the summer, let alone complete a complicated Excellent course on it!  He was one tired bulldog and deserves a nice long rest!

So before I make you all as tired as Brutus from reading a long post, think I better wrap it up.  Tune in again to see how we still managed to end our weekend on a high note.  I'll tempt you by saying that Carmen came through and saved the day, making me and a lot of other people smile.  For now I better let the Frenchies get back to their naps, they've earned them!

Out of the Office

Just a quick post today to let everyone know we'll be "out of the office" for the next few days.  The Frenchies and I have loaded up Big Earl and are heading to Canfield, OH for the Steel Valley Cluster, our first "away" dog show.  

I have Brutus entered Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in rally.  My goal is to get our last RA (Rally Advanced) leg & title, and hopefully be able to move up to Excellent before the weekend is over.  Despite Brute's stellar performance recently, I still think anything could happen, since this will be our first time competing outside & on grass.  He might rather go sniffing around than heeling, or perhaps figure that grass is just too prickly to sit or lay down on - you never know.  Such is life when your performance partner is a bulldog; the rule is to expect the unexpected, and just try to keep a good sense of humor about it all!  If nothing else, we are ALWAYS entertaining :)

This is a huge show, attracting people from all over the midwest and east coast.  Rumor has it that there is lots of great shopping there, and we're looking forward to spending a few days with my friends (or "crazy dog people" as Paul calls them LOL).  Paul is staying home with Mason, so they'll have a few Frenchie-free days of peace a quiet - kind of a vacation for all of us I'd say!

Will try to post updates when I can, as well as do some blog visiting in my down time.  We appreciate all the positive vibes you can send us, and will try to do you proud!  I'll leave you with a sweet photo of the Frenchies.  Not sure, but I think Carmen is giving her brother a kiss for good luck.

Carmentopia (aka "mobile home")

I got an idea from my friend/Carmen's breeder to use a playpen for containing a puppy.  Carmen was already used to it, as her quickly-growing litter of 6 Frenchies had lived in one for the last few weeks before they went to their forever homes.  This way if I can't keep an eye on her every second (which is what it takes to keep Carmen out of trouble), then the pen gives her a lot more room and ability to be active than she could in her crate.  She can play independently while I'm home, then just go in her crate when I need to leave.  It's worked so well that we even gave her little habitat a name: Camentopia!

It has everything a puppy could need at a moments' notice:  a comfy bed, piddle pad, water, lots of toys.  The photo above was taken when Carmen was about 15 weeks old, still a little squirt, and happy as a clam in Carmentopia.

Here's a broader view, her pen parked in the corner of my family room.  Brutus can't resist the chance to torment Carmen by doing walk-bys (often with a toy in his mouth to intensify the taunting) to remind her that he's free and she's not!

Well, as you know, things change.  At almost 5 months old, Carmen is growing up fast (already up to almost 14 lbs from the 9 lbs she came home weighing) and she's one smart cookie.  My little Frenchie princess decided it was time to explore broader horizons, and no plastic kiddie pen was going to hold her back!

I thought Carmen might eventually learn to jump out of her pen, but I was wrong.  One day I returned to the room to investigate a strange rumbling sound, and found Carmen on the other side of the room - still IN Carmentopia! The sound was her pushing it across the floor!

If you have the capability to watch video, I promise you'll get a kick out of this clip below.  Only a video can do justice to how well Carmen has learned how to maneuver her enclosure!

As you can see, Carmentopia became a mobile home!  I can't believe she's strong enough to push that thing around, but all she does is lower her head and lean against it while she walks.  If her strength isn't impressive enough, the way she has learned to steer it certainly is!  You can see how Carmen even learned to make little adjustments sideways or back it up (by pushing on the different sides) in order to avoid things in her way - namely my kitchen cabinetry - and get it through tight spaces.  If it weren't for the gate in my kitchen door, who knows how far she would have roamed!

So Carmentopia was great while it lasted, but it's time to move on.  I relocated Carmen into a new, bigger crate (which I really pimped out, since it had to be luxurious enough for the Frenchie princess!), so that she can lounge comfortably when not under my watchful eye (hmm, good idea for a future post, Doggie Cribs!).  I finally bought a real ex-pen, so that Camen & Brutus can hang out together and still be safely contained!  Brutus isn't terribly fond of this solution, but tolerates it better than a crate.

Speaking of tolerating, I'm getting the evil eye from my shiny black boy.  Better wrap this up, but before I do an obligatory Brutus photo (lest there be a post without one!).  He wanted to make sure I showed you what he really thinks of sharing his blog with Carmen: