A Rare Moment

Captured this photo a few days ago while trying out some new settings on my camera (tired of all those green/blue glowing eyes!).  All 3 pups were sitting there - CALMLY!!!  A rare moment indeed!

Easter Frenchies

Happy Easter everyone!  

Yes, it's time for yet another holiday-related, embarrassing photoshoot!  As if the Frenchies don't have big enough ears already, I got out the bunny ears and bribed them to cooperate for a while as I snapped away.  

Hope you all have a wonderful holiday weekend and that the Easter Bunny is good to you!

Hey, Brutus!  You got something funny-looking on your head!!

Yeah?  Well I hate to tell ya Carm, so do you!!

Great.  We're both being humiliated.  Don't look at mom, it's our only defense!

I sure hope the Easter Bunny is watching and brings us extra stuff for putting up with all this!

OK, fine.  Fine.  Let's just get it over with then...

Happy Easter everybody!!!!

 Love, Brutus & Carmen

Team Brutus Takes Chicago - the Final Installment

 It was two weeks ago today that we wrapped up our adventure to Chicago.  Yes, agility was the our primary agenda, but there was so much more to the trip than jumps & tunnels!  In addition to making lots of new friends (both human & canine), we had lots of tasty things to eat, and even got to do a little shopping.  We'll wrap up the trip in this post, and share with you the neat stuff we got to do before we came home!

 

None of it would have been possible without the hospitality & generosity of our wonderful friends - Hope & her sister Fran (pictured above with the Frenchies).  I met Hope in Wisconsin last year at the Frenchie National Specialty & we became instant friends.  So funny how having only your dogs in common can be grounds for a friendship where it might appear that you had nothing else in common!  Who'd have thought that a random conversation at an agility trial would lead to me driving 400 miles to visit less than a year later!

We thoroughly enjoyed our four days in Chicago, playing agility while getting to know Hope & Fran (and many of their friends!) better.  The agility trial is where we spent a lot of our weekend hours, but there was still plenty of time to relax and enjoy the finer things of the windy city - like pizza!

 

Nothing like Chicago deep-dish pizza!  This delicious slice is from Malnati's, but I also got to enjoy our all-time favorite, Giordano's!

After all 3 days of agility all day and playing all night, the kids were all seriously tuckered out!   The dogs worked hard and played hard, and as you know - tired dogs are happy dogs!!  Our last night there Brutus & Carmen crashed on one end of the couch,

Dax on the other end, 

While Teddy was zonked out in his lounger!

Thankfully we all got good nights' rest before we headed home on Monday morning.  There was one last item on our trip agenda to check off before leaving Chicago - a visit to Golly Gear!

 

Turns out that Hope & Fran own a small-dog supply store!  Behind this unassuming door we found the motherload of all dog stuff!

Golly Gear sells everything imaginable for our furry friends.  Collars, treats, toys, training supplies - you name it. They do most of their sales over the internet, but Brutus & Carmen were lucky enough to have the store to themselves to go on a shopping spree!

Talk about kids in a candy store!  These bins are bursting with all kinds of cool stuff!

The Frenchies wasted no time diving right in!

We spent over an hour trying on collars, harnesses & coats, taste-testing treats & playing with toys.  Hope had a special gift for Brutus,  a shirt that was most certainly made with him in mind:

The perfect muscle tee to show off Brute's buff physique!

In case you can't see the logo in the photo above (I was taking photos with my phone, sorry if they are blurry), here's a closer look.  It's simply made for Brutus, all too appropriate for my little mama's boy!

Love these new harnesses we found at Golly Gear!  Best-fitting ones I've ever seen, plus they are super-easy to put on (look out Teddy, Brutus & Carmen are gunning for your modeling job).

Here's some fun new collars we found there, biggify the photo to see what Brute's says.

Carmen opted for an ultra-comfy, pretty-in-pink martingale for her new training collar. 

Brutus & Carmen picked out some toys too (I'd show you, but they've already, um, Frenchie-tested them & they don't look so hot) and a really fun training tool (called a Manners Minder, but that's for another post).   There were so many other neat things there I can't begin to tell you, so just go to the Golly Gear website (just click on the name anywhere in this post for a link) and see for yourself!!

As they say, all good things must come to an end.  So with many great memories, a couple of qualifying agility scores, a bunch of new friends, and a bag full of great stuff from Golly Gear, we bid farewell to the windy city and headed across the Eisenhower Bridge towards home.

Hope & Fran, we can't thank you enough for all the hospitality and kindness you showed me, Brutus & Carmen (really, who else would be crazy enough to let my crew into their home??).  Can't wait to see you all again!  Until then, hugs to all our furbuddies!  Come visit us here in Ohio sometime!

Team Frenchie takes Chigago (Part Deux)

After an evening of playing with Teddy & all his pack, we turned for the night with mom warning us that it was going to be an early morning.  Sure enough at 5AM the alarm went off & we were on the move.

With four Frenchies safely piled in the car, Hope pointed the car (while mom helped navigate) towards Libertyville, IL.  After about 40 minutes, we arrived at the most enormous sports complex my big eyes have ever beheld!  Checked on the website, this place is 170,000 sq feet!!  Those little dots outside are cars (and BTW, Google Earth is amazing...)

Anyways, don't know if you remember from last summer - but indoor soccer arenas double as agility rings during the off-season.  Yep, we were at an agility trial!

Most of you have probably never been to any kind of dog trial/show, so here's the funny thing.  Early on the first morning a small city starts to emerge, with each club setting up camp & saving space for everyone in their group.  By the time the weekend is in full swing, it looks like a refugee camp, with dog crates, exercise pens, lawn chairs, coolers - often all coordinated in each training club's colors.  Quite a thing to behold!  Mom staked claim to a couple of square feet with the "All Fours Agility" group (where Hope trains with Dax & Teddy).

I'll try to spare you all the details mom would surely include if she were writing this post, you know how she can go on endlessly about this agility stuff!  I must mention that Frenchies were unusually well represented at this trial - there were 3 of us entered and another two (Teddy & Carmen) there who were present, in training but not old enough to compete.  

You already know this strapping, athletic (ahem):

Look, mom - a one-paw handstand!!

And here's our friend Dax in action:

We also met this handsome boy, Otto.  He's just starting in agility, and watching his runs left us with no doubt that he loves it!

Dax & I kept our respective moms pretty busy, but they did have some time to take the young 'ons over the practice jump.  Here's Hope & Teddy practicing their startline stay.

Had to slip in another action shot of yours truly (it is my blog after all), look at that intensity!

Oh yeah, and here's a video of Team Brutus in action.  Two runs here for those of you with a broadband connection, the first is the Standard course, and the other is Jumpers With Weaves:

We had a great time over the 3 days of the trial, putting in 6 solid runs and making lots of new friends.  We now compete at the top level of AKC agility (Excellent B), where runs have to be perfect to qualify.  No mistakes on course, no bars down, no going over the allowed time.  We managed to do that twice, and if it weren't for a couple of bone-headed maneuvers on mom's part (ok, and a couple on my behalf as well), we would have had 5 Qs over the course of the weekend - including the much sought-after Double Q (qualifying with both runs in the same day, which gets you special points).  All in all mom says she was super-proud of what we did there!

We originally planned to wrap up posting about Chicago in two parts, but there's still more fun stuff to tell you about.  The blog has kind of been withering on the vine lately, so hopefully our remaining followers will be entertained enough to tune in for one last (agility-free) installment!!

Later taters-

Brutus