Swing - the "bad" girl

After posting about the pups turning two I never dreamed that Swing would suddenly become a bad girl.  OMG, she's chewing on things she used to leave alone and suddenly things left on the kitchen counter or stove are fair game in her mind.  I lost a 1/2 a muffin to her counter antics and she sucked the cottage cheese off the top of Dirk's food when I put it up the other evening.  I'm going through rawhides like there is no tomorrow and I caught her gnawing on the end of the cord for a fan.  I fill the bone box up daily and she empties it out daily, time to chuck some of the old ones and pick up some fresh ones for them to work on.  I sure hope this is a phase that passes quickly!

We finished up a weekend of shows recently, she was Winners two days and Breed the one day.  Unfortunately there was only competition one of those days so she only added one more point toward her Championship.  But we did play in the big ring as I call it (Sporting Group) and had a nice time.  We'll hit the show ring again in a couple of weeks and perhaps there will be other Weims entered and a chance at some more points.

Last month we participated in two agility focus workshops, one on Foundations and the other on jumping.  The Foundations workshop covered things like extension and collection, jumping form and the beginning of turns.  The other one was geared towards jumping exercises to teach correct use of leads, how to sit back and jump from the rear, etc.  The information will be useful for obedience as well and it was nice to be able to focus on something I had not worked on with her since she has been a little slow to mature.

Speaking of maturing, I took Swing in for her OFA xrays and the results just came back.  Her elbows are "normal" and her hips are "excellent"!  After seeing the xrays there was little doubt in my mind about the ratings but you never know.  Everything looked very clean and my vet does a fabulous job.  Of course knowing what I do with the dogs means that he takes extra care when taking those xrays (and he's a bit of a perfectionist, he'll redo the shot if things are not lined up to his standards).

Summer is winding down.  School starts soon at Penn State as well as for the local schools.  I'm looking forward to the fall and some cooler weather so that I can get the dogs out in the fields to do some tracking.  I'm also a little excited about bringing Dodge out as a Veteran in the breed ring per Amy's suggestion.  I hope the rest of the siblings have plans for the end of summer/beginning of fall.  As always, stories on what is going on in their lives would be grayt for a blog posting.  Send them my way.