Working SAR Dog

This slideshow is of Clue (Blackthorn's Guiness) searching in Tuscaloosa, AL, following the recent tornadoes.

Pistol Goes Off

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Pistol has her topcoat coming in slowly, creeping out from beneath the fuzzy puppy coat. At this point, it's a matter of feeling the new hard coat rather than seeing it. It's particularly distinct on her face, where soft puppy fuzz is slowly being overcome by sleek adult hairs. A friend remarked that it's like watching a picture on your computer slowly get cleaner and more distinct.... it's a puppy being rendered, live action, slo-mo!

Pistol took a plane to her new home in Texas this morning, and it nearly broke my heart to say goodbye. She snuggled deep into my heart in the last few weeks, and I will miss her greatly. If I didn't know where she was headed, I wouldn't have been able to send her off. But it is a super-fantastic home with someone who has been doing SAR work with a girl from my B litter. And I KNOW PISTOL WILL BE WELL LOVED AND VERY HAPPY. 

I'm usually pretty good at not getting too attached to my puppies in their first 8 weeks. I mean, I love them all, but it is a generic sort of love. But in the last 4 weeks, I got to KNOW Pistol's little heart and she followed me from room to room every day, and she would tell me when she thought I needed to feed her and when she thought I needed to sit down and give her a snuggle, and I knew what the whines in the crate each meant (if it had a howly tone, it meant she wasn't just fussing, she really did need to pee, but if she was screaming and biting the crate bars, she was just mad that she wasn't out free to sleep under the coffee table and/or steal my shoes, and if she barked, it meant that I should pay more attention to her and maybe she would like snuggle/pee/eat). It even made me laugh every time she would grab my shoe, look over her shoulder to see if I was watching, and trot away from me, head and tail high. So, I will miss her hugs where she crawled into my lap, tucked her head under my chin, and snorfled me in sleepy happiness.

But now she gets to go be a big kid, gets to learn to do a job, gets to have a whole family of her own to love and entertain her, and, well, gets to finish rendering into a marvelous, beautiful girl.

Mad Splashy Skillz!

Oda and her sister Leia and a young Aussie named Gage and a 3 month old Border Collie named Alex have some mad play skillz. Oda has the orange collar; Leia is slightly shorter and more compact with a thicker tail---other than that, it's really hard to tell them apart!