Field Trialing

Oh boy, everyone!! I had quite an adventure this weekend. I went to my first Field Trial. Guess what? I took home a 2nd place and earned my first field trial points. It was kewl and unexpected.

Got this red ribbon, but more importantly, I got this yellow star toy that I can play with!

We had to wake up at 4:30am to get to the Sacramento & N. California Field Trials in Vacaville, CA by 7:30am. We were driving in the pitch black of night. But then it was kewl to see the sunrise.

We has to thank Ms. Sara for telling us about this, and for giving us the info, and for answering our bazillion questions about field trials. She and Jan have Bluefence bassets and they has a real nice crew. Here are some pics of their dawgs:

GFC Bluefence Devoted Sistear aka Cissie, with her son Bluefence Olympic Flame aka Fenris.

Bluefence Take the Like aka Buster Poseyear- can you tell they are Giants fans? Go Giants!! Buster is a nice boy and we were out in the field together a lot.

Cissie in the background with FC Bluefence RC Flying Solo, aka D'Brickashaw Fearguson. D'Brickashaw da football playah!

Thanks Ms. Sara!

Now what on earth is a Field Trial, ya might say? It's ok cuz we said the same thing!

Well, here is the Field:

It was a lovely weekend, but got quite hot in the afternoons.

Bright red tree in the middle of the field!

And here is the Trial: basically, the peeples and the dawgs walk thru the large field, and the bunnies get up and hop away. The peeples and 2 judges observe the trail the bunny took. The 2 hounds compete against each other to follow the bunny trail. Whoever does it the best wins.

There were 13 houndies competing in my Boys' class, both on Friday & Saturday. That means there were 7 braces (groups of 2 hounds that go) to begin with, which means.... lotsa waiting and downtime. Here are some pics from the downtime during the competition:

Out in front is Ms. Sara's Bluefence dawg: Mr. Buster. He's a nice-looking hound, my person says.

Practicing using my nose to find good sniffs

Nesting in the field

Field trial in progress

Some of the new guys I met

I kinda like this Field Trial thing!

But sometimes it makes me hot and yawny!

Here I am examining it...

 There wuz a raffle and I won a huge Natural Balance sausage...

And now here's my buddy examining it... hey wait a minute, that's MY sausage!

I met some nice folks here including Mr. & Mrs. Palmer, who put the trials on. They wuz nice cuz they put on a practice session for us newbies and it musta helped me, cuz I did good the next day. They has a lot of nice dawgs too. Here are a few of them:

Here is Ms. Abby

DCGFC Sanlyn CJ's Misadventure, Missy, the red/white, and Abby, the tri-color.
I believe Missy won the entire Sacramento Field Trial this past weekend (Absolute winner). Kewl!

Missy, Abby, and Delta on the right

I also wanna thank my Auntie M. and new pal Mr. Bo Jangles for coming out all the way to Vacaville to support us! I think Mr. Bo should come Field Trialing with me next year in the S. Calif Chino competition. It would be a fun thing to do together!

Mr. Bo Jangles

My Auntie M and Mr. Bo

Waiting, waiting in the fields...

This Field Trialing thing is a lot of wurk!! Made me SO tired!

Well, it is fun to have new experiences in life. We met lotsa new houndies and their peeples, all of whom were really kewl and devoted to their houndies. I may try this again sometime next year and will keep y'all posted.

Hope everyone is getting a good start to the week,
                                                                 Worm

Happy Halloweens!!!

My Grand-Maw and her team at work made this "pumpkin burger" for a contest, isn't it neat-O?

 

Hello Everybuddy!!

HAPPY HALLOWEENS!!! Hope everyone gets to have a nice adventure this season, whether it's dressing up or passing out candy to the kiddies or playing with pumpkins or whatever ya likes to do on Halloweens.

Well... I know what it means for me...

... it means that it's dress-up time. Oh boy...

This year, me was an airplane. My person was my flight attendant. We actually won something with this costume at Yappy Hour's Halloweens partee last week, I will blog about that later.

Me trying to hold still and be a good model... maybe I'm an airplane model lol! Naw, I wuz told I'm the fuselage for the plane.

 

 

 

Over the weekend, me went to the basset hound Halloween partee, and I wuz a Sheriff. Do ya likes my silver plush gun and lasso?

Here is my prisoner, my pal Mr. Bo Jangles. I captured him and placed him under arrest!

Closer up picture of Mr. Bo. Mr. Bo is my Auntie M's new rescue and he's been with us for a little over a month.

Have a happy and safe day! What did YOU do for Halloweens this year? Me wants to know!

                                                              Your friend,
                                                                       Worm

Camping: Part II. Poison Oakland!

Dear Friends,

This is Part II of a 4-part series on my camping adventures this summer. And I forgots to mention in my last post (my Auntie M reminded me!) to explain those purple things on my paws in the pictures. Well, theys are rubber balloon-like shoes & my person put them on me so that I won't puncture holes in their raft with my thick, sharp claws! They is funny things, kinda wrapped tight so water doesn't get inside, cuts off my circulation a bits if u ask me, but probably easier to walk in than other dawggie shoes since they are made of such thin material. anyway, so dat's dat, if you wondered what those things are on my paws....

Fast forward to September, when me wents on three, yes that's right THREE (!!!) camping adventures that made us sooo tireds but we had good fun.

First place we went to is a place called Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park in Santa Cruz. It is actually only 10 min away from the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, if you know where that is. It is up in the mountain, amongst the windy roads, and is a very beautiful park full of trees and redwood trees.

The ONLY downside is that they say 50% of the vegetation is Poison Oak : ( So my nickname for the place is Poison Oakland:

Poison Oakland: it's 50% poison oak

Here's a closeup of poison oak leaves that are turning from green to red during the fall. Now you can't say you've never seen poison oak, lol, like we did! We were very naive to the whole thing. We had to stock up on stuff called "Tecnu" which is the soap you'd use to rinse if you happened to get poison oak. It's also supposed to be soothing if you do get poison oak.

Yikes! we don't wanna gets that! well, as a dawg, it doesn't really matter as much cuz I don't really gets affected. But as a dawg, I can get poison oak oils on my fur and then gives it to da peeples, and then dat would make them very unhappy campers!

We is happy to say dat we made it without any poison oak incidents... yay! But the downside is that I didn't get to do my usual sniffs or pees on the bushes and vegetation or anything. My person had to keep me away from all vegetation and anything green the whole time, which was a pain for me as much as it was for her.

Here are some pics:

Me in Poison Oakland. They made these nice clearings in the vegetation so we have a nice big spot to camp in.

Enjoying the outdoors

My person likes this pic of me

Tied out to a tree-- well, good excuse to lie down in the dirt, I guess.

Me with our tents, keeping a watchful eye on things.

Am I supposed to be on the table??? Noooooooooo!! I learned a new trick on this trip. Jump onto the bench and then onto the table and then I gets to be right in the middle of things. If ur lucky, there is foods on the table too!

I'm a bad boy standing on the table.

Melikes to hang out in the car on camping trips, esp when the peeples are bizzy. It's nice and relaxing, and I enjoy this view from the window.

Well, that sums it up! It was a good trip and we had lotsa fun. Sorry the pictures didn't make it the first time I sent this out, so we had to send it again.

Cheers,

Worm

A Camping Frenzy: Part I

Hiya Pals,

Boy, it has been an adventure-filled summer for me! My person has really taken to this "camping" thing ever since she gots me.

We wuz quite the novices last year going camping, and slowly we has learned and built up our camping skillz.

In July, we went back to Yuhshemmittee (I still dunno how to spell dat place). Last year we went and stayed in Wawona, which is 45 min-1 hour outside the main drag. This year, though, we stayed in the heart of things in Yuhshemmittee Valley in the Upper Pines campground.

We went rafting this year, and got 2 big rafts to fit all the peeples and me insides of them.

Here me is, gettin' ready...

Me in front of Half Dome

Rafting with me and my Auntie M

Thank goodness for dawggie lifejackets, I say!

All dat adventuring makes me sleepy!

I made a new friend & her name is Bella! She wuz living in the campsite right next to us.

Here we is together. We gets along and so do our peeples.

Catching some rays in front of a tent.

I got some peaceful times in, too, laying in da dirt. It wuz nice.

Does anyone out there likes to camps too? 

I wanna hear ur camping stories!

Your friend, Worm

I gotta new friend!

Hello Friends,

It has been a long while, sooooo looooong, like my basset body.... Well I has so much to catches you up on.... basically the whole summer! I will try to get you updated piece by piece over the next month.

Let's start first with the most recent and exciting news-- do you remember my Auntie M? This is Auntie Melinda and she takes cares of me coupla times a week.

Here is my Auntie M and me sitting in a birdcage seat at Pier 1 Imports : ) She likes to do funny things to my earz....

Two weeks ago, we took a 2 hour drive to meet a nice woman named Jill who has rescued lotsa basset hounds. Bless Ms. Jill! She brought down 4 rescues. One nice man adopted a boy named Chevy. We wanted Auntie M. to meet the bagle (beagle/basset mix) named Schotzie. But instead....

...she fell quite in love with this one, named BJ! 

 He is a very handsome basset hound. And he is relatively small like me, weighs less than 45 lbs.

First sniffs between me and Mr. BJ.

Here we are standing side by side. We were at Starbucks for a long time!

Auntie M. feeding Mr. BJ some treeeeats.

Hey Auntie M! Please don't forget about me!! Melikes treeeats too!

Welikes this pic of Mr. BJ and Auntie M.

Mr. BJ is quite a nice and gentle boy. They think he is only 1 or 2 years older than me. He is mellow and a snugglebug, that is why Auntie M. likes him so much! He has a funny hoarse bark-- no one knows why that is, though, he does not appear to be debarked.

Auntie M. took Mr. BJ to see my vet Dr. D. Now Dr. D gets to see us 2 bassets and soon she will become a basset expert! Gee, I hope shelikes basset hounds! Arrrrooooooo!!!!

Please join me in welcoming Mr. BJ, my Auntie M's new rescue : ) She's technically still trying it out, but it seems to be going well so far. And I has gotten to play with Mr. BJ a few times already. We seem to get along.

Hope you are all doing well, and I will post more updates soon from my summer.

                                                        Cheers,
                                                          Worm