Open House Festivities - Bet

Howdy Ho Everybodies!!!  It's your very roving all over the place Border Collie Bet here!

Whoosh!  Things and stuffs have been going very fast here, it's a whirlywind of adventures, and meeting new peoples, and doing stuffs and things.  I had no idea this Iditarod thing was so, so tiring!!!! 

Of course we aren't not happy about the way the race ended, and we'll be updating everybodies on what is going on when we find out, just keep checking the Facebooks and we'll do filler on the bloggity blog once we get the time.  We just want to provide everybodies with what happened in order.

Anyhooooooo.

The Open house as held on the 28th from 10 am until 3pm.  We had it at the FABulously fantastical Jamie and Harry's house, they are so gracious and wonderful and had very tasty foods and drinks and cupcakes that were purple and the maple kind and everything was very tasty... not that I was sampling from the table or anything and I will deny knowing anything about spray cheese or who chewed up the spray cheese... I'm innocent I tell you.

The day started very early with a whirlywind of Minions converging upon the house.  They set about arranging everythings and stuffs to get ready for the fans by stocking up the house with tasty foodables that Jamie had made, and stuffs they brought.

Tasty foodables

 Then they set about arranging a mini store down in the garage so people could buy stuffs and things.

The store sign was our proud and tasty sponsor Eagle Pack... official tasty foods of the Pretty Curly Tails and ME!

Since the weather has been all icky, the Pretty Sled Dogs were brought up from the dog yard and put on a line near the garage where it would be easy peasy for everybodies to come meet them, give them lovin, and also get to the goodies in the house and just enjoy themselves rather than slip and slide all over the place.

Promptly at 10am, the fans began arriving.  Since this was an official function and everything, I wanted to look my best so I began by modeling my FABulous new ensemble that ultra fan Caren Stutzman hand made for me!

The peoples stopped upstairs for the tasty foodables and to mingle

This is Chris handler and Briffany Splat handler!

I was keeping an eye on the veggie platter to make sure there was no double dipping going on

HEY!  Illegal use of celery there mister!!

Other peoples were out in the "store" buying our cool swag and merchandise stuffs and things

In case you were wondering, we're totally out of the hats, and Gee Haw mittens, but we do have the new ultra cool Buffs® That can be worn as hats and the really snuggy hoodies... just sayin.

Anyhoo, the other peoples were in the dog yard getting snuggles with the Pretty Curly Tails.

Of course the entire place stopped when I came out wearing my fabulous new ensemble.

I was only a little upset that they wouldn't put on my matching scarf... I mean, come on its an ENSEMBLE peoples!!!  But I might have been a tad over dressed, and I didn't want the guests to feel overwhelmed, so perhaps it was best to go with just the jacket.

In the afternoon it got pretty sloshy outside, so I took it off, I didn't want to ruin it while I did my host activities of shmoozing and marketing.

Of course, everybodies was all like "oooh look, Bet and the Cartoonist get to meet for the very, very first time".  Yeah, whatever.  Frankly, she's as annoying, if not more so in person than she is over the interwebs and don't let her fool you.

You draw me wrong, I'm much cuter in person, and lay off the Nyquil!

So, one of the really, really cool parts of the Open House is that the Musher makes her officially official decision on which Pretty Curly Tails will make up the final team!  She generally knows exactly who will be on the final team, and they may or may not be the same dogs that will run in the ceremonial start.

WHAT? You say!!!  I'm confused, did you just say that she may run some dogs at the ceremonial start but not run them for the real race???  Yes I did... and I'll tell you why when I do the bloggity blog about the ceremonial start.

Until then, the Musher sat down with the new collars and put the official Iditarod tags onto those who will be on the final team.

So... when we were posting pictures on the Facebooks of all of the dogs that were in the line up at the Open House... and then posted pictures of the dogs that were getting new collars... all of you peoples had a chance to see who exactly was going to be in the final starting team hehehe, aren't we cruel!!!

I honestly still don't know if anybodies won the final picking of the team... I'm working on it because there were so many guesses, but we'll tell you later if anybodies did win.  If nobody won, then we'll just throw all of your names in a big bin and pick a winner from that and give somebodies some swag.

Then it was time to put the collars onto the Pretty Curly Tails

I also don't know if you "got" the fact that since I had undergone a complete sled dog physical, complete with microchipping and everything, that I was qualified to run in the Iditarod!!!  Yep, your Roving Border Collie Reporter could have actually harnessed up and run the Ceremonial Start or even the race.  PFFT, yeah, like that would ever happen... but the good thing was that it meant that I was qualified to go into the Ceremonial and Restart area, when no other blogging or regular dog could!

My Fantastical official Iditarod collar thanks to our proud sponsor Alpine Outfitters

The Wilkens family made it out to the Open House this year and presented the Musher with an official hockey jersey!

You may recognize Logan and Calvin from the 2012 Iditarod when Karen and Richard invited them to jump on the sleds for a short ride during the Ceremonial Start

Thank you Wilkens family, the Musher REALLY loves her hockey jersey and appreciates your support!

So, once all of the new collars had been handed out, it was time for the group howl!

For a change, Trampie was not so blah blah blah as she was a bit worn out from explaining to all of the visitors about how she wasn't happy with her dog house placement at North Wapiti North, and yammer, yammer, yammer.

Then someobodies wanted a picture of all of the minions and everybodies, so they gathered

So, let's see, kneeling is Dan Photographer Minion, then left to right is Donna Videographer Minion, Heather Minion, Bill Minion, Kristin Minion, Polly Minion, Musher, Shelly Minion, Jenifer Minion, and the stupid Cartoonist.  Mark Minion (husband of Jenifer Minion) didn't make it into the picture, so I may photoshop his head in there when I get back home.

Since my work is never done, I had to prepare the Pretty Curly Tails for their after Open House run, which would be their last run before the Ceremonial Start.  Irving... who is on the final Iditarod team this year, was especially cranky with me when I reminded him that he would HAVE to wear the FABulous scarf that Donna F Minion made for him.

So, then the fans left, the Pretty Curly Tails got their harnesses on, and once Richard untied the knot to the tree (ahem, slip knot next time), off they went for their final training runny run.