A Carefully Worded Blog...

I have a pretty twisted sense of humor. I think you would all agree there is really no doubt about that. That is probably why I find this story amusing and am compelled to share it. I hope most of you see the humor as I do and are not too offended.

We were approached by a Siberian Husky breeder in Australia a while back about using Crunchie and Q at stud on a few of her well bred Siberians.
Normally when this happens the owner of the female will ship her up to the home of the male for a few 'dates', after which she will return home to whelp out her litter 63 days later. However, with the long travel times and quarantine restrictions involved in sending a dog to and from Oz, that is not practical in this sort of situation. In this kind of case the general practice is that semen will be collected, frozen, shipped and implanted in the female at the appropriate time - of course, there is a ton of paperwork and technology in most of the process.....most of the process...

The 'collection' on the male is well....not very technical. Our reproductive specialist vet had to have carpel tunnel syndrome surgery a few years back. I'll leave it to you all to figure out the 'repetitive action' and then you should have sorted out the mechanics of the collection process. *Ahem*

An 'in season' female will be used to 'arouse' the male before the vet 'steps in'.

Ironically, after all the testing was done on the boys (blood work to ensure their rabies and other vaccinations had sufficiently protected them and any of their 'little boys') I didn't have a single female in the yard that was in season to act as a 'teaser'. After all my issues on Iditarod you would think just ONE of those girls would have been nice enough to help me out, but no.

No fear, our repro vet specialist is a renowned breeder of Golden Retrievers. She called to let me know she had a girl in heat. Awesome. Q and Crunchie were loaded into the dog truck and driven the 2 hours to the Clinic for their 'happy ending' vet visit.

Q was a perfect gentleman in the waiting room allowing George, the 14 month old male boxer waiting his appointment to crawl all over him and chew on his neck. When it was time he flirted with the very cute and sassy Golden and happily donated a lot of 'little Qs' for a trip 'down under'. Good boy Q.
Then it was Crunchie's turn.

He was also a gentleman and the other couple in the waiting room commented on what a nice dog he was. "He's young, isn't he?", the woman asked. She about fell off her chair when I answered that he had just had his 11th birthday. =)

The cute little Golden swung her hips provocatively as Crunchie followed her down the hall to the 'collection room'. He sniffed,  flirted a bit, and was pretty 'worked up' when the vet stepped in. "WHAT THE.......??????", said Crunchie as he shot a glance my way, "WHAT IS THIS WOMAN DOING?????"
There were going to be no 'mini Crunchies' available for the trip to Oz today. 

Apparently Crunchie doesn't 'do' blondes...or maybe it was the floppy ears, or the lack of a curly tail...whatever ..... this hot little Golden could not get Crunchie...ahem....'worked up' enough to overlook human involvement in his love life.

No fear, this is not unheard of, in fact, his father, the truly super Grover, was the same way. We didn't have time to wait for one of my girls to come into season (semen must be collected within a certain window after the blood work is done), so the vet suggested I bring in one of my girls, they would 'scent' her with a swab from the Golden and we be 'good to go' - or Crunchie would be.

The aptly named Trampie is by far the most 'desirable' girl in my kennel (at least to the male Siberians here). If she was human, she'd be a cute, bouncy, blonde cheerleader. She flashes a wink at my boys and they melt into a puddle of testosterone.
So yesterday Q (we wanted to get 2 collections of each boy as insurance), Crunchie and Trampie jumped into the dog truck for the trip to the city.

Trampie sashayed into the room with Q drooling hotly at her heels. She batted her eyelashes at him, he took a sniff of the swab and in moments we had a second batch of 'swimmers' .

Then it was Crunchie's turn. Tramp flirted, Crunchie sniffed.... his 'attention' was obtained and the vet moved in.
Eyes rolls from my stud dog and it was 'game over'.

*sigh*

Apparently The Man has standards. I guess I should have expected it.

We aren't out of options yet, but the boy is not making it easy.

Q says Crunchie is insane. "BEST vet visits EVER", according to him.


  

Happy Birthday Musher! - Bet

Howdy Ho Everybodies!  It's a very special day here at North Wapiti!

IT'S THE MUSHER'S BIRTHDAY!!!!!!

We have a whole bunch of surprises and fun games to play in honor of the Musher.  There will be pin the tail on Tic (don't ask how he lost it... it's a long, gory story), the Pretty Curly Tails have dug a special sand sculpture of the Musher that sorta looks like a really big hole, and I'm making shrimp with pasta... the Musher's favorite!  Except there's no shrimp because someone had to taste it to make sure it was still fresh and well... ahem... there will be pasta.

As an extra special bonus, I've asked Grandmom to send me some pictures of the Musher when she was a little pup and I'm going to do a "This is your life" thing and stuff for her!

So, here is the Musher when she was very small.  This is a picture of the infamous diaper fire incident.

Nobody in the family can quite recall just how it caught on fire, but they did say that the Musher was a unique baby who really knew what she wanted, and was very innovative, and original even at such a young age... at least that's what I interpreted when they told me: "We knew immediately that she wasn't right in the head".

While other teenage girls were having slumber parties and painting their nails and doing all sorts of really cool stuff like having fashion shows with fashionable ensembles and things... the Musher preferred to stay home and recreate the Serum Run in her room with her "team".

According to Grandmom, she wore out the carpet in her room circling it 1,149 times every year.

It came as no surprise that most of the Musher's friends were the little chipmunks that lived around their Ontario cottage, but she had to bribe them with chocolate chip cookies and watch them come running when she called "here chippy chippy".

Things seemed to even out in her adult years.  She met Musher Mark and owned a camera store and seemed to be acclimating herself to the real world very well (and from what I hear, she actually wore dresses and pretty things too).  Then one day Musher Mark had a job offer in Grande Prairie, Alberta, and bribed the Musher to leave Calgary with a real sled dog... but it couldn't just be ANY sled dog, it had to be a PRETTY sled dog.

Libby

So, that's when Libby joined the family.  Libby gave birth to Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie and they became the Musher's very first sled dog team!

Alpha (Allie)

Bravo

Charlie

Their first "race" was a mile around their Grande Prairie subdivision.

Soon after that, the mushing and show dog bug had taken hold, but there was no way to hold down full time jobs and do what they loved, so the family said good-bye to the big city and moved to North Wapiti... and the rest is history!

A bazillion shows, a bazillion sled dog races, and 10 Iditarods later, she's still very tough on herself and demands she push herself to the limit, but she's a big smoosh when it comes to her Pretty Sled Dogs... and me, and Cricket, and Musher Mark... but not the cats... the cats are Musher Mark's.  She'll fight off big stompy mooses and swim the oceans for us all.

She's a role model, a good friend, a philanthropist, a shoulder to cry on, a sounding board, a good laugh to share, a mentor, and an inspiration.

Happy Birthday Musher!

Proud to be a member of North Wapiti and the Musher's freak.

- Bet
(and the Pretty Curly Tails, Cricket, those cats, Musher Minions, and Richard)

Preparing for a walk on the wild side - Bet

Howdy Ho Everybodies!

I'm glad you enjoyed the Musher's pictures from the Cramplings' first walk in the woods.

I'm pretty sure it just looks like the Musher opens the Crampling pen gate and off they go, but that's not all that happens.

There's a lot of preparation time that goes into making sure they are ready for their first woodlands adventure.

Cricket has to go secure the perimeter to make sure there's nothing icky, stompy, quilly, bitey, stingy, or poke your eye outy lurking in the woods.

While she's doing that, I have to go in and give the Cramplings their safety check briefing and instruct them on the proper way to run willy nilly through the forest.  It's neither willy, nor nilly, but all a carefully orchestrated plan like those high speed jet thingies that do tricks do, but they make it look so easy.

First off, I provided the Cramplings with strict instructions that they must always stay in front of me, as I am a professional herdy type dog and it's my job to make sure they are properly herded to and from the wooded play areas.

No... Cramplings... in front of me.... you're suppose to be in front of me, always in front of me.  The only time you should be behind me is if Cricket gives out a warning of something icky and then you follow me to safety... at a high rate of speed.

No... NO... I'm not going to carry you to the woods, not, get off me, I'm not a pony!  You have to run to the woods... IN FRONT OF ME!

OHMYGAH OW, seriously?  You have an entire woods full of things and you chew on me... really?  Ok, I think we've had enough fun now... yeah, loads of fun, but we need to get back home for something... or other... no really, now let go of my lip.

Um... hello?  What part of IN FRONT OF ME... Cricket?? Why aren't you up front looking for icky things that may lurking up ahead, do I have to do EVERYTHING??

No, it's fine, no need to thank me for taking you out today, it's my job, no really, no need to show your appreciation by chewing on my head, oh geez.

FINALLY a few seconds of rest before I have to help the Musher with dinner... I hope it's pasta and shrimp again.  zzzzzzzzzzz

- Bet

A Walk On The Wild Side.....

Yesterday was the Cramplings first walk in the woods!!!

They were very keen...

But, of course, with all the critters that inhabit the woods around here, it is important that we take precautions for the Cramplings safety.

Meet 'precautions'....

....you all may better know her as 'Cricket'!!!

Like the good guard dog she is, she scoped the woods out ahead of us...

....and then we turned the Cramplings - and Auntie Bet - loose!

They all had a BLAST!!! They ran....

....they tasted EVERYTHING...

...they chewed on Bet...

...crawled all over their Dad...

....scaled logs...

...well....some 'cheated' and crawled under logs.

All under the watchful eye of their faithful guard dog...

All in all in was a great time...

Even Bet agreed!

The puppies pronounced the woods as a great place to hang out....

They thanked Cricket for keeping them safe...

and went back to their kennel for a quick drink. 

Smiley faces!!!

Good times!!

Karen

If You Are Just Patient....

....Solutions Will Present Themselves.

You may remember earlier this year when I was bemoaning having to get Cricket into my Toyota Highlander to get her to the Groomer. She is a 'big, boned gal' weighing in at about 106 lbs (48 kg) and while I do like to think that I am fairly strong, getting her into the vehicle, especially when she figures I'm up to 'no good', is a huge task that usually leaves me broken and gasping in the driveway.

Yesterday, after we unloaded 120 bags of dog food from the trailer I walked up to the house to have a cup of coffee and when I came back outside the solution for my 'get Cricket to the Groomer/Vet' presented itself....

Awesome...

Do you think she will lie there while I strap her down to the deck??

Yeah, me either.....guess it is back to the gym...

Yes Cricket....I do have chores to attend to. I will leave you alone and get to them......

The Musher is Trying To Kill Me - Bet

She is, I swear she is... she's doing everything possible to put me in harm's way... all because I keep bugging her about blogging her Iditarod Adventures!

I KNOW!!!!! 

Seriously, she's only up to here:

The Musher at Unalakleetwhatever

This is where all of the exciting stuff happened (not that the stuff that happened this far wasn't exciting), like the whole pizza delivery thing, and then the whole lost Wayward GPS thing, and the taking really really really long to cross that ocean thing!

So, I've been nagging her to blog about all of it, but its been really nice out, and she's been visiting friends, visiting Grandmom (and not taking me), and camping out at Starbucks, and Tim Horton's, and biking, and finally she asked if I wanted to go horseback riding.

Um... really?  Um... sure!  (she never offers to take me horseback riding... ever... I was suspicious).

So, off we go.  Me in my wonderful purple ensemble, and the Musher in jeans (how boring), and off we go to ride horses... except I didn't get to ride horses.  I totally pictured myself on the back of a magnificent steed riding the trails behind the Musher.  Yeah, not so much.

So instead of riding along nice relaxing trails and stuff, we're just in this corral thing with a horse.  A big horse.  The Musher gets this view:

I get this view:

I mean SERIOUSLY!!!  Scared the living pee out of me!  The Musher apparently thought I'd be handy for maybe herding the horse around or something, who knows, but no way, no how.  She finally told me to go lay outside the corral (um, don't have to tell me twice), and then she played with the horse while I baked in the sun and got dust on my purple ensemble.

She mentioned something about Wild Boar and meeting friends.  I told her that I had to stay home and wash my purple ensemble, but she should just go ahead and go without me.  I'm pretty sure that was all code for Wild Boar Jello wrestling or something dangerous and messy.  She can't fool me!

- Bet

Who Are you, who who, who who - Bet

Howdy Ho everybodies, it's your Auntie Bet!

Although the peoples on the Facebooks already know, the Musher and Musher Mark finally sat down and gave the Boo Who puppies their names.  Of course I'm a bit offended that my wonderful "The Who" names weren't good enough, and I'm sure there will be riots when the Dr. Who people find out that there isn't a puppy named "Tardis" or "K9", but I'm sure you'll be pleased with the names anyway.

This naming is a hat tip to the world of Dr. Suess, with some creative license.

Without further ado or schloppity-schlopp, I present you with the grickily gructus, diffendoofer names of the Boo Whos:

Who's Your Daddy (call name: Daddy)

 Horton Hears a Who (call name: Horton)... no, not from Tim Hortons as many of you suspected

Little Cindy Lou Who (call name: Cindy Lou)

Atwistle... ok, FINE, this is Who Knew (call name Google... don't look at me, I have no idea)

Here are the Whos celebrating their naming and also showing off for the Who Cam in their new digs in the back of the house.  Boo just got word from her agent that her reality TV show didn't get picked up by the network, so she's a bit miffed.

Here I am explaining to Horton that my fabulous ensembles are off limits, and that he needs to listen to me once he gets outside because there are scary things like hummingbirds, floob-boober-bab-boober-bubs, and toads out there.

- Bet