Hi again

I can't tell you how much there is to talk about. I have tons of news for you. I think I will spread it over several blogs though, in order to keep it easier to follow.

Well, here it FINALLY is. My first freestyle routine. Personally I think it is Championship material, but both my human and my real mum just chuckle at that. Well, I think I was brilliant.
But let me first tell you about our fantastic Christmas party. Mum and her friends from the Dancing Dog's committee organised a party for us - yep, for the dogs. We went to a lovely park with a dam and a nice open plan restaurant type veranda right on the dam. Everyone brought their dogs, even those dogs that can't dance were allowed to join in, and we lost count (even I lost count!), but there must have been about 50 dogs of all sizes running around. We were all off leash and we all got on really well. I did some supervising of course, so no wonder everything went smoothly.
We first just ran around getting to know each other and some of the mad Retrievers and Border Collies already went for a swim, before they even had a chance to dance and show off their outfits.
You can see my beautiful Christmas collar on the picture above. It also had 2 big bells attached to it. My mum's friend Margie brought it all the way from the USA for Quincy, but mum said it would be OK for me to borrow it for this special occasion, as long as I would take good care of it. When mum first put it on 2 days ago I wasn't very happy about it - it felt a bit odd. But then I realised that it was very special and I think the color really suits me. Now please don't say it doesn't match my mums pants - I told her that. They say dogs can't see red, but even I could see that those 2 colors didn't go. But she wouldn't buy another outfit - decided it would just have to be that way ...  I forgot to mention that we were 5 Wesavi dogs at the party. Mum and Chippy, Allez and Cassie and of course me. We took dad's car and quite honestly we couldn't have fitted anybody else in. As it was I had to squash at mum's feet and Chippy was sitting on her lap! Good thing it wasn't far to go. All of us wore special collars for the party, but mine was definitely the prettiest.

After the first run around we had a fun relay race for the dogs. I couldn't take part in that one, because mum wanted to supervise the humans. It was OK, I guess. She did OK until the part where she was supposed to look after a bowl of water with saussages in it and each dog in the race was supposed to "dive" for a piece of saussage, but a stranger just arrived and ate all the saussages. Mum didn't mind, she was just laughing. The dog's human arrived eventually to take her dog away - some dogs have no manners, what did he think just gate crashing our party like that? If I had been there that would have never happened, but I was in the car. Other than that all the tasks went smoothly - I hear a lot of dogs cheated, but I have a suspicion it was the humans that made them cheat!

Then we finally each performed our freestyle routine. We all did it to "Jingle Bells" and it was only 45 seconds. Mum says if I want to be a freestyle dog our routines will have to be much longer than that. Well that should be no problem, we stopped just when I started to get into the swing of things. It was fun to see how each team had a different interpretation. Some dogs were old pros, but some were also new at it.
My mum said she was very pleased with me (I sure hope so!). The space was very small, much smaller than the ring we usually train in, and everyone was sitting right at the edge. But it didn't bother me much - just once or twice I had a quick look to make sure that my dad had everything on the video. My mum had no treats or toys with her. That doesn't bother me anyway, but she thought it was a "big step".

So, with no further adoo ......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiuqMO8wUGQ  oh, mum says she also put the video up under my intro, so you can see it there if that is easier.

If you look at the background you can see the pretty dam and the rest of the park. This routine by the way is almost the last step in my Training Levels program which mum made us do since we were little. We got quite slack in the past few months, because we had so much other training to do with Agility, but mum says she wants us to finish our program. We really enjoyed doing it and mum thinks it is a great team building exercise and all dogs should ask their humans to go through it. It doesn't matter how old you are.

Next the humans needed a break, so us dogs settled down in the shade or our crates and let them have some breakfast to gather their strength for the second half of our party.
Everyone said the food was very nice - can't comment, as they didn't keep me even a tiny bit of the yummy smelling bacon ...

Getting their strength back definitely took longer than we expected, and they came back much more cheerful, I believe the correct word would be "tipsy", than when we dropped them off . When they were finally ready we watched the second half of the routines and then we went on a wonderful long walk. I think dad was a bit upset, because mum walked at the front to show the way and dad was walking somewhere at the back. Well, us dogs had to stick with mum of course - out front checking everything out. I think dad expected at least Chippy to stay with him, but we all just had so much fun with all the other dogs. I am sure he will get over it.

I think Chippy kissed one or 2 girls too many at the party, because he came home with a hot spot on his jaw - serves him right. He is quite miserable about it and makes a huge thing out of it.

I got to go again, mum needs me
Speak to you soon with all the other news.

Love you all
Lollie