Still Winter - New Family Pictures!

Do you remember that glorious winter we had last year? The one where we had practically no snow whatsoever? The year that we were still playing agility outside in January, February and March? Yeah, that one. We're apparently paying for that now.

With the additional 1.5" of snow that fell this morning, I think we are now something like 7" or more above average. Yay... And guess what, they just issued a new winter weather advisory for tomorrow.

Seriously, I am so tired of winter. I miss training my dogs! I am sick of planning our play schedule around how bad the footing is in the yard on any given day.

Last week I actually reached the point where I finally dragged a few jumps down into the basement. We've used the basement for playtime several times over this cruddy winter, but I never actually got around to taking any equipment down there. The recent blog action day on Internationalization (yeah, I totally failed at joining in on that one, even though I do have my fair share of opinions!) really made me want to get out and run the dogs -- so since I can't do that, I figured we could at least play with backsides, threadles & ketschkers with a couple of jumps in the basement. I haven't been torturing everyone with that -- Just Secret, but we've been having fun!

This weekend we are all home again. A sweet, blessed weekend at home. I hope that the weather cooperates enough that we can do something. Anything. Anything at all outdoors. Did I mention that last year it was 78 degrees on this day? Yup. I remember that we went swimming in March last year!

Next weekend we are making the drive back up to Ham Lake. We are only going on Sunday, as that was the day that had the most advantageous run order for Secret. Sadly for Luke, they aren't running Gamblers that day, which means he'd only have Standard and it was the last class of the day. (Secret is running Snooker, Jumpers, Grand Prix [finally], and Standard.) I decided to make the day a little bit of a test run of sorts to see how Secret does if I take her by herself (leaving the boys at home). I haven't attempted this since Father's Day weekend when my dad accompanied us to New Berlin. Who's to say her weirdness that day wasn't due to my dad tagging along, though? That's why I wanted to test the waters again.

However, plans changed. Photographer Barbara O'Brien (whom we tried to get in with when Secret was less than a year old) is having another open casting call up in the Cities next weekend. I'm thinking we should be done with our runs in time to make it over there, so I decided to sign up for Sunday afternoon. And since I figure Kaiser deserves a shot as much as anyone (well, so does Luke, but he's black and, well...), that means he gets to trek along as well. So much for Secret's solo trip.

We'll see how the audition deal goes this time. Secret has matured a lot since the last time we tried this. She was certainly a very good girl in all of our interactions with Barbara (open audition, Target audition, Chuckle Pup collar shoot), but she was obviously nervous. Hopefully having a couple more years of maturity under her belt will help her show off her naturally gifted posing personality.  :o)  It will have been a very long day with a 4 a.m. start and the trial all day, though, so we'll see what happens.