Big News! (x2!)

Ah! Where to start even?! So much to say.

We'll start with Kaiser. Kaiser was a GOOD BOY tonight and stopped making me pull my hair out. After making me eat crow at our last NADAC trial -- where I had our bar pre-made and ready to go, and Kaiser said, "No way Jose" to Qing in Tunnelers -- Kaiser was nice enough to be a good little Klee Kai and not make me sweat it out until our final attempt at the class on Saturday. Nope, he put in a lovely little Tunnelers run tonight to earn his first V-NATCH! This also makes him the first of his breed to win this award (we really need more Klee Kai in NADAC I guess....).

I also ran Kaiser in Weavers tonight -- it was the first class of the night and I figured it wouldn't hurt to give him a warm-up. It was a nice run, but plagued with some pretty wide turns and a little "Wah???" moment as I asked him to do something we pretty much never see at trials (a call out of a tunnel with like a 45' span back to another one -- he was looking for obstacles to do between, kind of like Snooker!), so we continue on with no 100+ DRI runs in Weavers. Oh well.

He wasn't too hyped up in general tonight, though. I think life is just very exhausting these days and since I was home from work all day the dogs didn't rest as much as I would have hoped.

We are back for more fun the next two days. Kaiser is entered in all six runs tomorrow; Luke has four and Secret has three (I entered her in just the first round of Regular). I'm going to start asking the leash runner to drop Secret's leash at the end of the run instead of that stupid NADAC rule of handing it to the handler. For all I know this might be the sole reason that Secret hates NADAC, because she doesn't like those weird strangers getting in her space at the end of a run. We like USDAA because we can run out of the ring without even putting our leash on. We like AKC because I can run to the leash bucket, throw it on her and run to our treats outside the ring. We'll try that tomorrow.

And for the other piece of big news -- It's official! This little cutie's name is now Kismet (Kizzy) and she is staying with us. When it came down to it, I just could not let her go.

This morning Kizzy and I went and visited my vet again for a full orthopedic work-up. Kaiser has a luxating patella on his right hind and I knew I didn't want to deal with another sport prospect with something like that if I could help it. I figured if my vet found anything worrisome then I would just have to accept it and let Lucy move on to her new life without me.

My vet put her through the wringer and palpated her every which way (which she was not terribly fond of, I should add), but could find nothing remotely loose or out of place. He watched her gait and said she toes in a little when she moves and agreed that her elbow does noticeably turn out when she stands still, but he nor the sport therapist at the clinic felt that this would in any way affect her going forward.

He also said that he felt pretty strongly that even if she did have any mild physical things going on, that he would still recommend that she be a working dog because she NEEDS A JOB. She was at the clinic for three days, I feel that they got to know her enough to have an opinion on this. lol And I agree, I honestly feel that Kizzy would be a complete nightmare in a pet home. There's got to be a reason that her previous owner was able to let her go so easily, and I have a feeling it's because she was very difficult to live with. Since she's been here, we've been walking 4-5 miles minimum per day (that fitness goal for Champs really took off when she arrived!), we have a play/training session with toys and she runs around the back yard for over an hour with the other dogs. She is ACTIVE. And then she comes in the house and chews on me a bit and is a general spaz for a bit before passing out. Yeah. It's seriously like having a border collie puppy in the house in many, many ways.

There was a fair amount of drama that occurred this afternoon when we had to inform the person who was lined up to adopt her that it wasn't going to happen. We knew that it would not be "happy" news for them, but I didn't expect to have threats of a lawsuit thrown in my face. That whole phone call was absolutely ridiculous. Long story short, the bottom line is that he wanted another Klee Kai (he has one) and he wanted it as cheap as he would get "Lucy" (that was going to be $250-$300) -- By some miracle and by the power of the amazing Klee Kai community, we managed to find a breeder that was placing one of their females that was just spayed due to Pyo. Apparently this appeased Mr. Sue-happy and he will be taking that dog now instead. He's sticking it to me, though, for something I said in our conversation. I asked him if he'd get off my back about this if I sent him the money he was going to pay for Lucy (I know, it makes no sense but I was grasping at straws...) -- so because I said that, I'm now contributing $250 to the transport costs to get the new dog from the east coast to Wisconsin. Whatever. I'm over it. I don't care.

So that's that! Big news done! Now to try to get some sleep for the big weekend ahead of us (since I totally didn't get the nap I'd planned thanks to all of the dog drama). Oh, and yes, Kizzy is already sleeping in bed with us.  :o)  That's the kiss of death in this house -- Once they make it into the bed they do not leave.