Hellfire English Springer and Sussex Spaniels

One is never enough

The beautiful ZeeZa girls in South Dakota

Zeta (2011 Toby X ZeeZa) and Gin (2008 Ace X ZeeZa).

The Family Jewels

The Iceman earrings arrived today! Think I'll order a couple more sets now that I know they aren't totally awful.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE DROID

Winter Greetings

Happy Winter Solstice!

Uber Cuteness

Right to hand. As nature intended.

Tenacious T

Keep in mind she is just shy of 8 weeks old...

 

Watch me!

Going up!

It's tipping

Ooops!

 

Little dog - Big ideas

Queen of the woodpile.

I definitely overdid the neurological stimulation exercises with that litter. My bad.

I got this

Baby Steve says, "I got this!"

Going up the agility A-frame

Shakin' it

The real purpose of those plastic domes

Tick borne diseases

The reason I mention this is because one of my 2011 Singer/Mickey puppies living back east was bitten by a tick and is battling the platelet attack described in this article, posted on the AKC Health Foundation facebook page. Her owner didn't even know anything was wrong until the dog started bleeding out of her nose, but she had pulled a tick off the dog a week earlier. In the majority of cases, the actual strain of tick borne disease is never identified. Even worse, if an affected bitch is bred, the tick rickettsia can be passed to offspring during the pregnancy.

Whilst we don't have deer ticks in Montana, we do have wood ticks and when my dog Ray (CNFC Bud X Maia MH) was a puppy he was bitten by a tick I never saw, and he almost died from Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. It also destroyed his trial career and his stamina. It's true that RMSF is very rare, but then again that four letter word is like a magnet to sporting dogs. Let's face it, we put them in harms way much more than a normal house pet, so the probability of finding those "rare" situations is significantly higher.

I was surprised to learn that the percentage of ticks carrying "bad things" was so high. This article has compelling and downright scary info reprinted from the CDC and provides food for thought if you travel with your dogs...or send out bitches for breeding to areas that have these kinds of creepy things.

I would imagine that with the increasing trend of mild winters, all the nasties will be migrating toward us here in the buffered zone of the rockies.

For you LOTR fans, in the words of Boromir, "It is a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing. Such a little thing." 

Well said, indeed!

Circus Show

Yep. About sums it up.