Chinooks Show Off

Yesterday two AKC judges drove down from Canada and Portland to get 'hands-on' education with Chinooks. They were here to learn about the breed but I also learned about confirmation and judging. 

I am still bummed I did not get a picture of the 5 beautifully brushed Chinooks with the two wonderful judges. 

Brushing my pack is a challenge, not because they don't like it, quite the contrary, all want the attention and stroking and continually vie for a position under my hand or to be on top of me. Grooming is also a challenge because they do it lying down. All of the dogs were blowing their winter under coat. Hunks of dense under-fur make them look akin to a musk-ox in spring. This usually lasts for only a day or two but would not present well to judges. I was afraid I would not get both sides of each dog done before the judges got here. Since the dogs have a preference of which side they lie on, for a while, I had one sided, beautiful, fluffy dogs. 

This morning, Carie of Moonsong Chinooks sent me a picture of Jiggles, father of Cedar's pups. 

He is a handsome boy. I can't wait to see the pups whelp in June.

Birthday Girl McKenzie

CH "PR" Frontier Rain Dancer McKenzie, CGC, HIT, NA, NJ (McKenzie) is celebrating her 11th birthday today. Joining her are daughter "PR" BrownStone Lupin; CH "PR" Moonsong Cedar River Touchdown, CGC, WD (Cedar);  "PR" BrownStone Iditarod Koyuk, WD (Koyuk); and son CH "PR" BrownStone Willamette, CGC, HIT, WD (Willy).

Forever young, McKenzie is still the first to bring a toy to play.

Storm

Last evening while enjoying a good book outside in the 80 degree sunshine, the earth shook - boom!  What the....?!? The temperature instantly dropped. I turned around from my western blue sky view and this was what I saw to the east:  

Fifteen minutes later just as we sat down to dinner, the winds picked up and power went out.

What a wonderful opportunity to uncover the fireplace table and eat alfresco.

The dogs enjoyed the novelty of a non-TV dinner.

 The sky became our evening news.

A Beautiful Day with Dad and Iris

If you are reading this and are also a blogger on Blogspot, you are aware that the cyber powers blocked access to your ability to blog unless you downloaded Google Chrome. Then once you did, you lost your access to e-mail as you knew it; all your blog settings; lost all your favorites; have a new program to figure out with new formatting; and no cyber-power human to swear at.

Well - with that off my chest, I can get to the fun part: a story of my beautiful day with Dad and Iris.

My sister and Iris's children have done an amazing job of making sure Dad and Iris have someone with them 24 hours a day. Sunday, I went up to spend the day and take them on an adventure.
Being Earth-day, the huge garden centers pulled out all stops to draw crowds. Ma Nature was at her showy best for the occasion.

After a long drive through the lush farming, countryside, we first went to a garden center celebrating their 75th anniversary.

I can't say dad was too excited about looking at new and unusual flowers but Iris and I were enthralled. He did, however, enjoy the homemade ice cream in a garden where all of the furniture and pergola doubled as planters.

We then took another long country drive to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival. Seems all of Portland and the Willamette Valley inhabitants also had the same idea.  The festival had simple fair rides, arts booths, "cow" and "dutch shoe" trains full of children being pulled by tractors around the fields, food vendors... 

Mt Hood watching over the brilliant fields

The festival was actually a county fair in a spectacular setting. Imagine the splendor of 40 acres of tulips all in bloom - breathtaking but marred by the crowds and lines everywhere. We waited in long lines to get our authentic Dutch lunch and a place to sit and eat. Iris and I then left dad at the shaded table while we walked to get a closer look at the fields. (There were even lines for that.) I took this picture and we quickly retreated to dad, finished our strawberry lemon-aid and head home.

A well deserved rest for dad after a very long day.

I too now need a nap or chocolate - AARG cyber powers.

Breeding Notice

BrownStone Chinooks and Moonsong Chinooks are proud to announce the breeding of CH "PR" Moonsong Cedar River Touchdown, CGC (Cedar) to GRCH "PR" Moonsong Mukilteo Bluejay, CGC (Jiggles)
All paws are crossed for a large litter of BrownStone Spring Fling pups to be whelped June 15th.

Takotna/Muku Birthday Update

Unfortunately my computer was in it's uncooperative mode when this e-mail was first sent. Fortunately Muku's family re-sent it. But better late than never and well worth the wait. Muku is a beauty.Hi Kay Lee,
Oddly enough, Muku was also sick on her birthday as we weren't taking any photos of her that day. We think she ate something nasty down at the beach...but all is well now. We're still not quite spring yet here, bu don't have anything like the snow you have! We do usually encounter snow on our trail runs, but nothing around our place. We bought Muku a backpack so she can carry her own stuff on our longer runs. I don't know if you could say she likes it, but she is used to it now, and knows we're heading out somewhere fun when I put it on her.

Muku and Ben's birthdays are only 3 days apart so we took some photos of them together...unfortunately Ben's hats wouldn't stay on her head.

Muku with her lynx the day she was whelped.
Ben, Muku and lynxHope you get some warmer weather soon, although it looks like the dogs are enjoying all that snow. Deavah, Brad, Ben and Muku.

The Mountain is Closed

Today was the last ski day of the season. Patrollers enjoyed scenic breaks between hauling everything off the hill for summer storage.

The sign says "please clear unloading area". While Dave spent his day receiving, sorting and packing patrol items, I got to ski. Unfortunately, most of my pictures turned out grainy and missed showing the beautiful day with snow capped mountains in the background.I met up with Lupin's family -sans Lupin. Klara is all set for her ride up the lift. The family on the way down the run.Kerstin skiing with Klara.Anna skiing with dad.Spring snow is "glick" - basically slick, ski grabbing, glue. Always-ready-to-serve patrollers offered wax jobs to suffering skiers. The day ended with a celebratory dinner and brew. Thus ended another good year at Willamette Pass.