The Lone Star State (in Finnish; Texas)!

After spending three nights in Memphis we left Andrea's for Texas. I didn't feel like driving the whole way on the boring interstate and so I ended up driving to Hot Springs in Arkansas! It was just gorgeous! In the center of the city there was a mountain and you could drive up to see the view. I took these cool pictures.

The city was just so beautiful, I fell completely in love with it! I spent a few hours just walking around but couldn't stay long because I wanted to drive a few more hours before it got dark! We took a smaller route and ended up sleeping in a motel in De Queen, Arkansas. I'm being a bit bad here in motels because I don't mention anything about a dog and just sneak her in so I don't have to pay extra! The motel was really nice for such a cheap place! I was just on my computer and suddenly it went blank! I couldn't get the screen to work anymore!

Next morning we took to the road again and as I was driving I noticed a sign to Paris! As it was pretty close, I just had to go and take a look! We found the town in Texas and spent a few hours just walking around. The stores were luckily dog friendly and I could take Dracu with me. I even found the Eiffel tower! It was styled a la Texas though :D Gotta love the Texas sense of humour!

Eiffel Tower in Paris, Texas!

=D



Dracu under the Eiffel tower!



Next we drove down to Hico, Texas were Terry Martin from kennel Slash V lives! Terry is a very long time working aussie breeder and she has really worked hard to create the Slash V lines that are very distinguished! We talked dogs for a few hours and then went inside Terry's house. There we found an other common factor; the love of fantasy books! We are both huge fans of the Twilight saga and similar books. We also shared the same taste in movies, TV-series etc! I ended up spending two nights with Terry and we had the best time ever!! Just talked dogs, books and life in general! Terry is a really nice and interesting person and she also has strong political views that I found very interesting as I hope to maybe study world politics in the future. Terry took me to eat in this super good place called the Koffee Kup (KKK!) and we had the best pie ever! And the nights we spent up watching a very cool series called Moonlight.

Aussie boy Spinoff Slashen "Shen" owned by Terry Martin

Terry's pups, age 2 days, out of Wicked and Tide

Boys Shen and Tide playing

On Sunday I finally had to tear myself away from Hico and drove about 2,5 hours to Fredericksburg where Melinda May from kennel Hullabaloo lives. There is a very nice little female from this kennel living in Finland so I was real interested in Melinda's breeding! Melinda also had a few other guests; Jean Miller (who works at the ASCA office!) and two ladies from California. We talked dogs, I got to meet her dogs and then we worked goats a bit. I did a little with Dracu but she was way too excited after watching all the other dogs work!

aussie boy Cedar Glen I'm a Ben Two "Ben" owned by Jean Miller

aussie boy Cedar Glen I'm a Ben Two "Ben" owned by Jean Miller

aussie girl L Bar J Meant 2B 4 Hullabaloo "Shine" owned by Melinda May

aussie girl L Bar J Meant 2B 4 Hullabaloo "Shine" owned by Melinda May

I found a cheap motel for the night. I went to ask for the price and then told the guy that it was too expensive but thanks. He called me back and made a new deal and I ended up paying like 15 $ less! :D So now I know at smaller places you can try to get the price down! On Monday I drove to Georgetown to make a surprise visit to Linda Bell from kennel Winslide. I was supposed to give her a call but my computer was still broken and her number was saved in there so I couldn't call her! She wasn't home but after waiting for 15 minutes she luckily drove home! We spent a few hours chatting but she had a lot going on so we agreed to meet after Nationals and I drove to Georgetown, found a used bookstore and ended up with about 15 books! That is one other thing I love about the States, all the books! I need to buy enough to last me until my next visit!

Next I drove an hour to Waco, TX where the Nationals would start on Wednesday (it being Monday). I got a motel room and just hung out for two days. I bought a new computer after the repair guy told be my computer was toast. I had a pretty crappy day on Tuesday as my bank card was not working and my budget suffered badly because this computer fiasco! But life goes on and I had a very big last paycheck from work so I should be okay. Just gotta be careful with money and that has never been one of my strenghts! Next I'll write about the Nationals!

No Elvis in Memphis, but plenty of dogs!

Okay this is coming with such a massive delay I can't be expected to remember everything! I'm just trying to catch up with the now asap!
I left my grandparents on Monday and drove the 5 hour drive to Memphis, TN. We checked into a motel (quite the dump!) and I was a bit scared when Dracu would stand most of the night at the door and growl... Luckily everything was quiet and my truck was where I had left it in the evening! Also I was at Wal-Mart and just walking back to my car next to a couple with a cart. Out of nowhere this lady backed her huge SUV right at us! We jumped out of the way just in time but she knocked the couples cart over so it was really close! And believe or not, she jumps out and starts yelling at us how it was not HER fault!!! Not a single "sorry" or are we okay.

That's something I've noticed about a lot of Americans. Nothing is their fault, someone else is always to blame. Someone made them do it or they could not help it. They are not responsible for anything. Jumping a bit in time, I was trying to get some sleep at the first night at Nationals around midnight when a lady in a stall next to me starts blow drying her dog! I get up and tell her I'm trying to sleep and it's pretty late so could she do it in the morning. And guess what she said: "It's not my fault there is all this noise, this is not my dog!" So because she does not own the dog she can't be blamed for anything she does with it? What kind of logic is that??

Anyway, Tuesday morning we pack up and drive to downtown Memphis. I park the car (of course later I notice it was to most expensive parking lot, go figure...) and walk around with Dracu. I got a hint from Ally Bryant about a lady called Andrea Hoffman who lives in the area and I went to meet her at her work place in downtown. Otherwise we just walked around looking. Can't say I'm a fan of Memphis... Downtown was pretty dead, and the black men where coming onto me a lot. Lucky I had Dracu, people seemed to think twice before approaching us! After wandering aimlessly around for a few hours I drove to Andrea's farm where I also met her roommate Tish Brockmire, who believe it or not, breeds Finnish Lapphunds! (Suomenlapinkoira) It was pretty weird seeing this Finnish dog (and a Finnish import!) all the way in Tennessee!

This cool house houses college students! I'm green with envy...

Yeah that's a firetruck!

The yellow schoolbus is NOT just a Hollywood invention! They are everywhere :O

They don't make riverboats like this in Finland!

I ended up spending two nights with Andrea and Tish. Andrea was kind enough to let me have her bed and she got the couch. Me and Dracu even got some herding lessons with the sheep which was really cool! I got a lot good points of how to work distance onto her. I got to watch all Andrea's aussies work and it was real cool. It's so nice to see the dogs in real life work, not only trials. We also did some agility, I showed them some Finnish handling and vise verse. And of course we spent hours just chatting about dogs, training, breeding etc.

They also took me out to eat at Taco Bell for the first time ever! Tish told our cashier I was a Taco Bell virgin and she was stunned! Called all the workers to see the girl who had never been to Taco Bell and they were amazed we have no Taco Bells in Finland! She even brought us some free dessert! Must try this again ;D Tish took me around a bit on Wednesday and we had a great time. The only not so nice experience (but fun for Andrea and Tish!) was when I met Peking the duck! Tish had told me about her being a guard duck and chasing some lady out of their yard and I could see why someone would flee from that duck! It was scary as hell, making all kind of weird noises and looking really weird :O



Big American smile at Taco Bell

Peking the duck...

Love that shirt! Thanks Donna!

I really liked Andrea's dogs, she breeds with a kennel name Istari. Her lines are based on Twin Oaks and a little something else. I was specially taken with her super fast girls Lin and Lizzy and fast & sweet boy Motley. But they sure had a fun pack! Thanks again guys for having me!

Broken computer! :(

Last Thursday I was using my laptop and the screen just went blank! And since then it has not worked! I took it in to a computer repair place today and they said it's a common problem this brand had a while ago and the manufacturers took them in to be fixed but that was years ago and they don't do it anymore. AND he can't fix it :( :( So there went my laptop. I'll go see if I can buy a cheap new one but I'll have to see if I have the money.

I'm in Waco now waiting for the Nationals to start tomorrow! Since my last post I have visited Andrea Hoffman (kennel Istari) in Memphis and Terry Martin (kennel Slash V), Melinda May (kennel Hullabaloo) and Linda Bell (kennel Winslide) all in Texas! Hopefully I can soon write more about all this...

Spending more time in Georgia

I left to Georgia again on Thursday and drove about 3 1/2 hours to go visit Allison & Micheal Bryant (kennel Four Mile). The drive there was quite fun as my navigator took me by the scenic route over the mountains. All I could do was pray the navigator knew where it was going 'cause I sure was lost!

I did make it to my destination and I had a really nice time just meeting the Four Mile gang, watching Ally work her dogs and then just talking dogs for hours :) Not to mention the wonderful food that maestro chef Mike made! I could have stayed there for ever after they gave me the old WTCH books to look at... All that history and those old dogs described by their owners. It really gives you something more to add when looking at the same names in pedigrees!

We spent Friday out with Ally on the farm. First we gave the sheep a hoof clipping and then a foot bath! It was quite something when the sheep decided the foot bath would kill them and they would not go in! We had to practically carry then into the shoot and then they would just jump over it and we would have to start again! What a workout! I really learned a lot about handling sheep, mostly how so push, pull, drag and lift :D Then Ally worked her dogs a bit more for me to see (I saw Cartman, Jade, Chili and Pony work). Must say Cartman stole my heart, what a silly sweet aussie boy!

W Lazy J J2 Chipotle Chile "Chile" owned by Allison Bryant. 

W Lazy J J2 Chipotle Chile "Chile" owned by Allison Bryant. 

In the afternoon we left to pick up Ally's daughter Perry from school and went for an adventure! Ally drove us to see the biggest waterfall east of the Mississippi, Amicalola falls. We drove to the top of a mountain to look at the waterfall from below and then we drove to the bottom and hiked quite a hill up to see the waterfall from below. Dracu came with us and we all got a good days worth of exercise! I spent one more night at Ally's and left early Saturday.

I drove about a hour to Tony and Donna Padgett's farm (kennel Coosawattee) for some herding. There were a few people besides me so I got to see some more dogs which is always nice. Dracu and I started with sheep and Tony came in to help us get started. We were both a bit rusty from the year long break but it started coming back pretty soon. Dracu was very excited to work and she didn't mind one bit that Tony's dog Georgia came to help us get the sheep out of the corners.

Next we went to try the ducks. This was the first time ever Dracu saw ducks and I was pretty nervous. She did start out pretty rough and did run them over and try to nip a few times. Then she settled down and I helped her to understand that she should move slowly and give the ducks a little time. After that she worked them much nicer and I'm sure she will work them really well after a bit more training!

The last thing we did was cattle. Dracu did see cattle in Sweden in 2009 but we just kind of followed them, she didn't really get to work them. Tony helped again and got the cattle out of the pen so we could start safely in the open. Dracu was really interested and after a bit of encourage she started working the cattle pretty nicely. She was quite keen on heeling and she would run to the heads but she didn't quite have the courage to head them (yet at least!). She does have this habit of not wanting to go too far away from me. She would follow the cattle a while but then stop and wait for me to catch up. That's the downside of a lot of obedience training i guess ;) But for a first time I thought she did real nice and I can't wait to do more with her. She also got a bit trampled at one point but just got up, shook it off and was of again!

           

After the training Tony showed us around in his little cross country car thingy (like I know what those toys are called) and Dracu got to be in the back with Georgia. I got my first ice drink things (I swear I'm not always this bad with remembering things, it's really late!) and we all went for a really late lunch in a restaurant. I got to meet a real American hemorrhoid (who knew they were pretty, long-legged and real friendly?) Sarah and we had a real fun time just hanging out. Then we got to talking dogs, pedigrees, herding etc. and before I knew it it was dark! Because I had a 3 hour drive ahead, Donna invited me to stay the night and I got to sleep in this really cool horse trailer/RV camper with Dracu!

Poor Dracu was left outside in the kennel while we went to eat and she was NOT happy. I could hear her howling away when we came back. We were in the house watching old ASCA trial runs from the early 90s when suddenly Dracu's nose was there against the window! She had somehow climbed over the fence and found us! And boy was she happy to have found me! She made such a fuss and would not be left alone anywhere without me. My spoiled, pampered doggy <3

The next morning I woke up bright and early and got a real Southern breakfast of biscuits and gravy! I can tell you my eyes were as big as plates when I watched them take a biscuit, a chunk of butter and a fair amount of syrup and stir them all together! I was brave and tried it - not too bad! Though it wouldn't be something I would eat every morning ;) But boy did that breakfast keep me going! The next time I was hungry was 10 hours after at dinner!

I got back to Crossville in the afternoon and I have just been preparing to leave tomorrow for Texas! I'll start my trip by going to see Memphis and Tuesday I'll get to go meet Andrea Hoffman (kennel Istari)! The plan is to be in Dallas by Thursday evening but we'll just have to see what happens.

Donna Padgett's WTCH Coosawattee C-Me Emmy Rose "Emmy"

Coosawattee Hillbilly Deluxe "Jeb"

"Georgia" and "Paisley" working the sheep together.

Coosawattee I'm Still a Guy "Paisley" owned by Sarah Logan

WTCH Coosawattee's It Just Comes Natural "Georgia" owned by Tony Padgett

Dracu cooling off after some hard work

Hardin's Hot Chili Pepper "Chili" owned by Darla Huffman

Hardin's Hot Chili Pepper "Chili" owned by Darla Huffman