Meeting Boost's Siblings

Backfill: Tues, Nov 22, 5:15pm

maybe photos later

On Thursday at the Nationals, I finally met the last of Boost's siblings, the one who went down south. Her name is Gina and she's the third of the blue merle girls. She's the one being trained by Olga Chaiko, one of the top handlers and trainers around, instead of primarily by her owner. But her owner, Tim, seems like a really nice guy. We talked quite a bit while I played on my knees with Gina, who has some similarities in markings to Boost but who isn't quite as similar as Bette is. Tim is currently running a Boxer in agility; says he's the #1 AKC agility boxer at the moment. They're just starting to get into USDAA, having just finished their ACK MACH (that's the agility championship in AKC). Tim's wife wasn't there, or at least I didn't meet her, but Tim's apparently the guy who runs the dogs.

When I finished playing with the puppy and we were wrapping up our conversation, I became aware that I was kneeling ON something. Turned out to be my glasses. With their expensive scratch-resistant high-impact lenses. Turns out that scratch-resistant doesn't include being ground into blacktop with one's knee. See, I was wearing my sunglasses and had just dropped one earpiece of my regular glasses into the neck of my shirt, which I do a lot around town but not usually when doing things with the dogs, because they'll fall out. Well, they fell out. Fortunately the scratches are above and to the right of my main vision; I just now have a tiny blur in my upper right peripheral vision that makes me want to clean my lenses. Sigh.

I don't know why I'm not taking photos of all of Puppy's siblings when I encounter them. Would be cool to have and display. Maybe I'll remember later... although not sure when I'll see Gina again, since I'm not planning on going south for a while and it didn't sound like he'd be coming north for a while. So the six puppies are:

• Boost, my blue merle girl
• Bette, my agility friend Mary's blue merle girl the only one with upright ears.
• Gina, the southern blue merle girl.
• Beck (or Becka?) my agility friend Robert's black and white girl; Robert's been out with various illnesses, operations, and injuries and I can't remember what the latest is, but it appears that his wife, Linda, will be training not only her own slightly older BC but Becka as well, all at the same time as running their two older German Shepherds.
• Derby, the only boy, very tall and also black & white, kept by Tammy out of the litter.
• The third black & white one. Um, don't remember her name, and although I've sort of met the new owners, I don't know them or remember their names, either. They're in this area, have been in our occasional Saturday puppy classes, and just adopted the girlie a couple of months ago.