11.18.09

Lots going on

Posted in News, Other dogs at 01:07 by nikki

Well, I’m really busy lately with the website, Facebook accounts for our school (two different ones) and I’m happy to say that a remarkable 65 people clicked on as “fans” in one day! The surprising thing is they are almost all living in Iceland and most are not even people we know so we’re looking forward to seeing if any of these clicker fans will sign up for courses in the future. Obviously it was not a bad idea to add a fans page because as I said to Rúnar it will give us an idea of how many people in Iceland actually are interested or already use clickers or are clicker training. There are no other pages on Facebook for clicker training schools or in general here yet so it gives us a bit of an edge. I really want to try to spend the majority of my free time making that fan page interesting for people to keep coming back to visit. I think we need to take our dream a bit seriously because no one can make it come true except us!

Unfortunately this means I have pretty much stopped reading posts on all my different groups on Yahoo. Not enough hours in the day to go through all the emails that come from the lists. I really don’t know how people manage to keep up with so many lists at the same time AND do other things. If specifically asking for comments from me you’ll need to send me a note to tell me where to find the post. I’ve gone through and couldn’t find the post you talked about Val.

I’ve been encouraging Rúnar to take the online Tagteaching course because they accept his KPA CTP title as part of the course because he had to learn a bit about Tagteaching while he was doing it and was assessed for his skills while he was being judged for completion. I on the other hand although I’d love to do the course have found out that it would mean a trip to USA to a course and I really can’t do that, don’t have the health or resources to go on a trip right now. I think however that if Rúnar got his education then since he is going to be taking over the teaching anyway it would be a great addition to our school and we will then be able to teach people in the Tagteach manner more efficiently which would make our courses even more special.

I got back to my book for very short periods the last couple days and I see that I have so much more to write and I want to hurry up and finish it. I had written a couple pages as the “conclusion” a while ago (if I think of something I write it down even though it is not quite in sequence) and I read over those today and thought gee, I really shouldn’t have given up on it because even I thought it wasn’t half bad.

So the news of the day is that after Rúnar came home today we went to my old town of Bessastadahreppur where Hófi’s beau lives and although they were showing some interest she is still not quite ready. We felt sorry for him the poor guy she was playing with him like a teenager and he kept up with her too amazingly, no doubt he’ll sleep well tonight though. We’ll be going back on Thursday and probably every second day for a while just so we don’t miss it. This also means we have no time in the evenings and poor Rúnar was exhausted tonight and went to bed early. We really have to make sure all these trips aren’t in vain, it’s alot of gas spent driving back and forth so often. I guess since we are not going to change our minds I may as well let the cat out of the bag about who the male is even though I might jinx it. Care to guess who this 12 year old gentleman is? I think most have already figured it out. You can click on the photos to enlarge slightly and don’t forget to use the back arrow to get back to the page. To be fair to both the dogs I will say that neither of them is back in coat yet, as you can see they both look really “naked” and they can look better but I’m posting the photos anyway.

That’s right, I’m linebreeding directly to the O line! Skessu Skolli is the brother of Hófi’s grandmother Skessu Salka. I’m excited about it especially after spending a bit more time with him again tonight and seeing how much of a sweet guy (I knew he was, have known him for years) he is and he still thinks he’s just a youngster. A bit like Frigg you’d never guess their age when you meet them in person. We saw how similar the temperaments of him and Hófi are and his owner and her daughter got some kisses from Hófi and fell for her, like most people do when they meet her. I had been looking at sons of his as well as other related lines that were not as close but I couldn’t find any that I could use. Unfortunately his sons are either dead, neutered or living in other countries so it makes him even more important in my mind when his offspring don’t go any further in breeding. Then I thought well a linebreeding of 8% is really not high and I think that it is the very best way to actually breed directly to the O line instead of thinning it out even more than it already is. A linebreed without the high risk that a closer inbreeding would give, I’m thinking it might just be a good way to strengthen the line. I know I’m going to get dirty looks from the “show breeding crowd” but in my honest opinion…who cares?  :Þ

It was so cool when his owner got out a couple of old photo albums and Rúnar got to see the dogs at Thorvaldsstödum and especially his grandmother who I always say Hófi is the spitting image of and well, I wasn’t alone thinking that. Both Rúnar and her owner agreed. Hopefully if it works out we can then get a few good photos of Freyja frá Thorvaldsstödum to put up on the website. (There is one of her on there already on Hófi’s litter page at the bottom I believe it can be accessed through the planned litters link). I honestly thought when I looked at all the older dogs that I remember that I’m glad I decided to use a dog from the “old generation”. That generation is almost all gone already and in my opinion where such different dogs than they are today. I like the old type, I liked the old dogs, I fell in love with the breed because of all those dogs and today I find myself not as smitten by the new type of ISD. Maybe it’s just me but I’m hoping to keep the old dogs alive just a little while longer by using this old guy before he too is gone. Fingers and dewclaws (ALL of them…he is an alspori) crossed that our plans work out.

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