Del Val Dog show in Pleasanton, CA

A couple weeks ago we were asked to take photos for our Chow Chow breeder friends at the Del Val dog show in Pleasanton. It is a fun, odd group of dogs and people and of course the chow chows are our favorites!

Here are some pics we took for the group which we've been told are likely to be published (some, one, none) in a Chow Life magazine. So here they are and enjoy....

Chris's new friend.

As posted on facebook we had a visit at the house by a Burrowing Owl yesterday and he hung around near Chris and even flew back to her when she called him.

They sounds like a neat species:
http://www.owlpages.com/owls.php?genus=Athene&species=cunicularia

Now.. time for some pictures.

The year goes on

We're sorry we haven't been blogging much for the past year. We have truely had our hands full with our living for our dogs which can be good and bad.

This year we plan on doing a lot more outdoors and getting back into our favorite hobby, photography again which will bring some new posts.

We hope you are all having a good 2009 and that you have happy safe travels!

Wow, a year already!

Can you believe the first anniversary has come and gone already? Amazing how time flies.

We actually went up to Tahoe to celebrate our anniversary and were gifted by mother nature with a show. Apparently, back in the 1940's, Lake Tahoe was stocked with Kokonee salmon. As most people know but few people have seen, those salmon truely do spawn and since they are already "up there" they don't have much of a stream to spawn "up".

While driving down the highway past Taylor Creek on the south side of Lake Tahoe we saw a group of 20+ people standing around, on a bridge looking over. We stopped and sure enough thee was a show in progress.


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The Kokonee Salmon were huddled up in Taylor Creek, swimming upstream by the thousands. We attached a couple pictures of the salmon in the stream.

While we were there looking around we found someone out fishing and can you believe it, he didn't even have a license!!! It was a young brown bear, splashing around looking for some dinner and he was even able to catch some. Sorry.. we didn't have our camera with us at the moment! :(

Hope you enjoy the pictures, if you would like to see more let us know!

Mark & Chris

Catching Up - Athena

In April Chris and I were trying to help the Chow Chow rescue by visiting a local shelter to meet and greet a dog they were thinking of rescuing. We stopped at the city animal shelter in Tracy, CA to check out a female chow-shepherd mix and although the staff was afraid of her.. we adored the sweet girl.

She was a black dog, mostly german shepherd and sweet... so we spent a 1/2 hour with her and took pictures and got to know her personality, both of which we sent back to the rescue group. Unfortunately the rescue was full so they determined they could not help her.... That is when the fun began.

We received a phone call the next day to let us know they shelter was full and if the dog was not rescued by noon she was to be put down. What else could we do but rescue her ourselves!!

Our house was already full so we found a kennel close by and Chris went over everyday to spend time with her while we found her a home and within a couple weeks she had a new home in Santa Cruz, CA. A nice young family with a little girl decided it was time for a new dog in their family and so we delivered her to their home and spent some nice time with them. Athena was promptly at home and was running around their huge yard checking things out.

We received a couple follow up emails from them and they are all doing well. Along with her new family, Athena received a new name from the family's little girl, which is very cute though odd... and what was it? "Ding Dong"

What a happy ending to a sad situation! Good job Chris!