the Light still shines!

Yes the light in the tunnel that I saw on Sunday has continued.. and today is Wednesday! Ellie successfully now goes outside every time she has to potty. Every now/then I see her sniff the floor and I say to her "Ellie Outside!" and typically she heads that direction. Zero accidents since Saturday and 100% success of going in/out the door. She is not going to the front door though, she uses the back door/slider onto the deck. I think because it is closer to the living room whereas the front door is around the corner and further away. She will eventually figure it all out and use the proper door, all I care is that she is using a door!! The down side to it all is the house if full of flies since we leave the doors wide open when we are there so she is not hindered at all in her potty attempts.. the small price to pay for a well trained dog! :)

After a looooong week of feeling like I could do nothing but sit and watch Ellie 24/7, we are now at the point of being able to roam about the house while she is in the house.. we can do laundry, do dishes etc w/o too much stress over where she's at.. and Russell is starting to play with her! He actually kinda ran with her a little, he's been horny and likes to air hump over the top of her since she's so darn small.. lol

more doggy business!

Got the message from Jim today (he is the breeder of our Boykin pup) and his female just came into heat!! Which means.... our little "Cooper" will be coming home just before Thanksgiving! They say it takes 6 months for a puppy to be fully potty trained, well Ellie will be exactly 6 months old when Cooper comes home, so lets hope the 6 month mark is true because I dont think I could handle trying to potty train 2 dogs at one time. :)

We are getting very excited about Cooper, I love having the puppy energy around, but whew the potty training is tiring.. She is fairly content staying outside on the front porch, but I feel bad for Russell having to be left outside all the time, so I try to allow her in the house as often as I can.. which basically means not much ability to do anything else while she is in the house. She pees every 30-45 minutes when she is awake/active and if you dont get her outside before she has to potty, she'll just drop a damn squat on the living room floor!

Saturday was a bad piddle-on-the-floor day.. she pood once Friday night and then peed 3 times on Saturday and it was NOT because I was not paying attention, she just goes from playing to peeing in a matter of a second! I was frustrated a little, I must admit. I needed a break from puppy, so was glad to get to leave the house for a few hours and head off to my cousin Shana's 40th Bday BBQ/Party.

I had spent most of Saturday working on more videos of Oakley. We went out Thursday evening and shot more video of him and then I spent probably 6 hours Saturday compressing things down and finished with uploading 4 new videos to youtube! So now there are 5 total and possibly will do one more trail video in the future if need be. There has been a lot of interest in him from our online ads and these videos.. some promising potential buyers.. Derek spent Saturday out dragging the pasture, exposing all the rocks and sticks we need to pick up over the next couple weeks before the grass takes over again.. All the cross fencing was pulled up so we are getting closer to putting in our permanent fencing.

Sunday evening I saw some light in the potty tunnel.. for the first time Ellie twice walked over to the screen door to the back porch, Derek jumped up both times and let her out and she immediately went out in the yard to potty! It was fantastic!! Yes my life has resorted to being overly joyous at the sight of dog piss/poop.. LOL What the hell has become of me...

I have to remind myself she is only 8weeks old.. 8 weeks old.. 8 weeks old.. and stop for a second and take a step back because potty training does not happen overnight and I was crazy for even thinking we were gonna have that perfect dog that NEVER went in the house!! :) Russell has yet to start "playing" with her, but he continues to allow her to now bite at his face, she will run under him, she steals his ball from him, she runs up sideways to him and pushes her body under his face, she's curling up next to him in the crate.... Soon, soon he will fully appreciate this gift we have given him! lol

In the meantime, the horses continue to enjoy their vacation! August will be a much better month for us to get back in the saddle.

Pics of the Ellie Bean

Taking a moment to chill out.. these moments only last but a few seconds when she's in "play" mode! Then she's off and running again, grabbing whatever her mouth can get ahold of.

Welcome to our house! This is what you see when you come up to the front porch these days, it's been transformed to a playpen basically. Not only is the crate on the porch (so she can get accustomed to going in/out of it on her own so she learns to love it!... well that's the plan anyways) but there is also a big igloo dog house next to the porch that they can go in as well.

Another pause in playtime..

She's so flippin cute, I can hardly stand it! :)

She thought the camera noises were "Cool Beans!" She kept lunging at me when I would zoom in/out or the flash would go off.. I know it's blurry, she was running straight at me from out of the crate.. lol

This is a rare moment in time that she was okay with sitting on your lap.. Even though she's a small little lap size dog, she's not necessarily a "lap" dog yet! Normally she wiggle worms her way off of ya and prefers to cuddle up at your feet... occassionally I can get her to snuggle on the couch cushion next to me, but she has yet to "love" the lap dog roll.... which is okay, I know she is going to be a happy loyal dog, and that is important.. it might be nice to have a dog that prefers to lay on the ground next to you than be a baby (Russell!) and beg to get in your lap with dirty camping paws anyways!

Ellie Video

Here's a video I took yesterday, a little blurry at times, but it shows only a small portion of her energy and crazy playtime behavior.. she is definately cookoo crazy funny!

adjusting..

things are going pretty good with miss Ellie! :) No more worried calls about where the dog is, the doggy door is taped shut, so she cant get in the house while we are away. Let me tell ya, she THINKS that she should be able to get in that house though, scratching at the door when she feels left behind. I dont know if Russell loves being an outdoor dog, I'm sure he misses his comfy recliner but he seems content with what he has.

Ellie is quite the character and proving to be as smart as Aussies are known for... I picked up some tiny soft treats yesterday and she was trying to get into the unsealed bag before I even had them out of the shopping bag.. she could smell them and was fanatic about getting into that bag!! something to worry about.... garbages beware. I worked on the command "come" yesterday for the first time and she was doing soooo great at that! If I say "come" and tap my leg, 85% of the time she comes running! Sometimes I reward with lots of praise, other times she gets the treat. I've started using the treats every time I ask her to go in the crate too.

Russell is really coming around with her.. He only growls on slight occassions now, he lets her run under his legs (yes she is still small enough to fit even under his short squatty legs!), lets her cuddle up next to him, she is starting to bite his nubby tail and his neck.. most of the time he acts like she doesnt exist and just ignores her, she attempts to play and he just keeps on walking.. but give it a few more days and I think he'll be chasing and running with her, not past her. :)

Putting him in the crate with her at night has made an amazing difference! In the evenings we let her play real hard for a couple hours to tucker her out... The crate is all open/wire type, so she can see from all directions. When she first goes in, she does whine a little even though Russell is with her, but as soon as she's in, I lay on the bed which is right next to the crate and put my fingers in the side, she will come over immediately, sniff/lick my fingers and lays down right away, curls up and goes to sleep. If I dont put my fingers in, she gets upset and will sit there whining.. so she definately is comforted by our touch and once she goes down, she's out for the evening! :) Monday night I got up once in the middle of the night to let her out to potty when she whined and then last night she didnt even stir.. she slept til 6am when I got up.

It's still tough to figure out how to get anything else done besides playing with her! :) She is a barrel of monkeys all in one little fur ball of a dog! She goes crazy and is so fun to watch run and scurry.. she loves to run full speed and squat her butt and lay down before she's even stopped moving practically... very typical Aussie behavior in her play. I bought her about 10 toys yesterday, they are scattered all over the yard and living room.. I want to be sure she has lots to chew on.

Tomorrow she is 8 weeks old, I think we'll have to give her another flea bath or drops if she is old enough and she might have some ear mite issues.. need to get up to see Andrea to have her take a look.. otherwise she's happy and healthy and we love her to pieces. She's a lot more energy than we initially had set out to get in our "next" dog, but that's okay.. I'm looking forward to working with her, training her and eventually maybe get into agility...

Just what we need, another hobby to take up the little spare time we gripe about not having! lol Plus when we get Cooper, we plan to train him and do field hunts/trials with him too... something will have to give at some point.. housework maybe? cooking? household projects? It's not that we need more time in the day, we just need more money to hire someone to do that crap we dont want to make time to do... LOL

on a side note, Shannon is starting to get some interest in Oakley, his online video has been viewed almost 250 times!!! Yeah... that is exciting! We are shooting more video tomorrow that I will have to piece together.. I might try to figure out more with this video, could be a decent side cash job I could do for horse owners.. I come out and video for them and put it all together... I suppose I could do it for other animals too, maybe I should take a video class at the college, I could really enjoy that as a side job!!!

Awaiting the call...

I've been at work, waiting for Derek to call because it is 3:55 and he normally gets home about this time.. So he calls and at first sounds like he has a really worried tone, so I almost start to panic.. he says "Did you leave Ellie outside when you left this morning?" YES, of course I did... My heart began to sink, tears were welling up already and he says.. well I just found her in the house!! LOL

We are not 100% yet how she figured it out but she did it.... that little Ellie squirt figured out how to get through the doggy door while we were away at work! 1 day alone and she is smart enough to figure something like out that, I thought it would we weeks before she was even big enough to go through it.. we are in trouble with this one!!! :)

Now Derek is on potty patrol.. just because she found her way in, does not mean she will have found her way out and who knows how long she was in the house for.. hmmm She was hiding under the saddle in the entryway, she probably heard Derek calling her when he was out in the yard. Funny Damn Dog!!

All About Ellie..

Yep, it's all about her right now!

The plan was to get up early Saturday morning and drive down to Damascus OR (just outside Portland) and pick up our little Ellie! but Friday Derek sent me a text saying, why dont we just leave after work? So we got home, loaded the camper and headed on down the road, just us and the Russ. We had contemplated staying at a campground, but we wouldnt get down in time to check in, then we thought about finding a Walmart to stay at but because we dont have a potty in our camper, figured it was best to stay at a rest stop, so we pulled over at Milepost 11 rest area in WA and slept there.. it was a mini adventure and it was actually kinda fun! We woke at 6am (not really intentionally), it was only 40 minutes to our destination and we couldnt show up til 9, so we stopped for a big breakfast and tried to relax the anticipation of getting our dog!

The lady we got our pup from, Denise, she has a lot of Aussie's and had a few other females available too.. one was a red female that was going to be smaller than Ellie. We contemplated for a few seconds, but both realized we had our hearts set on Ellie and that's who we wanted to take home with us. She's a little pudge ball with fur! :)

The ride home was great, she slept up on my chest/neck the entire way, we stopped often for potty breaks and had no car sickness issues with her. Because of her ball of fur and since she's been raised outside, we had to keep the cold air on her to keep her from panting, she is really cute when she pants though! lol

After we got home, we rested for a while then headed out to the Scherrer's for the horse club Ice Cream social and potluck dinner. It was delicious and fun. We had Ellie in her crate most of the time in the shade, she was content to just sleep. Poor girl was tuckered out, but I was happy to see her so comfortable in her crate.

Every time for the rest of that day, whenever she would start to fall asleep, I would make her walk into her crate so she learns that is her safe zone to be quiet and calm. Saturday night in her crate was a completely different story though! She slept just fine in her crate for an hour or so and then she would whine.. so I'd get up, take her out to potty and then put her back.. an hour later she would wake up and we'd do the same routine.. well after a couple hours, she figured out that if she whined, she would get taken out so then she just wanted to be held.. so i'd take her out, hold her til she fell asleep then put her back in the crate and again an hour later, she'd wake up.. on and on and on, til I just gave in and got up for the day much earlier than I wanted to. :)

Sunday we went to my parents for breakfast and she did good, again we used the crate for her to sleep in while we ate and she did great.. we'd then take her outside to play.. the first time my parents Aussie dog ran up to her, she screamed like she was under attack! Sarge didnt even touch her, he was just looking at her and she sat there and screamed bloody murder and didnt stop until I picked her up, she acted like he was eating her.. :) A little later we reintroduced him to her and she was just fine.. I think the initial shock of him running past her, just scared the shit out of her! lol

I spent the afternoon on Sunday doing some of that long-lost cleaning that I've procrastinated on.. not sure what burr climbed up my behind, but I got windows washed, dusting done, vaccuuming.. Ellie sat in her crate as I vaccuumed and was not phased one bit by the machine... She really started coming out of her shell yesterday, she was doing a lot more playing and running around.. She LOVES the grass! Ever since we put her on grass on our drive home from OR, she just loves the feel of it and rubs her head in it, rolls in it.. She has figured out how to go up/down the front steps, she's slowly starting to come in/out of the house on her own, she is doing great with potty (no accidents as we are very good about getting her outside). She is definately a much different dog right now when she is inside vs outside. Outside, she runs and spins circles, rolls in the grass, growls, chases Russell, explores.. In the house, she plays a little bit but is more reserved and tends to want to hang out by me. I am really glad she likes it outside considering that when we are gone, she is out there all day.

Last night we put Russell in the crate with her (a little snug for the 2 of them) but it worked well because she slept solid from 10pm - 5am! She had to potty real bad when I took her out at 5, we came in the house and I put her back in the crate.. Russell had jumped out as soon as I opened the door.. he was not really okay with being forced to sleep with her, I would say he tolerated it very well.. :) But she slept solid and when I put her back in at 5, she whined and cried, so of course I caved and put her in the bed, she fell asleep between us until it was time to get up for the day.

Russell doesnt yet love her, he likes her okay.. he growls at her a tiny bit if she gets too close for comfort, but he's slowly tolerating more and more from her.. she tries to bite him and runs up to him all the time and he's coming around.. she follows him all around in the yard. We have to keep reminding him to not get grumpy with her, I think in a couple days it will be a different story. Russell has never been a puppy fan but he's also a good boy and since we are now going to make him sleep with her, he'll just have to learn to love her!!

I think it's only a matter of a few days before Russell stops feeling butt hurt and starts realizing she is going to be his next best friend! :) It is tough though with her... trying to figure out how to cook, clean, get ready in the mornings, work around the place.. we are wanting to keep our eyes on her a lot for 1) she is so darn cute! and for 2) because we want to be sure she is not going potty in the house or chewing up things she is not supposed to! I think as the week progresses we will find a way to balance this out a bit, but for now, our day (aside from being at work) is consumed with how to work around our little Ellie bean!

wooohooo

I finally got back the letter I needed for Edgar! Yeah... The ranch that branded him sent me the letter indicating they release him and that to the best of their knowledge I am in legal possession of him.. so we can now get a brand inspection done on him which means we can then travel across state lines... legally!! YEAH! That was a big headache process but I'm glad to have it resolved.. The bummer part is that they didnt send me any information on Edgar, like I had hoped they would.. oh well.. we love him and that's all that matters.

If you ever buy a horse with a brand, just be aware of the potential issues it could cause you down the road, it is not easy tracking down where a horse came from that has ZERO papers or known history! :)

Volunteer Weekend

I'd like to get back to the weekend, but not to the weather.. it was just too hot! Yes I am a "too warm bitcher!" :)

I had Friday off and used that day to run errands in preparation for our weekend up at Harry O out of Sedro Woolley. This was the weekend of the fundraiser ride that I made all those bulls for. It was so hot on Friday, I had to work in phases... Me n Russ went grocery shopping early to beat the heat, picked up the horses on our way home and then I had to get the trailer organized and cleaned out, make and pack up the food, finish the laundry, pack the camper.. Derek got off work early thank goodness so he was able to help me because I was not functioning very quickly that day.

We finally made it to the campground around 6:30pm, had some dinner and decided it was a great night to get in a quick ride. So we saddled up and were on the horses at 9pm! Rode down the road to the Cowboy Campsites to check it out. We had never been to their facility, it is basically a big area where you can purchase camping lots, you get a lifetime ownership of that lot. They are not huge, but big enough for your truck/trailer, maybe a small cabin, 1 or 2 corrals, firepit.. Some people have put a lot of time and money into their sites and they are so cool! Cowboy Campsites does not own the land, it is leased land, so you dont technically own anything other than rights to your spot for as long as the land is leased to CC. I like the idea of having a place to go and you can set it up real nice, but 2 minutes down the road you can camp for free and access the same trails.. soooo... why buy what you can get for free! :) But it was fun to ride through the area and wave at the campers.. the very last couple we came to were sitting and watching their 2 pups run around. The guys says to Derek "I really like that roan horse you got, is he for sale?" of course Derek says no, we wouldnt sell him for anything at this point! I asked if his dogs were Toy Aussies and he said no, they were mini aussies but only 3 and 4 months old.. OMG, it made me sooo excited to get our dog when I saw how flippin cute those little buggers were running all over the place!! It was dark when we unsaddled, sat with some Horse Club friends for a bit then headed to bed, it was an early to rise Saturday!

Saturday morning, we saddled up and rode out to our station on the trail. We left about 45 minutes before the official ride started so we would have time to get to our station and set up the bulls and the tarp. At our station, we met all the riders, they drew poker chips from us and then most of them participated in the ride challenge of attempting our obstacle type course. We were at our station for about 4 hours, until the last rider had come through.

Here's a couple pics of our bulls and some horses crossing the "tarp water" and then they had to navigate through balloon hanging cows. It was a great setup and fun for the riders. A few horses wiped out our bulls here/there and we had to mend broken legs, horns, replace the stakes into the ground.. some horses had no respect for them bulls! :)


Here's Josh riding HotRod and then a pic below of Adam on Princess.

After we finished with our station, we then were able to saddle up and finish the rest of the ride, behind the last riders. We attempted to do the other obstacles at the 4 other stations, a bridge crossing, shooting a toy gun, opening/closing a rope gate and then riding across a wood teeter totter... that was interesting. We were pretty tired that night, the weather was fantastic on Saturday, I think it reached about 80.

Here's a pic of Derek in the woods on our ride Saturday.

As we rode that day on the rest of the ride, Edgar and Red were walking out a lot faster than normal and were pretty tired from the ride and heat. When we got back into camp, I realized that Edgar was not feeling well, he was acting colicky! :( He drank plenty of water on the trail, he was happy to eat grass, so we think maybe he got overheated. He thought real hard about laying down, so I grabbed the banamine paste and gave him a dose. He also had no gut sounds. We then led them down to the creek, Edgar drank a little, stood there for about 15 minutes while he ate some grass then led him to the water again where he drank some more and by the time we led him back up to the trailer, he had some gut sounds and he had quit looking at his belly. So phew!! He seemed all good...

Sunday morning Edgar was still fine, he had pooped, peed, ate, drank and had gut sounds.... We took our time that morning, no need to rush. We then saddled up for an almost 2 hour easy going ride with Barb S and Renee. We explored, had no idea where we were going, but we did a really nice low key loop and it was a great ride to end the weekend. I have not ridden much up at Harry O, but the riding is great! You can do easy and you can also do pretty tough hard riding. Derek & I both are looking forward to going back, it was his first time there and we had a great time.

We got home in the early afternoon on Sunday and as we were taking the camper off.. there was a MOUSE under the camper in the bed of our truck! We noticed it when we lifted the camper up out of the truck, I have NO idea where the bugger came from, there were no holes in our camper, so I dont think he came from inside.. I HOPE NOT anyways!! Maybe he jumped in the bed of the truck while we were camping and then went for a very long ride.. unfortunately we didnt get a chance to kill him, I had wanted to but Derek never had the shot to take with the 2x4. :) I dont know where else he would have come from.. It really bugs me though that he was there, I HATE rodents!!

We both crashed in our chairs that afternoon and got in a little nap with Russell who was very upset with us for leaving him behind, but it was just too hot to take him and leave him in the camper all day w/o us able to stay there with him. It's a bummer to be back to work, I think we both would have enjoyed another few days up there camping with the horses.

I have always been an over-packer when I go anywhere, camping too. So I've been trying to be normal I guess you could say and pack smaller bags but I have realized I am going back to my old ways.. I took 1 pair of jeans that I wore all day Saturday and they were so dirty and gross, there was NO way I was going to put them back on Sunday! So I had to ride in shorts, which was OK, except there were a few spots on our trail that had stinging nettles hanging into the trail and they were brushing up against the horses. A couple times I had to swing my legs out of the stirrups and up onto the front of the saddle, which normally is fine, but Red was being "jumpy" so a couple times when I did that, as my feet are out of the stirrups, he jumps/lunges a little forward and spooks at my legs! So here I am trying to now avoid nettles, avoid falling off my horse who is spooked by me and keep him walking forward while I have no legs on him to do so! :) I did not get one nettle sting, so I did good...

Red is doing much better as a trail horse, he is figuring it all out slowly. He still needs to get used to saddle bags, those still make him jump at times and I realized too he doesnt like it when I break off huckleberry bushes and hold them up to my face to munch the berries off.. oh that spooks him if the branch is big enough for him to see so as I'm trying to ride with no hands on the reins so I can hold berry bush in one and pick berries off the bush with the other, my horse is trotting rapidly down the trail spooked at the bush! I kept grabbing the rein and asking him to walk but eventually had to throw the bush full of BIG plump delicious berries because he just would NOT walk and he was getting out of control with his spookiness.. oh well, things to work on! lol

So only 5 more days til we pick up Ellie!! I am excited, I think a lot of my excitement and anticipation is for Russell's sake, I just cant wait for him to realize he has a new girlfriend to love with and play with. And the breeder of our Boykin Spaniel pup, he went down and met Earl, the boy dog he's breeding to his female. Earl apparently is the 3rd highest ranked Boykin Spaniel dog in the US with the 1 and 2 dogs coming from the same lines as Earl who are older. So that is GREAT news! We really lucked out on this deal.. We are getting a champion pup for probably 1/2 the cost and it's a local breeding and we get pick of the litter... A lot of the big top breeders of the Boykins have waiting lists up to a year for a puppy.. I still am unsure of how we will handle having 3 dogs, but it will all work out, that I am confident of. :)

Wants Wins!!

We wanted, therefore we get!! :)

We just paid our deposit on a cute little blue merle toy aussie down in OR.. she's 6 weeks old, we'll drive down on the 17th to pick her up in OR. We are super excited, she is super cute!! We decided if we were going to get a purebred, we were just gonna have to spend money.. We were okay with getting a mut, but once I had my heart set on a toy Aussie, there was no going back. I dont know anyone with one.. so this is going to be GREAT! We are keeping the name Ellie for her.

Wants vs Needs

We are struggling with what to do now for another dog! :( We had our hearts set on Ellie and it's tough to go from being ready for her, to now having no plan again..

I've been looking on CL for re-homed dogs.. not much out there that we are interested in.. oh there are LOTS of dogs! But we are a little picky on the type of small dogs we like. I started looking into the Toy Australian Shephards.. they are pretty damn cute and I found about 6 breeders across the NW that have pups ready now. The problem? Sure, I really want one of these dogs, I am loving the size, the breed, how cute they are! But do I really Need to spend $600+ on a dog??

hmmm.. just not sure what to do.. we didnt set out to spend more than maybe $200 for a dog, and now since we are considering purebreds, we could be up in the $500 range to get what we want.. Its a tough decision, we want a friend for Russell but do we really want to spend the money to get what we want.. You'll be the first to know through the blog and FB! :)

No Ellie..

We got a call today that Ellie had a hypoglycemic seizure (or spelled something like that) and they were unable to save her. We are really sad, we have been talking about her every couple days and were planning to pick her up in about 10 days. We could have picked her brother, who is VERY cute as well, but our hearts are set on a female, so we will continue to look for the right dog for us and for Russell.. It's a shame that cute li'l thing did not make it

mooooooo-ve over cow, here comes the bull..

One other project this weekend was the "painting-of-the-bulls 2010" :)

For the fundraiser this weekend, our ride challenge station will have a blue tarp with a bunch of bulls standing up on the tarp.. the riders will have to ride their horses over the tarp, weaving around these cows for points.. they will be judged on how their horses handle the challenge. Derek and I had the responsibility of creating the bulls, so I cut them out of cardboard, we will attach them to stakes and put them in the ground.. I spray painted them and then was going to hand draw in their faces when Derek came up with a quicker and better way to make the heads and I think they turned out as best as they could for keeping it on the cheap! :)

a week of non-stop digital technology..

I've had this camcorder that belongs to Shannon for over a week now.. she needed me to pull the videos off it and edit them down to make one solid good video of Oakley to post on the internet. I soon realized I had all the tools I needed except the biggest part, which was the program to load onto the computer which enables you to do all the editing!

I purchased a video editing program at Staples, loaded it on my 2 computers here at home, spent the entire evening trying to get that darn program to work.. the program only works on my laptop and somehow it was not reading the videos on the camera! GRRR So then I thought, well maybe I should just pay and download the program that was originally supposed to come with the camcorder.. so I downloaded that.. download failed twice on one computer and then loaded unsuccessfully on the laptop, so I was back to square one because although I was supposed to have 5 downloads, I really on got 3 and of those 3.. non worked! GRRR again!

As I lay in bed Thursday night frustrated at midnight from all this work I was putting in with little to no results (and a few FB posts) I wasnt sure what to do next.. I then popped up out of bed because it hit me that the name of the program sounded familiar, so I threw on a t-shirt and sat my behind in the office and found the program! Our digital camera runs from the same program.. WHOOPIE! I could finally go to bed satisfied that Friday would bring me success..

I had plans Friday morning to meet up with Lynda Burgan at 9:30 because my parents had found a really nice digital camera at a g-sale so they bought it and gave it to us.. So all this past week I messed with the camera off/on and found it to be completely frustrating as well! If there was any light, the images came out BRIGHT. In slightly darker settings it took really good pics.. and then anything with any movement.. complete blurr.. I tried and tried and played with it for days.

I awoke at 6:30 Friday morning and spent 2 hours working on the computer on the image editing program we have had on our computer for years. What I realized is that the program I had, ONLY recognized the pictures and videos that were created on my digital camera. The program is ALMOST identical to the one I needed, but the one I needed was specific to the DVD Handycam.. GRRR!

But I was able to SUCCESSFULLY create one video which had pieces of 3 different videos and I was able to eliminate noise.. I literally skreetched out in joy!! Now that I could do it with our program, if only I could download the other program which looked identical, I might just be able to accomplish my task.

I then headed off to Lynda's inwhich she indicated although the camera is in great condition and a nice camera, she did not find an action setting so it is most likely not going to be good for us since I LOVE to take pics of all our 4 legged children.. then off home I left from her place, loaded up the horses and headed to pick up Rachel to ride at Lords Hill for 2.5 hours. We had a really nice ride, she rode Red (I let her have pick) and I teased Derek that she chose my horse! lol It was nice to ride Edgar again as I hadnt been on him in a really long time..

When I got home I promptly plopped back down at the computer and decided to re-purchase the program I needed and HOPE that it worked a second time.. WAHLAH it did!!! I got the program running and after a couple hours of playing around, I got the program to recognize the videos I needed, got them loaded up and then it was off to dinner..

Saturday we went shopping and dinked around and when Derek left to go watch the UFC fights at a bar with Tyler, I stayed home and spent the next several hours putting together the video.. I successfully edited the video clips into a 7 minute video with no sound... perfection! well as close as it can be for now.. but it shows GREAT footage of Oakley, I am really happy with the video AND I successfully got it loaded on youtube.. I am amazed and the hardwork paid off, I have spent the entire week completely stressed out about this deal. Now I can help Shannon anytime with making videos for her and that makes me really happy.

You can see the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejmf4tnlT60

This morning we woke up early to meet my parents and brother/andrea at Big Lake.. the weather was crappy, got drizzled on, took Russell with us and got skunked. Not even a bite.. we only stayed out a couple hours, apparently the weather was too crappy for fish to even bite. Bummer! It is now 3:40, Derek is snoring in his chair, house is dark and cold and we are supposed to be at Eric/Andreas in about 3 hours for a 4th of July BBQ. Hopefully he'll wake up soon... We both have tomorrow off, not sure if we will go riding or fishing or both.. maybe even go see Ellie!!! 2 more weeks til we can get her.... hehe