Category Archives: Yakira

50 for 50 #18 – Japan Festival

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Japan Festival - Salt Lake City

Today we took Trax downtown to the Japan Festival. It was sunny but cool and the festival was very crowded. In 1985 I went to got to Kobe, Japan to play volleyball in the World University Games. We just missed getting a medal by taking 4th place. That was a long time ago and it feels like another lifetime too. There wasn’t much of today’s festival that reminded me of that trip but I’m glad we went.

Yakira and the CCI dog

balloon artist with samurai warrior hat

As we got off Trax about a block from the festival we started to notice the costumes. Some people were dress in traditional Japanese dress. But more common were young people dressed in all kinds of fanciful ways, with cat ears, tails and other kinds of animals. There were a couple of booths about anime so we think that the costumes were from Japanese cartoons. Most of one side of the street were food booths. The other side of the street had booths with merchandise. The most popular items were colorful umbrellas and samurai swords. We saw several dogs including a working dog from CCI (Canine Companions for Independence). The CCI dog was a yellow lab, who showed interest in Yakira but was not distracted by her.They also had an open house at the local Buddhist temple, so we walked around it for a bit.

My favorite thing was a balloon artist. He had this amazing samurai warrior made of balloons on his head. There were also two stages with Japanese entertainment. One on each end of the street. It was too crowded for my comfort so we didn’t stay very long. Yakira didn’t love the crowds but she handled them just fine.

Trouble with Blossoms

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Yakira with a flower petal stuck to her nose

With spring comes blossoms and we have lots of spring blooming trees near our house. Add that to Riverton’s famous wind (did you know that South Jordan, that is just to the north of us, was originally called Gale, for its wind?) and sometimes it looks like it is snowing with all the petals blowing around. Yakira goes through spurts of wanting to chase after stuff that is flying around on the ground and other times she does great. So a few days ago when Bill took Yakira out for her last relieving of the night she couldn’t help herself from investigating a petal on the driveway, but then it disappeared and she couldn’t find it. When I saw her I started to laugh and ran to grab my camera. The petal had stuck to her nose! The really funny part was that it was perfectly center so it looked like it belonged there. I think she could tell that something was wrong with her nose but she couldn’t figure out what it was. Poor girl! She wasn’t in misery long though because soon the petal dried out and fell of her nose. We sure had a good laugh about it.

Yakira trying to look at the flower petal on her nose

Has your dog ever gotten anything stuck on his nose? Or what does your dog do that makes you laugh?

 

50 for 50 #17 – Volleyball Game

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Smith Fieldhouse - BYU vs Long Beach State

This week as I was deciding what to do to celebrate my 50th year I investigated going to a volleyball game. When I check the BYU Men’s team schedule I discovered that they had finished the regular season but they were playing Long Beach on Saturday. So I called Bill to see if he would be interested in going down to Provo to the game. He said that sounded great. A couple of days later my friend, Tricia called and I mentioned about the game and she wanted to go to. Then later in the week she picked up tickets for all of us in the reserved section. This was really nice because today we were slow getting clean-up from yard work and getting on the road. But even though we were late for the game we still had good seats.

Tricia and Raelyn at BYU volleyball game

BYU won the first two games and then lost the next two. It brought back so many memories of long drawn out games in the Smith Fieldhouse back in the early 80’s when I played at BYU. Some of those games we didn’t come out on top but tonight BYU got the momentum in the 5th game and won easily. It was fun to have Tricia there too. She has been really busy the last month and we haven’t gotten together since early February.

Yakira curled up at my feet - BYU vs Long Beach volleyball game

We also ended up with two puppies in training at the game. Our puppy club leader was evaluating a dog from another club and had too many dogs at her house so her puppy in training, Hallie came for the weekend. It was a great socializing experience for Yakira and Hallie with all the noise and all the people. They both adjusted to the new situation and slept through most of the game. They even did good with all the people who kept going in and out of their seat and so they had to climb over the pups every time.

It is interesting all the rule changes that have happened over the years since I played. The down official was one who refereed when I played. He has gray hair now. Another thing that shows the passage of time was to see Chris McGown coaching with his dad, Carl as one of his assistants. Carl was instrumental in teaching me how to play volleyball. I remember Chris coming by when he was just a little kid and hanging out at two a day practices or volleyball camps. Chris’s team is doing a lot of nice things. They had some amazing blocks. You can watch the game here.

BYU vs Long Beach State

Clifford and Yakira

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Yakira and Clifford

On Sunday, before Pierre’s family picked him up we had another lab join us for a few days. Clifford was here with us until Wednesday night. Then my parents picked him up and took him back to my sister’s house. They got home from Disneyland late Thursday night. Yakira had so much fun and Clifford was even easier than Pierre, mostly because he is older and has a more laid back temperament. I didn’t have to spend as much time preventing too much playtime between Clifford and Yakira.

On Monday we took Clifford with us to puppy class because we were going outside. Plus Clifford’s raiser, Karen was there, so she got to hang out with Clifford for a little while.

On Tuesday I took both pups for a walk. I don’t usually take two dogs at a time but these two did great together. The only challenge was that Clifford’s pace was slower than Yakira’s. So several times I ended up with Yakira out in front with her retractable fully extended while Clifford,s taking his time smelling, was behind me with his retractable at its max. After the walk they shared a bowl of ice cubes to cool them off. The weather had been perfect for several days.

Wednesday Clifford had to stay home while Yakira and I went to the local elementary to read with some kids. Then my parents came and my Mom, Yakira and I went to the last NAMI “Family to Family” class. My Dad said that Clifford didn’t seem to know what to do with himself while we were gone. Yakira was tired so she didn’t mind Clifford being gone on Wednesday night.

Thursday morning was quiet but we took a walk before lunch. By 3:00 p.m. Yakira got restless. She had almost two weeks with a playmate and I just didn’t cut it. She drove me a little crazy but we made it through the day and I took her with me to Round Table for Cub Scouting last night.

Today she is off at work with Bill and the house is extra quiet as it always is when Yakira isn’t around. It has been a good week and Yakira will be 8 months old on Monday! We don’t have any big plans for tomorrow so it will be a quiet weekend getting things done around the house. We probably better get out and do some errands so Yakira doesn’t get to bored.

Do you prefer to have one dog in your household or do you like it better when there are more?

Puppy Sitting Pierre

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Yakira and Pierre playing with the jolly ball in our backyard

We have had another puppy in training here since Friday, March 30th. Pierre will turn one year old on the 14th. He has been a very good boy and Yakira has loved having him here. The only challenge is that Yakira wants to play and Pierre is easily tempted. So we had to keep them separated much of the time. They got to play in the backyard most days plus a couple of romps in the house but it wasn’t as much as they wanted. The first couple of nights they had to sleep on tie down to prevent them from playing all night long. Then we tried just pretending to hook them up at night. Finally they just put them selves to bed. It helped when we didn’t tolerate any playing in the bedroom. On Pierre’s last night here the slept the night on the same bed. It was so cute! Today when his family came to get him, Pierre was so excited. He couldn’t calm himself enough to respond to a sit command. It reminded me of how our pups are when we see them at graduation after having been apart for several months. I expect to see Pierre graduating as a guide dog or a breeder before the end of the year.

Yakira and Pierre snuggled together on Yakira's bed

An Afternoon at City Creek Center

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The opportunity came up to see the new City Creek Center in downtown Salt Lake City today. So I packed up the pups, (we are puppy sitting Pierre this week) and picked up my friend, Lisa and her niece, Jessica. Lisa is an official puppy sitter for Guide Dogs for the Blind and so she can work with these puppies in training. Otherwise I would have had to leave one of the puppies home.

City Creek Center is an amazing place with lots of wonderful stores and so many people there today enjoying the spring weather. They had the retractable roof open. I’m really impressed with the design of the place. We didn’t go everywhere. We spent all our time on the upper level so I’m sure I’ll have to go back again in the near future and take a look at the creek that runs through the center. Both Yakira and Pierre did perfectly. They had lots of opportunities to meet all kinds of people and go in all kinds of stores. For the most part we resisted buying anything. Except I picked up a fun sweater at Macy’s for $13. Yakira got tired of going into stores near the end and wanted to stay outside in the sunshine.

Yakira’s Toy Trick

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Yakira and her toy trick

Yakira has a small tug toy that she really loves. We bought it a couple of months ago at our local IFA. Yakira and I went there just as an outing and discovered that they had some toys that were right for a puppy in training. They had the tug toy in several sizes and I decided to try the smaller one this time. I’ve had a bigger version of it in that past that all the pups have enjoyed. It is a great size to drop in a bag and take on long outings. She is a gentle enough chewer that it works good as a supervised chew toy too. Well today she was picking it up and enticing me to play tug with her and then dropping it again. Then she picked it up in the middle and the two ends folded in and the toy became like a spring in her mouth. It was so cute and had to get a picture. That was the hard part. She kept dropping the toy when I’d snap the photo. But I finally got a decent shot of her doing her toy trick.

Yakira and her purple tug toy

50 for 50 #13 – Jigsaw Puzzle

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our puzzle after Friday nights marathon

I always enjoyed jigsaw puzzles growing up and even as an adult but it has been at least 10 years since I took the time to put a puzzle together. So I thought it would be a good activity for my 50th year celebration. I picked up a 1,00 piece puzzle while I was out running errands this week and we started on it on Friday evening. The puzzle I picked was an image by folk artist Charles Wysocki. His painting remind me of my days working at Coni’s Art Warehouse in Lindon.

We got all the edge pieces done and then went about our other evening activities. As we were getting ready for bed, I found Bill back at the puzzle and I made the mistake of sitting down at the coffee table too just to put in a couple of pieces. Well, one piece lead to another and next thing we knew it was 3 in the morning. Thank goodness we didn’t have any commitments on Saturday until 11: 30 a.m. It was so tempting to start back on the puzzle the next morning but we still had a bit of prep before we went to teach a Dog Care Merit Badge class. So we used all our strength to resist the call of the puzzle.

Yakira watching from the other side of the x-pen

We didn’t get back to the puzzle until Saturday evening and we were able to finish it up. Yakira got into the mix Saturday morning when she picked up three pieces off the coffee table and munched on one of them pretty good. We stopped this by using the x-pen and blocking off her access to the puzzle. We sure had a lot of fun and I think we should make puzzles a part of our lives. Bill’s family is coming over for Easter. Maybe we should get out a puzzle then.

Have you done any puzzles lately? How do you keep from staying up all night once you get started?

Yakira – Seven Months Old

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Yakira and her pillow

Our sweet Yakira turned seven months old today. When ever I think about the challenge she was and three months and even four months old, I am so grateful for the wonderful puppy she is becoming. Yakira got to wear the birthday bandana today. We had a quiet day at home with no outings other than a 45 minute walk. Of all the puppies we have raised so far Yakira is the first to really lay her head on a pillow like a human. Some of the other pups have enjoyed pillows but more for their shoulders but she lays her head on the patchwork pillow almost every night.

Waffle and Claraliz

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Waffle

Today we got to visit Waffle and Claraliz. On Monday Waffle will be a year old and I really wanted to see our little girl. We hadn’t seen Waffle since she transferred  to Claraliz the end of September. We didn’t want to do anything that would disrupt her training but I checked with our club leader and she said it would be fine. So we made arrangements to meet up with Waffle and Claraliz at her house. It was so fun to see our little Waffletta. She jumped on me after I got in the front door. I was glad that she was happy to see me. Sometimes when we were raising her it seemed that she was always happy to see everyone else but since I was there most of the time she didn’t seem to miss me.

Waffle

Yakira and Waffle got to play together and I made Waffle a tug rope that she really seemed to like. We also had a zip lock bag full of adult food left over from Casey that we passed on to Waffle. Yakira is still many months away from switching to the adult food. It will be kind of old by then. Claraliz made some yummy red cake for us and we got to meet her pet dogs and her dad and a brother. Waffle is doing really well. She is very grown-up and her nose is very pink. Waffle also still has her underbite. Didn’t really think that was going away. She is very happy and content in her new household. She has now been with Claraliz as long as she lived with us.

We probably won’t get to see her again until recall day when she gets on the truck to return to Guide Dogs for the Blind. Claraliz is thinking about getting a new puppy this summer to raise. I hope she does. She is doing a good job with Waffle.