Puppy Play Date!

Stella and Cleo

Last night Cleo had a puppy play date with the sweetest 15 week old GSP! Stella is owned by Keith Ehling and Stephanie Raieta. Keith and I went to high school together and set up the play date on facebook a couple of weeks ago. Prepare to be inundated with adorable puppy pics!

Look at that cute face!

Get her Stella!!

Stella is adorable. She has a sassy little attitude and didn't take any of Cleo's crap. Just for fun we gave Ms. Stella Bella a pheasant wing and it took about 2 seconds for her to realize she didn't want to share it with any other spotted dogs.  There is some prey drive in that little bugger! I was impressed with how well she listened.  She spent almost the entire time off leash and checked back in.

I loved getting to see Stella in action. I completely forgot over the past 2 years how cute it is to watch little puppies hop and run. I love how off balance and spontaneous they are. Only two more weeks until we get Cleo's little sister!! Then Stella will have someone to pick on her own size. 

And then there was one....

Gunny and Cleo

A short while ago I dropped Gunny Boo off with Momma Secan. I have to say the closer we got to the drop off point the sadder I got. Gunny was a good house guest the last 5 days. We've all gotten pretty attached to him. However, I am excited to not share my half of the bed with him tonight. Sticking with true GSP form he is an all encompassing bed hog. But I'm sure Jackie will be ecstatic to have him back and hogging up her bed. He is a very good snuggler.

I do believe he had a good time while he was here. He got to sniff butts and play at daycare with Cleo and her buds. Everyday he got to waste himself running through fields and woods. He slept every night in our bed under the covers with his head on my chest. We loved him like he was ours. Cleo I think is sad he isn't here either. She looked for him when I came back solo.  Below are some pics of them running their hearts out yesterday. 

Gunny's idea of exiting the woods and entering the field

At least Cleo will get a pick me up tomorrow. Jim and her are guiding a hunt for a friend and his 11 year old son tomorrow at Powderbourne Pheasant Preserve. I know Jim is looking forward to getting to work her. I'm jealous I have to work and can't go. Hopefully he'll take some pics of their bounty so check back for updates!

Two's Company!

My girlfriend Jackie owns that funny back sleeper on the left. She's out of town for the holidays in Kentucky with her beau so Jim and I are watching her GSP Gunner for five days. We are currently on day 3.

They've been doing really well together. There's been a fair bit of wrestling, snuggling, face biting and lots of tug-o-war. Gunny seems to have really taken to me so Cleo has been a little jealous of me giving him loves and snuggles. If Gunny's sitting with me then she is too. Is pretty entertaining to be the most popular person in the house all of a sudden. Until sleepy time...it's been a struggle sleeping at night with two 55 lb spotted monstrosities jockeying for position on you.

Christmas Eve GSP Pile

It's been awhile since we have dog sat another GSP so it's been nice to see how well Cleo has adjusted to having another dog here all the time. One of the reasons I was so eager to watch Gunny for 5 days was I thought it would give me an opportunity to see what life is like with two dogs. AND because I love my friend Jackie. She's the Thelma to my Louise.

Jim and I have a deposit on another Nobelles puppy who should be born around Valentines day in 2012.  I realize that this experience will be different than one with a puppy mainly because she (the puppy) will be raised with the same set of commands as Cleo, she will be taught from 8 weeks old to leave the cats alone ect. But I give Gunny mad props for adjusting so well to how we do things and I think we have adjusted pretty well to using the commands he is familiar with. We took them to some fields on Christmas just to run them out. Both dogs heeled phenomenally together and both listened great.

Tag team squirrel hunting

Car Ride!!

A little video of them in action

Gunny Boy is funny dude. I'm pretty sure his favorite game is keep away. He loves to bait Cleo into chasing him. He humps folded up dog beds with zeal and gusto. He loves to sleep on his back and sings when he gets up in the morning. He LOVES kisses and pees on everything. He shows zero interest in my one cat and I'm pretty sure he wants to eat the other one. Personally I think its because Jackie told him the brown one scratched her once when she slept over. 

Jackie - That's the brown cat talking trash for trying to get him killed! :)

Check us out on facebook at Adventures of a German Shorthaired Pointer!

The Weekend in Review: GSP Playdate, Squirrel Chasing, and Walking at Heel

Gunner running down Cleo

This was kind of a crazy weekend for Jim and I. Normally for the fourth of July weekend we always go to my parents shore house in Cape May, NJ. This year we were thrown for a loop. Last week Jim lost the vision in his right eye. To make a long story short he fully detached his retina, which when it separated from his eye it tore a large macular hole rendering him completely blind in his right eye. He had surgery this past Thursday where they were able to successfully reattach his retina. They also removed his eye fluid and replaced it with a gas which helps heal the macular hole. He is still blind in his right eye and will be for approximately 5 weeks until the gas absorbs into his body. Until this occurs we will not know how much of his sight he will regain. Needless to say we laid low this weekend and stayed local. Luckily for us our friend Jackie Secan invited us over on Saturday for a little GSP get together which was a much needed aversion from current events.

Cleo and Gunner in a game of chase

  
Cleo was quite a sassy brat face at Jackie's. She is always vocal but had no issues being barky in the boys faces. Lucky for us the boys pretty much paid zero attention to her intermittent crabbiness and after a few minutes they were getting along just fine.

We did notice that Drake is the great mediator. Anytime Cleo and Gunner got together for a tussle Draken would appear out of nowhere and shove himself in the middle. He's kinda like the Teddy Roosevelt of GSP's.

A handsome Drake - free of his cone

Gunner and Drake Bookends

Jim aka Cyclops, aka Captain Jack Sparrow getting some kisses from Gunner

Cleo and Gunner taking turns whizzing on Jackie's plants....

Eventually the dogs wore themselves out. Which for any other GSP owner knows takes a small miracle. Once the kiddies were pooped it left us plenty of time to drink some booze, tell some lies and eat some delicious snacks Jackie whipped up.  

Gunner in a puppy coma

 Cleo in one as well

Sunday was a slow day for us as well considering Jim is on lock down. Cleo spent the morning obsessing over some squirrels at the bird feeders. She eventually developed some patience....god knows where that came from and she just camped out under the tree they escape too. Within 20 minutes the squirrels returned and she came very close to bagging one. The whole thing reminded me of her sister Kona and her squirrel addiction. Read about Kona here: Nobelles Brewed to Perfection: Call name Kona

Later in the day we set up some stakes and Jim walked Cleo through at heel. This is in preparation of the NAVHDA Utility Test. This is the only thing Jim is allowed to do as far as training the dog for the next few weeks. We are still going to be working her but I'm just going to have to take a greater role until he's got the go ahead from the surgeon. She did really well with it and after they were finished she went and laid by the stakes until we came out and gave her snuggles. Such a silly doggie.

Jim and Cleo lovies

GSP Dog Party!

Last night Cleo was cordially invited to a lovely GSP party about 25 minutes from our home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Our host was Jackie Secan from Montgomery County, PA. Jackie and I recently met on shorthairs.net which is a forum for GSP obsessed people. She noticed I lived relatively close to her and reached out to me. I'm elated she did. She's a wonderfully funny person and she fully understands whats its like to live with and hunt over these energetic spunky dogs.

Jackie and her boyfriend Chris have two GSP's. They purchased their first pup Impressive Gewehr Von Catskill, call name Gunner when he was a puppy from Catskill Peasantry in Long Eddy, NY. Gunner is 14 months old and he has a spirited and quirky personality. Jackie has some hilarious video's of Gunner singing on her facebook page and yesterday while at play Gunner danced off chasing a dragonfly. He would throw/launch himself into the air trying to catch it. It was pretty entertaining! You can tell he is a real lover boy too.

 

Their other GSP is BNJ's Jager Von Draken, Call name Drake and he is 19 months old. They purchased him as a started gun dog out of a kennel in Michigan because they realized they didn't have the time for a puppy but wanted Gunner to have a four legged companion. You'll notice Drake has a cone on his head. He ran into a tree a few days ago and split his leg open receiving several stitches. He came out to play but wasn't allowed to play too hard. You'll notice below Cleo has very few manners and finds it completely acceptable to chew on his lamp shade.

Apparently she doesn't realize its socially inappropriate to chew on someones head cone. I clearly blame her poor manners on her father. :)

There were five GSP's in total at the party. Two more handsome males where brought by Jon and Lisa Sensinger also of Montgomery County, PA. You know its weird when you see someones dogs and realize that they look really familiar....more than the people who own them. Last fall when Jim and I took Cleo to finish her AKC Junior Hunt Tests in Weatherly, PA we watched both of Jon and Lisa's dogs complete their AKC Master Hunt Titles. We were super impressed at the time by how flashy they were in the field and how well they performed. They were being handled at the time by a professional handler out of Virginia named Bruce Shaffer. Below are some pics of their boys:

This is proud momma Lisa with her boy Shady Cove's Bummin Money for Whiskey, call name Dollar. 

This is their other male Snips's Sixth-Sense Wyatt, call name Wyatt.

Wyatt is 2 years old and completed his AKC MH at the age of 18 months. His big brother Dollar, who is quite large by the way, is 3 years old. All the pups had a blast together and considering that their were four un-fixed males and one intact female there were no fights or cruddy attitudes. They all seemed to really get along nicely.

Cleo Sandwich

Drake's impersonation of the headless horse dog

Chris was nice enough to get a big bowl full of water and ice to keep the dogs cool. For whatever reason Cleo felt the ice shouldn't be in the bowl and proceeded to muddy the drinking water with her filthy paws and sling the ice everywhere. I suddenly felt what its like to be the parent of the socially awkward kid.

I also took some video of the festivities!

King of the Hill

Face biting between Cleo and Wyatt

Cleo and Drake on the Hill

It was super nice and generous of Jackie and Chris for inviting us all over. The dogs clearly had a blast and we all enjoyed an awesome dinner with some seriously yummy desert. Before we had to split we thought it would be fun to try and get a group picture together. See below.

Jackie had to grab Gunner as he made a break for it!

So hopefully we can get the pups back together for another date. You know...you meet the nicest people with hunting dogs.