Needlefelted American Eskimo Dog / White Spitz - 6" tall

First Commission of the 2011 Holiday Season – an American Eskimo Dog for Brenda in Washington!

This seated American Eskimo Dog (or white German Spitz, as you please ) is just over 6″ tall and features felted eyes and nose and wonderful wool and silk fiber for a great sheen to his fluffy coat.

This is the second long-haired spitz-type dog I’ve done, and I really am happy with how he came out – he’s got a very good smile and expression and I hope captured the personality of B’s dog who she sent me photos of well.

This guy is a little larger than my usual commissions (which are generally around an inch shorter.  3-d sculptural commissions in this size are normally $75, but are currently on sale for $55. Only a few more weeks to order for holiday arrival!

Still no service dog, and no prospects, although I’ve evaluted a few litters. My plans to hit the road are on hold until I have a replacement for Kaylee trained.

Pricing for products has changed this year.
3-D sculptures are $55
Scarves, hats, and headbands are $20
Wallhangings are $75-150, depending on size
Christmas Ornaments are $15 – pictures to be posted over the next few days.

With every dog that comes into my life, I try to be a better trainer. And I think I’ve largely succeeded. I was a much more positive trainer with Indy than with Bou. Wings had better boundaries than Indy. Lizzie was not the reactive brat she could have turned into. Mal, when he FELT like working, had much prettier heeling and sits than his predecessors, and beautiful, flashy attention when there was a high rate of reinforcement on offer. And Kaylee loved to practice- she had a higher tolerance for repetition than any of my previous dogs.

With my next dog, I want to do better about recording our training- both SD stuff and normal training things. I also want to be better about general fitness.  By the end of the month, I’m going to get my bike in working order and take it to my parents so I can start riding again (there’s not a good place to ride around here unless I cart the bike up to the park- the roads are REALLY rough and my balance is crappy- at my parents’, it’s a nice 6 mile round trip to the Katy Trail, down to the end, and back to their house.)  I’m also making an effort to get Lizzie out and walking more- most of her exercise right now is in the yard, and that’s okay- it’s enough to keep her sane- but we need to be working on fitness for agility anyway. She’ll make her debut in Novice FAST this spring and hopefully be ready for standard and JWW this summer- her weaves still have a way to go before I want to test them in a trial situation, although everything else is looking pretty good as long as *I* don’t screw us up.

So that’s where things are right now.  I’ll post the new SD blog in the sidebar when I decide where it’s going. I’m not looking at a new dog in training anytime soon- probably not until the late spring/early summer, since I’ve still got a lot of research to do and am making an entirely new set of contacts in breeds I don’t know as well.

Kaylee SD

Tairis Gone With The Wind

Kaylee is not doing well. The degree of problems she was having was just unacceptable- she has zero quality of life, and if I didn’t think there was a reasonable chance that we can SOMEHOW make this better, at least a little bit, I would probably be euthanizing her in the next few days. And it would be euthanasia. She’s not interested in food, or any of her toys, or lying in the sun, or getting petted. She’s now refusing chicken and cheese. She could barely walk and needed help to stand up. As of this afternoon, we took her off the phenobarb (with the vet’s blessing).

One of the hard things is that all the symptoms that she’s having COULD be ‘just’ phenobarb symptoms- or they could be symptoms of brain damage- either cause by liver failure (which can be brought on by phenobarb) or potentially damage from seizures (it’s apparently rare for seizures to cause brain damage but severe seizures, especially prolonged ones, are the most likely type to do so- and her first two both meet the criteria for that type, apparently.)

As the phenobarb started to wear off this evening, she’s been more aware and less panicked. She’s not crying constantly anymore. That’s good. But she’s still very uncoordinated- about the same as she was yesterday. She had a small seizure around 4AM- less than 30 seconds- and seemed fairly present afterwards- but now is totally uncoordinated. All I can do on that is wait and see. She’s very, very uncoordinated right now, but if this is just post-ictal and she continues to improve otherwise, we can make this work. I’ll call the vet when they open about starting her on potassium bromide or something else, but other than that, I think we’re just holding out for Monday.

For those of you who don’t have me friended on facebook – Kaylee was diagnosed with epilepsy after two grand mal seizures last Wednesday. She’s on pbr and hasn’t had another since, but she’s having horrible side effects. Please keep us in your prayers that we can get this figured out in a way that lets  her have some quality of life.

I’m not giving up on my ‘post-a-week’ goal for 2011 yet! This is post 2/52- and it’s only Wednesday!

Craftwise, I haven’t gotten a whole lot done since the end of the Christmas rush. (So if you want a scarf? This is a good time to order one! Prices will be going up in Febraury, it looks like, due to a supplier change.) I’ve been working on FLYlady, a home organization system and am fairly happy with it at the moment- ‘do anything for 15 minutes’ works really well with my ADD brain.

Dogwise, it’s also been quiet. I went to a judges education seminar at Glen Rose on Friday last week and learned a TON about a breed I’m interested in for Kaylee’s successor. Lizzie and I were supposed to start agility up this week with Leslie Parsons, but I’m a wimp about cold and begged off- we’ll start next week, hopefully. This cold snap is just BITTERLY, BITTERLY cold, and I can’t seem to get warm with all the layers I own! (or rather, parts of me are warm and then I can’t feel my feet.) I’m very glad I got a new coat before CHristmas, but even so!

I’ve got a few interesting more ‘arty’ felting projects in the works- we’ll see how they go as they progress.

This fall kind of sucked overall, and I got buried in November and December with a new product in my shop, the custom scarves. I’m still taking commissions in the new year, but luckily, things have settled down a lot.

I have some goals for the new year, but mostly, I don’t want to talk about them. Let’s just say that they involve more creativity- more stitching and sewing, felting and knitting, and some media I haven’t played with in a few years- clay, paint, and wire!

Have a great year, everyone!

Woops! We’ll be in Crowley at the First Church of the Nazare, Fort Worth ’s Holiday Craft Fair.