Hollie & Peter

Received this great picture last week. This is "Peter" Ch. Paisley Perpetual Motion (L) and his owner Hollie. (Pete is the sire of our beloved Josie.) We kept Watson & Peter from Coral's first litter, with the agreement that Watson would stay and Jess could finish Peter's championship and then we would place him in a suitable situation. He finished with a great record and later went to Hollie as a Junior Showmanship dog. They had a wonderful JS career, and Hollie finished his Canadian Ch. going BoW at the National, but when Hollie first went off to college Peter had to stay behind with Hollie's parents. Arrangement were eventually made for Peter to live on campus with Hollie and her friends, so off he went to college where he has reportedly been an excellent student! Hollie plans to be a Vet someday, and we hope she will always have a Dalmatian companion.

As Peter & Watson are now 9 1/2 I often wish I had repeated the breeding they are from. We tried a chilled semen repeat breeding and Coral missed, and when I was ready to do another natural for her last litter, Kramer had just been neutered (he was 10) . That breeding was by far Coral's best, with the two boys plus their major-pointed sister Cookie (killed by a car when she jumped the co-owner's fence) being the only three in the litter. Both Wats & Peter had great records, and could not possibly have better temperaments. Sigh . . .

More rain, no sun, what's new? This month is shaping up to be the wettest & coldest October EVER. Ugh.

Making progress on the website issue, get an email response from Network Solutions & a call back from Yahoo. Fingers crossed that this all falls into place and my website does not disappear. I've learned a lot this week, but am still really annoyed that I did not know that Geocities would pull the plug. Would have been nice to have a bit more time to get this done - but on the other hand, being a procrastinator I might have waited until the last minute anyway!

Plans are falling into place for Pauli who is working out well in her new home. She will hit a few show weekends next month and start learning the ropes of traveling with a professional handler to dog shows. I suppose she will beat Argus on occasion next year, but we are proud that he produced such an outstanding daughter and glad that she will have a chance to be campaigned and that *I* don't have to do it!

That's Gem on the left, the Argus/Lily daughter that I used to own. She's doing well in her new home, catching on quickly to training, and doing a bit of modeling on the side. This is a page from a children's book.

Haven't heard anything from Suzi about the puppies, so not sure whether they will be coming to Minnesota or not. Have to admit that it is awfully peaceful here with just the 4 oldsters, but I really want to see the Argus/Read pups get into the right homes.

Wendy says that Pauli is fitting in well with the Labrador boys, so hopefully she will have be a permanent resident at Wendy's. Wendy & Jess can plan Pauli's future show career - she sure looked great the last time I saw her. Pauli, I mean! ;-)

I've figured out the website thing and what needs to happen, but getting in touch with Yahoo Small Business & Network Solutions to coordinate things seems to be impossible right now as my emails go unanswered. Guess I will have to try waiting for hours on an 800 number . . . Am running out of time here. Geocities websites supposedly get pulled next Monday, and the way things are going the transfer will not be compete by then so my website will disappear - even though I have paid Yahoo the money for hosting it. Could be that thousands of others did not know about this, or waited until the last minute, and both companies are swamped. Had not realized that Network Solutions was the registrar for most of the domain names for websites on Geocities. Because there are apparently problems with Yahoo email right now, it could be that the volume (of everything!) is just too large. We shall see.

I've often thought about redoing my website, but probably would never have gotten around to it. This way I might have no choice! I set mine up in the 90s and did my html coding by hand. Things have changed a lot and putting up a new site should go faster, but I have over 100 pages on my site, and hundreds of pictures - many that I have no where else. I'll pick up a portable storage drive or whatever and download my pages this weekend, just as a precaution. I've already got the most important ones on this computer. What a pain . . .

I've been working on the fish tanks this week, along with fighting the Website War. Hope to get to the fish club auction this weekend, and although I am incredibly broke I expect to bring home some new aquarium denizens. Many of my fish are elderly, and I actually have several empty cycled planted tanks for new fish. What I really need are some new heaters though. The tanks that are not in the fish room require heaters as my basement tends to be chilly. My Firemouths & Honduran Red Points are in the spawning mood, so things are getting lively.