Snow Days

Zephyr and Astro having a great time in our recent snow storm.  We are enjoying the warm temperatures and soft grass of Phoenix for Christmas.  Happy Christmas!

Happy Holidays

Wishing You All a Wonderful Winter and Happy and Healthy New Year!

Zephyr, Astro, Riley, Pablo, Annie, and I are sending you and your hounds best wishes for the holidays and the new year.  This year was tough with Zephyr getting encephalitis and I really appreciate all of the nice supportive messages you all sent.  Thank you!  Zephyr is doing great!  I've continued to reduce his medicines and he's feeling even better.

We are also looking forward to Winter Solstice and the return of the sun.  Zephyr's registered name is Cebar Winter Solstice Zephyrus FC.  I chose that because he was born in early January, Zephyrus is the Greek god of the west wind that gently blows in spring, and he definitely makes life brighter.  :-)

This is the final card that I made at Shutterfly.  I'm really happy with it and wanted to send it out to everyone.  The inside has a collage of pictures of the dogs and cats and the back even has a picture.  I couldn't get that to show, but all of the pictures are one's that I've already posted on the blog so you can imagine, it's really cute.  ;-)

Enjoy the Holidays!

Feel the Love

Many thanks to Nibs at BrindleHounds and A Dogs Journey for giving us the Liebster Blog award!  We are feeling double the love here.  :-)  They actually gave us the award a week ago, but I've been a little busy and am finally getting around to passing it on. 

Here are the rules to follow for accepting the award. 

Liebster means “dearest” in German, and the award is intended to help up-and-coming blogs get the attention they deserve. As with any award, there is a bit of ceremony involved. In order to accept the award, we must do the following:

1. Copy and paste the award on our blog.

2. Link back to the blogger who gave us the award

3. Pick our five favorite blogs with less than 200 followers, and leave a comment on their blog to let them know they have received the award.

4. Hope that the five blogs chosen will keep spreading the love and pass it on to five more blogs

Since I received the Liebster award twice I'm going to award it to six other blogs.  Enjoy!

1.  Graceful Greyhounds - Sue and Song share the love from Norfolk, England.

2.  Itsa Great Day at Greyhound Gardens - Spreading love from Oregon.

3.  Luna's Life in the Garden State - Giving lots of love to their recovering girl Luna.

4. A Dog Blog - Sharing love with Ferg and fosters in Maryland.

5.  Crafting 4 Greyhounds - Creatively spreading the love from Norfolk Broads in the UK.

  

6.  Jennifer Zalewski Studio - Sharing artistic love from New York.

Fashionista

 Miss Annabelle Lee Pinkerton is a true fashionista.  After a hike one day for some reason I laid Zephyr's collar on the floor next to the couch.  A few hours later this is what I find.  Annie decided to try on Zephyr's collar.  BTW, the knitting you see peeking out of the bag is the sweater I've been making for Zephyr.  It's taken awhile because I've really had to alter the pattern because Zephyr is much bigger than even the biggest size, and I'm just a slow knitter.

Annie looks quite proud of herself.  She was rolling around on Zephyr's collar and managed to get it on.  She then proceeded to walk around the house with her new accessory.  I have to agree, it looks stunning on her.  :-)

It fit her perfectly and didn't seem to impede her climbing abilities.  After this I put the camera down and forgot about the little fashionista.  A bit later she showed up without the collar and I went to retrieve it.  Alas, it could not be found and hasn't been seen since.  I've looked in all the normal and not so normal places and haven't been able to find the collar.  She must have a secret place for all her favorite things.  Luckily, Zephyr and Astro can tend to be metrosexual and have many collars to choose from, therefore not missing out on any walkies.  ;-)

Thanksgiving Hike

Astro and I went on a hike in Woods Canyon with friends Thanksgiving weekend.  This was Astro's first time carrying a pack on a long hike, it was a little over 9 miles.  His pack only weighed five pounds and didn't seem to slow him down. 

Chris and Dan with Friday, Linus, and Astro.

Chris, on the right, organizes all of the pack hikes through the Greater Swiss Mountain Dog Club of America.  Thanks Chris! 

This is the trail that we saw some cows on last winter.  No cows this time.  Actually there were no other people on the trail so the dogs got to do a lot of off leash hiking. 

I was a little worried about letting Astro off leash in this area because there are a lot of cactus.  He did a great job though and had no cactus incidents.

A rare photo of me with a dog.

Astro did finally slow down a little towards the end of the hike.  He definitely likes to be out in front of the group exploring around though.  But, he won't go too far and always stops to wait or comes back to the pack.

At the end of the hike there was a nice walk along a small creek.  Walking along in the grass and oak leaves and taking a dip in the cool water was a great ending for the day.