Harvest

Saturday was white grape harvest at the Heintzbergers.

What a fun and interesting process.

We were not required to stomp the grapes to get the juice out, although that might have been fun.

Grapes post-press

This is somehow turned into Chardonnay wine! 🪄

Starry G for Grapes went along to play with her friend, Jerzy.

They had a lot of fun together 💙🩷

Until Jerzy, ten-months-old, demonstrated his manly skill of leg lifting and peed on Starry’s head! G for Gross!!! This resulted in her first ever bath.

She took it like a champ ⭐️

Happy Fall to you 🍁🍂

Random Acts of Kindness

“How do we change the world? One random act of kindness at a time.”

(Morgan Freeman)

Mark and his wife live in Texas with their Berner, Tootsie. We have never met in person. And yet Mark rested his mind and talents on the Gems and their humans.

I knew these were being made/sent but said nothing. Alison got hers first, and immediately texted me to ask if I knew anything about it. SO FUN.

I told Mark he could send Tommy’s to my house since I see Jennifer pretty regularly. I was glad I did because it was so wonderful to see her reaction to a stranger’s random act of kindness.

Han Solo was last and we were all waiting for that one to arrive — we did not want to spoil the surprise. Tricia’s reaction was similar to Alison. I immediately got a text asking if I knew about this Mark person in Texas 💙

Mark reminds me that the world is filled with good and decent humans who do nice things just because they can.

Thank you, Mark.

The words seem inadequate. It is just hard to know how to convey all the things it means when someone is so kind to us. It is like Mark tossed a kindness pebble into a pond of humanity and sent ripples moving outward.

And now those ripples have touched you ❤️

Starry G for Going Tracking

Starry G has started tracking, and in the doing of it I feel the echoes of generations — all of my beloved girls started their performance lives with tracking.

Because we currently live in an urban area, I am training her in urban settings with a goal of earning the Tracking Dog Urban title with her before she is a year old. I like goals.

This was Starry G’s third track and the first one with a covered food dish at the end (an airtight pyrex bowl with a extra good jackpot in it). The previous two tracks on successive days (one per day) were just teaching her the Hansel-and-Gretel method that I use to train: the puppy goes from treat to treat, and the treats are closely spaced to keep her engaged and moving.

Starry G was missing treats on her second track because she was moving so quickly, and that is a sign that she was ready for treats to be spaced out a bit and the track to be a bit longer.

This is a look at her track today — you can see the little covered bowl at the end.

This is a snippet of her running the track.

I will add the puppy harness soon but for now, a collar and leash are fine. Starry G is showing a lot of promise already — very cool ⭐️

Pozy continue to be a really bad and impatient patient as she recovers from her TPLO (knee surgery) but she is getting better and her rehab is going well.

I only let Pozy hang out with Starry (above) when the puppy is tired to reduce the chance of ill-advised shenanigans — Pozy is the Queen of Ill-Advised Shenanigans.

I hope all your Sunday shenanigans are fun and safe!