I’ve been remiss in posting cute puppy pics, so I best get to it. These are all from the last week here.

Overall Nash is doing pretty well still. Man does he like to chew, but otherwise is doing good. I have determined that there are several kinds of “tired” however. I can take him on a walk and he will stop and rest in the grass and look like he is ready to just collapse, but then when we get home he’s very happy to chew and chew on chew toys, not sleep.

Nash shows that he can roach with the best of em.

Very cute when sleeping.

Merlin and Nash on a walk.

Everyone loves LOG!

Merlin: “I know he’s in there”

Sure enough, there he is. BONZAI!

Crates are ok places for a roach.

Monkey? Hey, this couch is pretty comfy.

Bye for now.

Yesterday was my birthday, so I made plans to go out to dinner and see a show in boulder. I knew I would be gone quite a while, so I took the pups out to petsmart (nash loved all the people and played with another puppy), a very long walk (nash was slowing down at the end), and a long play session in the back yard before I left (Merlin for the first time played chase with him and they both tired each other out).

So, I crated Nash and went off to dinner.
I was gone about 6 hours. I made it home and opened the door and there to greet me were Merlin and Kurt and Nash. Yes, thats right, he figured out
how to jigle the crate door and open it. He was out loose in the house. I don’t know for how long. There was a poop and a pee accident upstairs in a place that a foster used to go long ago. On a matt. Nothing else was wrong. Lots of toys around, but no sign of chewing or destruction.
I’m impressed with the little escape artist.

Until thursday night he had had 0 accidents in the house. Merlin in particular is warming up to him. Kurt always liked him.
Will try and post some pictures later tonight.

Just a quick nash update. So far he’s still doing pretty well. He’s also still very cute.

downsides:

• He does whine in the crate, usually after about 10min in there, then he stops at about 15-20min, when he realizes that I am not going to let him out and going back to sleep is a better option.
• From about 7:00-8:30pm he’s a little maniac
• His fav chew toy is his leash. It’s a neverending battle to pull it out of his mouth and put in a chew toy
• His next fav chew toy is me. Those puppy teeth can be sharp!

Goodsides:

• He’s very cute. A few times he’s done little greyhound zoomies around the yard.
• He’s a champion roacher. He roaches at the drop of a hat
• He loves people attention. He loves pets and wags his tail for more
• He’s a bit spazy, but coming along well for walks on leash
• He goes right in the crate
• number of accidents in the house: 0
• He wants to play with the big dogs. Kurt is happy to oblige, Merlin is more reserved
• It’s cool to see him see new things like sprinklers (bit into the water) or leaves in the pool (jump in and attack!)

I was worried about him sleeping thru the night last night. He had a big case of big D in the evening before, so I wanted to make sure
and let him out. He whined at about 1:30 and 5:30 and 7 and woke up and let him out each time, and he layed down and looked at me.
Tonight I am just going to try and sleep… I think he will do fine.

Well, after about a zillion delays and logistical problems, I picked up Nash the puppy this morning.
(I almost didn’t, as the park and ride where we were going to meet has become a mall, and neither of us had brought the others cell phone #, so we have to wander around aimlessly, but it worked out and we found each other

He rode back with no problems at all:

He met up (again) with Kurt and Merlin. Oddly Merlin pretty much ignored him and Kurt was super interested in playing. I didn’t want kurt to hurt him, but he was play bowing and jumping around and chasing him. Nash kept running under Kurt. Tails were wagging up a storm.

Blurry, but you get the idea. Nash is a master of the full body, contact roach on the grass. He puts his nose down, and flops his entire body down after it.

Got an itch:

Nash: “Hey Kurt! Play!!!!!”

Tally so far:

• Many roaches
• Chew toys are excellent!
• Baths suck and you should squirm around as much as possible
• The crate is great. Nice place for a nap
• Walks are fun, but tiring
• Cats: who cares?
• Kisses on the nose of the human are fun

So far he’s very well behaved, very mellow and doing great. This is totally diffrent than my last puppy experence.

PS: dog/greyhound folks, drop me an email if you want to come by and visit the little guy. I should be around pretty much all the time this coming week except thursday.

Alas, the other day I saw that the dreaded ETS syndrome had hit close to home. Merlin was suffering a bad case:

(ETS: Errant Tounge Syndrome)

I managed to put my phone cable upstairs under some things and it took me a while to locate it, so these pictures are a bit later than normal.

Last weekend of Faire was supposed to be the end of July, but due to the rain weekend, they extended it another weekend.
That was great, as it allowed me a final chance to get out there this year. All the usual greyhound booth friends were there. Hopefully I can stay in touch with them over the winter better this time than I did last year. Probibly the last weekend in Aug is looking likely for my annual post faire BBQ.

Merlin says: “Dad! weren’t we through with this thing?”

T shows that Dazzle is a lap dog too:

Working the crowds:

Sabrina doesn’t seem to mind Merlin putting his leg on her head:

Thats all till next year!

Finally pulled the pics off my camera from the recent Grand Canyon trip. It was a blast, but too short…

Thursday night I flew out to visit my friend C in Goodyear, AZ. We just grabbed some food on the way back from the airport and went back and crashed.

Friday, C worked and I relaxed around his folks place. Very nice house. Big and has a very nice back yard and view. After work we went out for dinner and then a movie. Clerks 2 was playing at the right time, so we went to that. It almost looked like it was going to be a private showing:

It was an ok movie and entertaining while I was there, but it wouldn’t bear repeat viewing.

Saturday I had C drop me at the airport and I met up with one of my sisters that was heading up from Tucson. It was a 3 or so hour trip up to Williams, which wasn’t too bad. We all amused ourselves with a silly car game (a-z find words that start with each letter in turn). The hotel was nice and the buffet place we ate (it was included with the package) was pretty good as well. The hotel had wireless, but it was unusable. It kept dropping out all the time while trying to use it, so I ended up using my phone connection when I needed to check emails.

The hotel had a nice outside area in back that we took over. It was great weather…

Sunday was the train trip up to the canyon. It started out with a gunfight:

We had some music up (and back) on the train (sorry for it being blurry, the train was moving around):

The train going around a curve:

My brother and one of my sisters:

The train depot at the canyon:

The tour bus we got seated 16, and there were 16 of us (although my nephew was in his wheelchair, so we had 1 empty seat).
Here’s the guide walking up from the back of the bus:

The bus took us to about half a dozen lookout places (as well as lunch).

The mules that take people down into the canyon:

First look at the canyon. You should probibly just click on the picture and go to the full gallery. There are a ton of pictures, and I don’t want to link to them all here (but I will do a few more of the notable ones). You should go look now. I’ll wait… go ahead…

Some of the rails were comforting:

Some clouds:

The orphan mine. It was a uranium mine on the canyon rim. Closed now, but it could be reopend someday.

Here you can see part of the bright angel trail going down in the canyon from the main bunch of buildings (lodge, etc):

The train getting ready to head back to Williams. On the way up it was a deisel engine, but on the way back we had a steam train:

The Grand View car on the way back (they gave us cheese and crackers and champane and such on the way back):

The engine on the way back going around a curve:

The back of the hotel (facing the train depot):

Monday was travel back to the airport and back home.