The Red Sketchbook - Roxy's cousin, Sadie and miscellaneous other stuff

We have started to have a real life! The Big Guys cousin and her husband and puppy came to visit the other day! First time they have visited us in eight years - we always go to visit them as we had no room for visitors in the trailer at Sequoians.

As I am doing the dogz and catz sketchbook I took a picture of Roxy's cousin, Sadie the pretty lady, a seven year old cocker spaniel and then drew her. There will eventually be a picture of my drawing but for some reason the program won't take me to picture uploads! Artquilltmaker is home and she showed me that once again, it is operator error! As you can see, pictures are included. Anyway, after I took this photo I worked on it some more and now don't like it. Oh, well.

Welcome to the 18th century!

We also went to the Highland Games in Pleasanton last weekend. I went Saturday and the Big Guy went Saturday and Sunday. We joined our old regiment, Montgomeries 77th Highlanders, at their encampment. It was a lot of fun. In the 17 years we have been reinacting the French and Indian War at the different Highland Games I have never had the chance to see the sheep dog trials. Last weekend our encampment was just beyond the trials so I spent a good part of the day watching the dogs. What fun! The dogs were beautiful, mostly well-trained and appeared to love moving the sheep around. They had a difficult time because it was extremely noisy with the bagpipe bands, other loud music and noisy crowds. I saw about 30 dogs run and I think only about four of them completed the course. Some of them got the sheep so excited that the beasts jumped the fence back in to their enclosure!

This is one of the successful dogs. He did a good job getting the sheep to do what he wanted and he finished in plenty of time. The dogs have five minutes to do the run. I enjoyed this so much I thought to myself 'I can do that and would like to!' then my other self said ' Idiot! Those dogs must cost a thousand dollars, need a flock of sheep to practice on and several acres to run.' Sure was fun to watch!