Now that I have “Raven”, I need a good full name to go with it. Here are some of my “possibles”

Toven Rave Review – Fits with both her callname and her Mom’s name (“Extra Extra”), but it’s been “done” a lot (and probably half of the dogs with that name are called “Raven”).

Toven Ravin’ Lunatic – Just kidding – Toni would kill me! (Not to mention its probably bad karma to give your dog a name with “lunatic” in it!)

Toven Light up the Night - My fave so far!

Toven Starlight at Night

Those last two both honor my Sally (who had “Amber Starlite” in her name). Raven was born exactly one week before what would have been Sally’s 16th birthday, and her puppy name “Cookie” was Sally’s nickname.

Votes? Suggestions?

A huge congratulations to Bryce’s niece “Zen” (OBay Truly Balanced – by Bryce’s half-brother Monty) and her handler Bernadette Bay on some consistently outstanding runs at the FCI World Championships!

After a disappointing start in Individual Jumpers, Zen and Bernadette bounced back with 2nd and 3rd place finishes in the Team agility events, effectively “bootstrapping” the Great Britain medium team to their 2nd place finish :)! (Of course it DID take some solid performances by the rest of the team to get that silver medal, but those high-ranking results did a LOT to pull them up through the ranks).

Just for fun, they followed that up with a 3rd place in Individual Agility!

Well done, guys – W00T!!!

I’ve decorated! Like it? The cartoon and favicon were imported from my old website.

Concerned about the Pet Food contamination recalls in the USA? The bloggers at Pet Connection and Itchmo.com have been doing an awesome job keeping on top of things, with reliable, up-to-date info and posting product recall alerts BEFORE the FDA!! Kudos to them both!

I’ve been shamed into adding some posts by someone accusing me of being “boring”. I beg to differ, but boring, busy … whatever.

What better to start off my “catching up” posts than with this Strange Bird …

Whatever it was, it was hanging out in suburban NJ behind my house a few weeks ago. That’s no little finch, it was about the size of a Canada Goose! Not a clue what it was (some kind of water bird maybe?) – I never saw one before and haven’t seen it since!

Tags: bird, NJ

Here I am, blogging again …

My previous blog lived (and died) couple of years ago. Back when blogging was cool. Before everybody had a blog. Before subscription sites gave them away like penny candy. Ah, the good old days :)!

Along with the startup of a blog come some crucial decisions. The first of which is, what theme to use?

Blog theme shopping is sort of like clothes shopping – find something that flatters you and that fits. Download a bunch of possibilities to your blog-fitting-room and try them on…

… and on and on. This one’s too garish, that one’s too goth. Too bland / too artsy / too fartsy / too mannish / too fru-fru / too hard to read.. Then you find one that’s just right – only to find out later that someone else is wearing the same thing!

In this case my choice was Almost Spring 1.2 by Becca Wei – also being used on Matt Cutts blog.

Not wanting to be a wannabe, my Search for the Perfect Blog Theme continues. Meanwhile, it will remain almost springtime around here – I could do worse!