Here we are back in Niland, California for our winter trip. So I am going to try to do a blog again. We had a pretty uneventful trip from Montana except for the snow the first day! We had been watching the weather and thought Dec. 1 would be a good day to leave. Well, it was all right until we got 25 miles from home--then we ran into snow and had snow most of the day. But after that everything was fine. We just missed that big storm that went across the country.

The weather has been great since we got here. It rained one day--the hardest rain I think I have ever seen here. So we spent a couple of days training in the desert; everything else was way too muddy. But we like the sandy desert and the dogs also seem to like it. We are training 4 dogs now: Chance for the All-Age, Skatch will be starting in the Qualifying, and we have 2 puppies, Soupy and Ruger. They are 8 and 7 months old now. We are really having fun with them. They have really progressed in the short time we have been here. Shows what regular training will do! We have been training with Valerie Martin and on occasion, Jack Vollstedt. We trained a couple of days with Patti Kiernan. That has been very good for our dogs--they all think they are at a field trial. Hard to get that atmosphere with just one or two people. Anyway we are having fun and training hard.