Nadia had her puppies on Friday April 9th starting at 5:30pm. They were all born healthy and pretty much uneventfully. She had 4 boys and 2 girls. I have posted lots of pictures, and there is a video of the delivery as well. The pups will be ready for visitors the at the age of 4 weeks.  The first image is a link to the whelping video.

[youtubehq Sn_w29MB1cU Nadia Whelping]

Bryan and I took a little pheasant hunting trip down to Morris, Il at Erienna Hunt Club.  It was lightly snow.  Cinder and Nadia both came.  Bryan is planning on bringing his little dog, Bailey on the next trip.  Enjoy the photos.  The apparently posed shot of Bryan aiming up in the air is when one of the pheasants flew up into the tree.  They are easy to hit when they aren’t moving.  Brian is shown holding is first bird ever in the first photo.  He looks so proud.  We came home with 6 and let a few fly away.

Nick, my cousin, hit the pheasant preserve for his first trip with his new gun.  We took Cinder and Nadia and let them do their thing.  Nick dropped three birds with one shot a piece, pretty impressive since he only made it to the trap range once with his new gun.  After a pretty succesful day, 4 birds and only two fly aways, one of which definitely got hit and was going down, but managed to do so out of our reach.  After a day in the field, we hit the lodge up for some beers.  While we were standing around waiting for the birds to be cleaned we ran into the hunters in the field next to us.  They asked, “Who was shooting the cannon?”  To which I replied, “This guy,” while pointing at Nick.  Quite funny at the time.  We were both shooting the same shells but something about his gun just makes it loud.  Enjoy the photos and our video.

Nick with Nadia and his first pheasant.

We spent the day playing with dogs at the annual IKC show at McCormick Place in Chicago. There were lots of Tollers, good friends, and good competition. It was a benched show so we got to show the dogs off all day and it was a lot of fun.

Chicago is getting its first big snow of the year.  They are estimating about 6 inches when all is said and done.  The dogs love it.  Hopefully Hannah will go sledding for the first time soon.  To top it all off, on Thursday, the national weather service is predicting 1/4 to 1/2 in of ice to form on surfaces, that is really scary.  I took a photo with the iPhone, all the snow sure is pretty as long as you don’t have to do anything important.

Yesterday evening we flew back to Washington. We must have been quite a sight. It was myself, Ashlee, Hannah, the two dogs, their crates, our bags, and most obvious of all a big silver case. As I stepped to the counter with my posey, I boldly stated, “I have gun.” Then we really got some attention and we were promptly checked in and through security and attracted even more attention. Hannah was even feeling a little feisty and decided she want to fly like a big girl.

Nadia put on her aviator glasses and grabbed her favorite toy. She said, “I want to fly like the ducks!” Enjoy the cute picture.

Nadia is waiting patiently for her turn to strut her stuff in agility. There are lots of really nice dogs. Marley, one of Nadia’s best canine friends, is shown running the course in a golden blur of speed.