Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Dogs, painting, and snow forts









It's been a really fun couple of days.

To start off with Sarah and Tanya came over yesterday and hung out with us because Tanya had the day off. We went for a long walk, had hot tea and did a painting. I brought out a blank canvas and everyone painted one thing on it. The pictures above are of the process and the finished product, in exactly the opposite order that I meant them to be but oh well. It was fun and produced a great memory! I love hanging out with the Smathers!!! It is so good to have a great friend that I can just hang with and she accepts me for who I am, my little strange hippie self, and vice versa.

Sarah loves animals and she brought over a dog book, turned to a page and said, "Heidi, I don't think Billie is a heeler, I think she is a Catahoula Leopard Dog." Funny thing is that we have been commenting lately about how Billie doesn't really look like a heeler, except for her coloring, and she doesn't act anything like a heeler. Our dog trainer has made several comments about her looking like a leopard dog but I passed it off because the puppy rescue 'said'. So anyway, I looked at the pictures and read the description and, ya, she is DEFINITELY a Catahoula Leopard Dog!! I did some more research this morning and definitely no doubt about it! Something else we have made a lot of comments on is how she would make a great rescue dog because she is awesome with sniffing things out and very aware of her surroundings, kind of a sixth sense that is greater than most dogs I have seen. They apparently use these leopard dogs for search and rescue quite a bit because they are so easy to train. We were very excited to learn this new information and I would like to work towards training her for search and rescue, going to do some more research on that :)

We are continuing to get a TON of snow, seems like it just won't stop. Plow trucks cannot keep up and our road is more like one lane now. If they don't actually remove it we are going to have issues soon. This morning Tristan wanted to go out and work on a snow fort that he started yesterday so we all went out to dig. It felt good to use my body and wear myself out. He has a pretty cool snow fort started. We came in for a rest, lunch and some warm tea and then we are going back out to dig some more. I have a feeling that it is going to be hard for me to roll out of bed tomorrow:)

10 comments:

Heather said...

Tanner liked Tristan's snow fort!!!

The painting is really cool! What a great idea! What type of paints did you use?

Heather's Moving Castle said...

We've been doing some creative stuff here too. But nothing to show off on my blog. LOL. This time of year it is nice to be creative with colors.

I can't complain about our winter so far. But I am ready for spring or summer and even fall! I couldn't imagine digging in that much snow! You all mut have some decent snow clothes and shovels. I'd love to go skiing and snow machining though. So would Holden!

kelli said...

You've been tagged for a weirdness blog. :)

Check out my blog for details.

Heidi Snavley said...

Heather, we just used acrylic paints that come in the little bottles at Joanns or Michaels. Today they are painting my bar stools.

Jessica said...

We have a dog who's part catahoula & part lab... we saw his mother when we got him & she had the black-blue-grey catahoula coloring and one blue eye and one brown eye...
Sometimes our pooch is playful but most of the time he is quiet & makes a great "couch" for the kids... lets them lay alllll over him and sometimes our 5 yr old takes naps on him, has been doing that almost since we got him! :-) He's also pretty protective of us...

I think the biggest catahoula trait he has is the lethargic trait... but he's very alert...

Steffi said...

I enjoy to read your blog.It´s a nice blog!

Greetings,Steffi

Heidi Snavley said...

Thanks Steffi, I will have to take some time to peruse yours! I wish I knew German. My grandmother is Swiss and didn't learn English until she was 6, too bad she doesn't live nearby :)

Ren Allen said...

Usually, the search and rescue dogs must be owned by active search and rescue team members....so you'd have to give her up.
If you were to get trained and such, you might want to consider live rescue because searching for bodies involves using cadaver parts for training. I can just see a hand or foot in your freezer. ooh.;)

I think you should keep her as a family dog.

Heidi Snavley said...

Anyone can volunteer for search and rescue as long as your dog can show their obedience skills in search and rescue so we wouldn't have to give her up, we would volunteer as a dog/owner team. It is EXTENSIVE obedience training though, don't know if I am up for that intensive of training.

Heather said...

" I can just see a hand or foot in your freezer. ooh.;)"

HILARIOUS!!!