MUNGO EATS Latin America

The love affair between Mungo and Sargon continues.  The play is more sustained, and Sargon doesn’t dive for cover under the chairs and the coffee table as frequently.  The play can sometimes get quite loud, and Sargon tends to be quite the little barker.  I am trying to talk him out of barking by using a spray bottle.  Grumbling is fine, growling ok, but the sharp little bark that threatens to pop your eardrums, is not allowed!!  Any such bark, gets you sprayed with water!  Oh, and Ridgebacks, as a rule, do not enjoy getting wet much.

The play has changed a bit now too.  Instead of just chasing Sargon and trying to entice him to chase him back, Mungo is starting to wrestle with him.  They alternately take turns rolling around on the floor, the non-roller pouncing on or gnawing at the others’ throat.  Sounds vicious, but no Ridgebacks are harmed in the game.

And after a hard day of playing with your bff, what could be better than curling up and having a nap together.

Aww, doesn’t that just make you heart melt?

We have just had another busy weekend.  Thankfully, ski season is coming to a close, so not too many busy weekends left. 

The boys had a pretty good weekend in Hinton.  Sean got a 7th and an 8th place in his races this weekend, but he did some great shooting.  One day he shot 4/5, 4/5  and 1/5 .  The second day he shot clean the first time into the range (5/5) and 4/5 the second time in.  Great shooting!!! 

He travel mate, Jerome, placed 1st and 3rd in his two races this weekend.  Those are his two best finishes for the season!!  Way to go Jerome.  On the first day, he shot clean all three rounds….unbelievable!!  No wonder he went on to win.

The girls’ weekend was pretty successful as well.  Saturday, Sara placed 12th.  Not stellar, but not bad. 

On Sunday, the four girls all participated in the Lake Louise Loppet.  We all had to ski the 10 km race.  It actually turns out that the course was 11.1km long, not 10k after all.

Sara’s goal for the race was to win a medal.  She knew there was a very strong skier from her ski club in the race, and she was determined to beat her (Megan).  She did not succeed, but she managed to keep Megan in her sights for the whole race, and finished a very, very strong second.  She finished only 30 seconds behind Megan, which is great for a 10 km race (oops, 11.1km).  She skied the course in less than an hour, 54 minutes and I am not sure how many seconds (although if you ask Sara, I am sure she could tell you her exact time).  Sara’s team and travel mate for the weekend, Sophie, finished third. 

In the 40-49 age category, my travel mate, Francine finished second.  How, you may ask did I do???  Well, I finished fourth (out of 8), just shy of the medals.  Am I happy with my race?  You bet!!!  Considering that I have only skied 4 times this year… I think I did great.  I was happy that I kept up a pretty steady pace.  I had my ipod pumping out tunes for me throughout the race.  So even though I finished just out of the medals, I am happy.  Yippee for me!

The boys (dogs) seemed to have had a great time with their sitter.  Sargon only had one accident the whole weekend.  The boys seem to be nice and relaxed, and happy to have us home.

So that is one more crazy weekend down!  I don’t think there are any more crazy weekends left.  There are a few single races left and Sara is actually going to try skiing in a race at the Canadian nationals, next week.  I will write more about that later.  I think tonight, we will all go to bed early.

So Sargon is doing quite well. He and Mungo alternately eat, sleep and play, all day long. Sometimes the noise level gets quite high in this house because of it, but I am hoping eventually it will all settle down and there won’t be so much chaos.

This morning we started to wean Sargon from one food to another. The food he is on has really small kibbles, and is appropriate to the age of 5 months. We thought we would put him on the same brand of food, but with a bit bigger bites. He would be able to have this food until the age of 12 months. He had his first taste of the “new” food last night, and thenn again for breakfast this morning. A few hours after he ate, I noticed he did not seem to be his normal “sleek” self. He had a bunch of bumps all over him…hives to be exact. I tried to take a few pictures, but you really cannot see the hives in photos. I am not sure that it is the food he reacted to, but I thought I should be on the safe side, and therefore this afternoon, I went to buy more of the old food to feed him. The ingredients look identical, so it may not be the food. I will try feeding him some again next week to see if the hives repeat.

We are leaving the dogs with a sitter this weekend as the family is off in two different directions again, neither of them that would easily support a puppy. I am relatively confident that we could get away without Sargon “soiling” in a hotel, but I still do not trust him to sit quietly in a kennel while we are away, and I fear the barking and grumbling that the dogs do when playing could get us kicked out. So, for now, the dogs will stay home.

Kevin and Sean left this morning to attend the last big biathlon race this year in Hinton. Sara and I head to Canmore tomorrow and then to Lake Louise on Sunday. I am actually going to ski the loppet at Lake Louise. I am not sure how I got talked into it, but it is a 10 km “fun race”, and I will give it a try. I will likely finish last, and Sara has already told me that she intends to race to win, so I will be skiing on my own, but that is ok. I like it that way.

By the way, for anyone that is wondering how the clinic is going, here is an update. First of all, the whole process is fraught with conflicts, errors, and problems. It turns out the original drawings done by the designer (her measuring and drawing out the shape of the room), were incorrect. Every dimension she measured was wrong. We therefore had to make adjustments to pretty much everything once we started to build. This has caused an unbelievable amount of problems. I think however that we are finally starting to get past all these issues and the building is going well. At the moment the space looks pretty cramped, but I am hoping that once everything is in it’s place, the space will be functional (I am sure it will be).

We are hoping to be open mid-April, and so far, everything is on track. I spend a lot of my day on the computer answering emails, talking to bankers and suppliers, construction managers and designers. It is really not my cup of tea. I will be very happy when this part my job is over and I can get back to the “fun” of just being a vet. I will be finished my current job on March 18th. This gives me a month “off” when I can figure out all that needs to come together for this clinic to work out. Brother, what lot of work. It will be worth it though!!

We have had Sargon for a week and a day and I figure it is time to let you know how the strange little beast is doing. 

He is settling in to the house quite well.  Mungo loves playing with his new little buddy.  At the moment, the favourite game is tug of war.  It is not much of a challenge for the big hound.  He more or less just stands in one place with a toy dangling from his mouth.  Sargon grabs the other end of the toy and pulls with all his might.  There is a lot of growling, little tiny growling, but growling all the same.  Eventually, Mungo gets a little tired of the grumbles, and with one swing of his head, drags the small hound across the floor and sends him sprawling.  Fun to watch. 

He was doing great with house training, and the last two days, he asked to go out to the bathroom EVERY time.  Today, he decided that it was too darn cold for hounds to pee outside and he tried and tried to pee inside.  I kept having to remind him that outside was a way better choice. 

Nights are getting better.  He sometimes can “hold on” all night, but more reliably he is going out in the early morning.  At least he is settling into the kennel well each time he is placed in it.  I am sure that sleeping through the night is just around the corner. 

Even though Mungo likes to play with his new friend, he has not allowed Sargon to snuggle up with him until a few days ago.  Now, apparently Sargon is cool enough to share a couch with.

 At least he WAS cool.  I think it is a good thing that Mungo missed this little display of craziness that happened on the couch this evening.  For some reason, Sargon was being “bothered” by his front paws.  He began to growl and bite at them.  What a kook!!

I think we have another fool on our hands!!

Sometimes the weekend takes more than a little coordination. Sometimes, we have to devise a whole master plan.

This weekend, there were two separate races, in two separate places, for two separate kids…nothing new for this house, but then we threw in a twist. One of the races was the Kananaskis Ski Marathon, more affectionately know as the Cookie Race. The Cookie Race is put on by our ski club (Foothills Nordic), and it is a big race. The furthest distance raced is 42 km, and there are hundreds of participants every year. As members of the ski club we are expected to bake cookies and volunteer in the organization /running of the race. Kevin took on a larger role this year, becoming chief of controllers. I have no idea what this job entails. I only know that because of this job, he had to be out in Kananaskis on Friday afternoon, instead of Saturday morning. Sara needed to be at the race on Saturday morning and Sean needed to be in Camrose the same morning.

So here is how it all shook out. We luckily have some friends who face the same race dilemmas as ourselves. Bernie and Francine have a daughter, Sophie, that ski races with Sara and a son, Jerome, that does biathlon with Sean. So, on Friday afternoon, Kevin and Bernie headed out Kananaskis together. Saturday am, Francine picked up Sara and dropped off Jerome. The girls headed west and the boys and I headed north. Jerome’s grandparents met him at the range in Camrose, and my job was complete.

The drive to Camrose was hairy. The roads were icy, the traffic was crazy and people were sliding off the road in every direction. I know how I was elected to do the drive north, but I gotta tell you, I am so happy that it is the last one of the season for me. I hate the highway north. It never ceases to amaze me when I get to my destination in one piece. There is still one more biathlon weekend in Hinton, which is located north west of Calgary, but Kevin is on driving duties that weekend, thank goodness!!

I am not sure how the race went in Kananaskis. Sara finished 12th in a very strong field and was very happy with her race. Sean did very well, considering the conditions and circumstances. This was his first “real” race shooting on smaller targets, and to confuse matters worse, the range is just a wide open area, so the wind howls through the range, making shooting even harder. I was proud of Sean’s shooting, he hit just over 50% of the targets over the two days. I know this doesn’t sound spectacular, but many of the older boys shot much lower than that. One teammate, who generally only misses a target or two through a race, shot only 1 of 10 targets in the second day of competition. CRAZY.

The second day was a truly horrific race day. It was about -10, but there was a howling wind, so the windchill was horrible. Before each race, the kids “zero” their rifles. The front site on their rifles can be adjusted to the right or left and up or down, to adjust for conditions. Since the wind was howling into the range, all the guns needed to be adjusted to the right. This way, they would aim more to the right and after the pellet left the gun, it would be pushed left by the wind. Generally, you zero a few “clicks” one way or the other, but yesterday they were adjusting 10 or more clicks to the right. One little girl’s rifle was zeroed as far to the right as possible and it still was not shooting correctly, she had to aim at the right edge of the target, not the center, just to hit the target!!!

The kids were pretty cold. Most of them did okay once they were actually racing, but standing at the start line was torture. Parents stood around, taking jackets off at just the last second. One of our kids was so cold that she quit the race after the first visit to the range. She said she couldn’t feel her hand. This was only her third race, so I don’t know if she just wasn’t dresssed for the conditions? I hope she does not give up racing because of this experience.

I am not sure how Sean did yesterday. We left before results were posted to start the drive home. So far, the results are not on the online site. The first day, he finished 8th. Not bad for his first race on small targets, racing boys at least 2 years older than him. I was just happy that he perservered and did not quit.

Good children….good racing!