Puppies!

Meet Miki, the newest addition to our household (and the third of the field spaniel persuasion)! He’s 10 weeks old, mostly liver (isn’t that an awful name for such a beautiful color?!) but with some white on his chest and a few other places. We’re not sure how much of the white will survive puppyhood, but so far as we’re concerned the more the merrier! Miki (MEE kee) is a Hawaiian word meaning agile, quick, or nimble — perfect for a dog who is destined to be an agility champion, if Sheila Miller (our breeder, in photo at right) and Debbie have anything to say about it. Debbie (my lovely wife) has been handling our two field spaniels (Mo’i and Lea) in agility competitions for several years now — and Mo’i is currently the number two field spaniel nationally. Debbie has already started training Miki (not agility yet, but the basics), and this little field spaniel is going to be studying and practicing hard for the next few years. He has a job, you see — to be a most excellent agility dog and conformation show dog. We have high expectations for little Miki…

We drove all day Friday from Jamul, California (our home) to Battle Mountain, Nevada (Sheila’s home) on Friday. Sheesh, what a long and frustrating drive — 945 miles of freeway, through the Los Angeles clogs, the Sacremento rush hour, and road construction (looked like destruction to me!) in Reno. We had just one adventure: we nearly ran out of gas on the last stretch into Battle Mountain. We were saved by a gas station in the tiny little town of Valmy. When we finally made it into Battle Mountain (at 9:30 pm, after leaving at 6:15 am) we wanted a bite to eat and perhaps a glass of wine. As we rolled into the motel, we spied a homey-looking little place — Mama’s Pizza — right next to the motel. So we threw our stuff into the room and walked over, only to find out that Mama’s closed at 8:30. What kind of pizza place closes at 8:30 on Friday night? So we drove down the street a bit until we found the Owl Club — the sign said “family dining” — where we parked and went in. After wading through choking cigarette smoke past several ranks of electronic slot machines, we found a nice little diner-style restaurant with a very friendly waitress. So we had our glass of wine and split a sandwich, then headed off for bed.

Saturday morning we got up about 5:30 am, checked out, and had a big breakfast at the Owl Club. Then we set off to find Sheila’s house — I had it located on my GPS, but I wasn’t sure how to get there. We still had over an hour to kill before getting to Sheila’s house, as we’d promised not to darken her doorway before 8:00 am (she’s not quite the early bird that we are). It turned out to be a very good thing that we left early, as the map in my GPS turned out to be defective. Sheila’s street was (in the GPS) a couple of miles away from where it really was! I drove out to where the GPS thought her street was, couldn’t find it, and stopped to ask a couple of people working in their yard. They allowed as how they’d never heard of the street I was searching for, and gave me encouraging words about looking “over there", while each pointed in a different direction. To make matters even worse, we had stupidly neglected to write down Sheila’s phone number before leaving. Sigh. So we decided to try our memories — after all, we’d been here twice before, even if that was six or seven years ago. And amazingly enough, our memories actually worked! We drove back to town, then headed out using the directions we vaguely remembered from all those years ago when we picked up Lea and then Mo’i. And we drove straight into Sheila’s driveway — though we were only certain we had the right place when Sheila came out to greet us.

Of course, Sheila really came out to greet Mo’i and Lea — and she looked very surprised, and disappointed, to discover we hadn’t brought them. But we figured the trip back was going to be enough confusion and work with two puppies (Miki for us, and the tentatively named “Mayhem” that we brought back for Richard and Judy Shriver, in Poway). And with 20/20 hindsight, I think we made the right choice — two adult dogs plus two puppies in the back of the old SUV would have been a bit much, I think. But poor Sheila only gets to see her Southern Californian canine babies at long intervals, and we hated to disappoint her…

We had a lovely couple of hours visiting with Sheila, the five remaining puppies in this litter, and the five adult field spaniels (including both of the litter’s parents) there. Most of the pictures below were taken in Sheila’s fenced yard, out in a typical Nevada sagebrush valley — broad flatlands between big mountain ranges. We’ve spent time, in years past, in the Ruby Mountains not far east of Battle Mountain, and also at Great Basin National Park, a bit further to the southeast of her. It’s beautiful country, and (like our area) especially at this time of year…

The drive back was relatively uneventful. The puppies were both very easy travelers; no problems there at all. And we stopped frequently enough to avoid any “accidents” in the car. Most of the time, both puppies were very contentedly asleep in their crates — testimony to all hard work of conditioning that Sheila has done, including lots of “practice” car riding. These two were “old vets", and nothing about the trip alarmed them — police sirens, big bumps, and even two adults in the front seat yelling “yaaack!” or some such unintelligible thing upon witnessing an accident unfolding right along side them — all passed unnoticed by the little puppers.

The highlight of the trip home, by far, was our stop at the Shriver’s home in Poway to drop off their puppy. We’d called them earlier to offer the drop off service (Poway is right along our way home), rather than have them travel out to see us to pick her up. But the offer came with a catch: they had to be willing to meet us at the late hour we’d be driving through. I was talking to Richard for this conversation, but I could clearly hear Judy in the background saying something like “You tell them to stop here no matter what the hour is!” Dog people, for sure <smile>. As it happened, it was almost 2:00 am by the time we got to their house, but we’d kept them informed as we approached, and they were all ready for our arrival. Debbie carried Mayhem in, and we stood their yakking for a few minutes with the Shriver’s with Debbie still holding the puppy before it dawned on Debbie that it was their puppy, and they might want to hold it (in our defense: we were very tired). Poor Judy — I could how badly she wanted to hold that little puppy, but she somehow restrained herself from whacking Debbie upside the head, and waited until Debbie came to her senses and handed little Mayhem over. We got to meet their Welsh Springer briefly, and Debbie got a cup of coffee, but we stayed only briefly as we desperately wanted to get to our own home, and get some rest. Which we did, posthaste. Sunday we had what Sheila described (quite accurately) as a “hangover"; it was only this morning that I felt whole again…

As usual, click on any of the small pictures to get a larger version…