Grammy Got a GREAT Valentine’s Present! By Pippin

Note from Grammy: Robert called the Vet's office this afternoon, and the girls were finished with their surgeries and resting well, they said...

Guess what! Papa got Grammy a GREAT Valentine’s present… AND WE got to go along! He made arrangements to go up and meet with her son, Mick and pick up Little Bear for the weekend! She was SOOOO happy!

He had GrandPaw take Gimli, me and Grammy to Bakersfield to the big Annual Central Valley Sportsmen, Boat & RV Show and meet him there! It was really something! They had the Splashdogs there, a well as Hunting Dog Training Seminars. There was a Super Cruise Car Show with a bunch of old fancy cars that GrandPaw really loved to see, too!

Gimli and I got to go because Grandma OC is heated up and they didn’t want to leave us around the house, AND they are still “socializing” us, too. Grammy wanted Gimli to get used to big crowds, too, and she said that he did a FANTASTIC job when they went into the buildings and there were so many people around.

We had an AWESOME time! First, we went to the Splashdog area. It was run by Splashdog.com, and they had a HUGE pool there in front of some “stands” that people sat on to watch. I wonder why they call them “stands” when you are supposed to SIT on them?

There were LOTS of dogs all over. Papa wouldn’t let us bark at them, though. He said we had to be quiet and polite, and not even tell them to stay away from our people! How are we supposed to protect them THAT way?

There were a LOT of people that liked us, though and we got all kinds of comments about how cute we were and they asked about what kind of dogs we were, so Grammy and Papa got to talk about our breed a lot. There were also a LOT of kids and I got to "Shake hands" alot. We got all kinds of petting all day long! THAT was pretty cool!

If you ever get a chance to go to a Splashdog Event, you should go! It was VERY interesting! As you can see from the pictures and vids, there was a big platform and the Splashdogs would climb the stairs on the side and go down to one end of the platform. They had to sit and stay there, while their person took one of their toys to the other end. When they were ready, their person would que them to “GO” and the dog would run down the platform to the edge of the pool as fast as they could and their person would THROW their toy out into the pool and the dogs would FLY out over the water and try to catch the toy!

If they missed in the air, then they would splash into the pool and swim over to the toy and get it and then swim back to a ramp at the side of the pool and climb out. They had some kind of fast camera thing that took pictures and wherever the dog’s tail base hit the water was where they measured from. The dogs that jumped the longest were the TOP SPLASHDOGS!

I think some of the dogs were fairly new at it and didn’t really want to jump into the pool very much, but they usually ended up doing it anyway because they wanted their toy back! One of the dogs would wait until his toy sunk to the bottom (about 3.5 – 4 ft.) and THEN he would jump in and DIVE down to the bottom to pick up his toy. WOW! THAT was really interesting, but I don’t know that I would want to do that!

They had said that in between jumping heats people could let their dogs try it if they wanted to, and Grammy was going to let us go and look at the water to see what we would do. I got to do that for a minute or two at the top of the ramp the dogs had climbed out of, but then she found out that you had to pay some money to try it, and since they only had enough money for Little Bear’s activities that day, they couldn’t let us try it.

There were a lot of dogs that did though, and they really seemed to have fun! Even a little Jack Russell Terrier jumped! The Splashdog people said that they are going to start having more events in this area, so maybe we will get to do it some other time. I don’t know if any of you readers out there are in the Bakersfield, CA area, but if you are, you can find out more about Splashdogs HERE.

After that, we went into a building that had places for kids to do things, and Little Bear got to shoot arrows, and go fishing! The line for the kids to fish was REALLY LONG, and so Grammy (who took her chair on its wheeled cart) sat in the line with us, while Papa took L.B. to the archery area, and then GrandPaw took him to look at all the fancy cars. We sat in that line that moved SO SLOOOOOWWWWLLYY.

It took us 2 and a half hours to get up to the front of the line, and another 45 minutes for Little Bear to catch his trout. It was kind of boring sometimes, but there were so many little kids around and we think that their parents were happy that we were there for them to pet and play with a little to distract them from the slow moving line! Grammy says that we got THOUROUGHLY socialized!

There was a really great booth in that building too, that was set up by Self Serve Pet Spa. Papa talked with the owners, David and Amy Sidhu, for quite awhile, and they were really nice. They were giving out small sample bags of natural dog food, so we got to eat a snack there, and THAT was really GREAT! They have a neat place where you can go to use professional dog bathing tubs and tools to clean your dogs and not have to break your back or clean up afterwards. The prices aren’t to bad, and Grammy says we may have to check out that place sometime. (Don’t you LOVE their logo?)

Poor Little Bear! Three trout got away before he FINALLY caught one! The kids were allowed to fish until they caught their trout, but it sure took him a long time! EVERYONE in the whole building clapped for him when he finally pulled out his prize!

Grammy was SO MAD because our camera decided that it was going to be finicky just about the time that Little Bear caught his trout! It had NEW batteries in it and everything, but it kept “locking up” and they would have to take out the batteries and put them in again to get it going again, so GrandPaw missed a lot of the catch. He got bits and pieces, but not the whole thing.

They had a place outside where they cleaned the fish for the kids that kept theirs, and put them in a bag with ice. It was pretty late by the time we finished that area, so we only looked around a little bit more, and then went to a Carl’s Jr. to get some dinner, then came home, and Grammy cooked that fish. Little Bear ate as much as he wanted, and then Grammy finished it off (She LOVES trout and doesn’t get it much). We only got a few little tastes of it. (Something about so many mouths…) It was REALLY YUMMY!!!

Gimli will tell you about our Sunday the next time! Hope you enjoyed hearing about our fun outing!