All is well in Morriganland. Everyone is healthy and happy. May is growing like a weed and is as tall as CiCi. Her head is coming along. She is at the lumbering puppy stage. She is going to be a big beautiful girl. Apparently, with May, we doubled up on goofiness. She is as silly as the day is long. Not a serious bone in her body! She hates being an outside dog but I am convinced it is the only way to grow a dog that knows how to be a dog and has the body to do so.

May loves CiCi

Uncle Trojan is in the best shape he has been in for a while. He spends to much time in the house to be in show shape but he sure looks good. Brian is huge! He turned two last week and it is time to gets his x-rays. He is the sweetest dog ever and even Laura is starting to warm up to him. She even feeds him!

Trojan liked Dustin the moment they met.

Lilly and Roxi are still maintaining their post in the front. The FedEx man won't get out of the truck. He just blows the horn. Lilly is enormous and she got to go on a trip a couple weeks ago. Sidney took her to wrestling practice. Lilly had a ball and Trojan was SO jealous. Lilly is WAY over 200 pounds. She carries it well too.

Lilly - A great one.

Anyway, not much going on Mastiff-wise. James is wrestling and Sid is managing the High School team. Work is work. I will probably place Brian with a handler soon. It is time to finish him. It WON'T take long.

And MORE Tug pictures. Damn beautiful dog. The English say that we show our dogs to young. Now that I have seen our dogs age a little. I think that I am tending to agree. Why show a puppy that you really don't have any idea how it will look when it is five years old instead of the five year old? I know the answer is that you want to find breeding stock as young as possible but really all you are looking for is the quickest maturing dog. Tug is beautiful.

Tug and Ty

Save me!

A rare picture of Tug with his eyes open...

Heather and Tug!

I love it when I get pictures. They make me smile. Two of these pictures are recent of Macey and the other one is from 2007 with Diane Becker's Randy. Randy looks like a male version of May! I am so proud of Miss Macey. She is so beautimus!

Yes, I know, it has been a month. The new jobs a hassle, the kids got the flu but, its sure nice typing to you...

May is turning into a wonderful dog. However, she still confounds me by occasionally having an accident in the house. She squats, remembers were she is and tries to pinch it off. She knows instantly what she has done and will look at me like, "I know, I just was excited..." It makes me crazy. She and CiCi are fabulous together. They play for HOURS at a time. I take her out frequently and she does great in a crowd. She isn't quite the ham that Brian is but she is fun and fearless.

Lexus is finally showing her age. Almost overnight she has started going gray. She still acts like a puppy and loves to fence fight with little sister Susie. She is still athletic, she just looks older. Lexus turns six in December.

Trojan is fabulous. He is just as dark as ever and has really fulfilled the promise I always felt he had. He is keeping my feet warm as I type this. He does wake up grumpy and that is a problem since he has become a little hard of hearing. Since it has finally gotten to a reasonable temperature, I took him for a walk today. I was walking the electric fence that keeps the goats in to make sure that it was clear since it has been raining for a while and wet weeds love to fall on it and short it out. Trojan wandered off ahead. I followed him for a change. He stayed close to the garden so I started off on one of the trails. I walked ahead and he walked in the woods off to my left. I stopped and watched him again. He had come to a large dead Oak that the forestry bulldozer had pushed over for me when they cut the fire break. Trojan jumped up onto the Oak and walked it to what is left of the root ball and stood there with his front feet on the root ball and his rear on the tree itself. I swear he looked like Simba in The Lion King. It was gorgeous. I didn't even have my ever present camera phone!

CiCi doing what CiCi does best. She Pyoed again on this last heat. I was watching for it, caught it early, spent a small fortune on a kick ass antibiotic and she was fine a couple days later. She never got a high fever and generally did very well. The solution off course is to spay here. CiCi will be six in October.

Where did May go? Last night I mentioned that she LOVES her laundry pile. This is were I found her a few minutes ago. Girl does love her laundry.

May at four months old. She is pretty relaxed. I gotta admit, I took that picture for a reason. Someone told me the other day that they could never crate their dog. Balderdash. Most dogs crate themselves if you give them the opportunity. Lexus sleeps in the closet. Trojan between my side of the bed and the wall. Susie does the same on the other side. May prefers the laundry room BUT when the door is closed and she can't get on top of her precious laundry pile, her crate is just fine. My point is this, dogs prefer to curl up. Crates are substitutes for dens and if you make it a safe haven, they will always enjoy 'their place'. To get May in her crate, all you have to do is pat the top of it and say 'in'. You never have to repeat yourself. That is NOT a punishment. It is security and comfort.

Someone was asking me the other day how Trojan and Brian get along together. So far, it hasn't been a problem. Even when the girls are in season, Brian is EXTREMELY respectful to Trojan. I really think this is because of what I call 'The Mature Dog' syndrome. Some dogs grow up and exude confidence. Morrigan did. Trojan does. I don't think I am going to have any issues from these two...

Also, look how athletic these two are! This went on for about fifteen minutes! A have six minutes of video from this frolic! Right after I turned off the camera, they went tearing around the dining room table with Trojan chasing Brian. When they got back around to the coach, Brian simply jumped it! This dog is SO strong and SO confident. He is awesome!

Oh, one more thing, yes, big, strong James DOES laugh like a little girl! :)

My shoulder just popped back in! YES! It has been bugging me for a week. Here are a few moments in time. Happy moments that I am glad are preserved.

May is growing like a weed! She is stunning. When we did her breeding we hoped that we would get something special but with only one pup, even my classic optimism was slightly concerned. I shouldn't have worried. I'm thinking Priceville... AND Brian is becoming what we all hoped he would. He is growing up as a dog and that always makes me happy. Again, I am thinking Priceville.

Heh heh. If y'all are nice I will post the puppy version... You owe it to yourself to click on this picture and look at him in high resolution.

Possible the only picture I will ever share of my wife in bed... circa 2005, French Lick, IN. Trojan is slowly evicting her... backing her off the bed.

My buddy, Rex. Been thinking about him allot lately. I am trying to find Apollo's daddy, Joe Miller.

Trojan and his nephew Apollo (Susie and Rex)

Sid and May.

I hate writing on my blog page without pictures.

Here are a couple of pictures to prove to my wife that I actually did go to Baltimore! The first is the battleship USS Constellation. She sits in the Baltimore Harbor. Right now she is having her hull reconditioned on her starboard side (that's left for you landlubbers!). The second picture is for my Dad. Its the Sewage Pumping House that is dockside in the Baltimore Harbor. This building is gorgeous and is also undergoing renovations.

These next two pictures are of the devine Miss May or as Sidney has taken to calling her in her best Southern Drawl - Miss Mayonnaise .

Its been a couple weeks and it is time for an update! Firstus, a few quick facts: May is growing like a weed. She will be 3 months old tomorrow. She weighed 41 pounds this morning. She tortures her mother relentlessly. Megan Fox is 23 years old. She is growing very uniformly. (Most puppies I have raised have grown tall then wide then tall again. May isn't growing like that. She has stayed in roughly the same dimensions for the last month. A month in which she has gained 20 pounds...)

May has started wearing a collar! She likes it. We have also started crating her. She likes that too. She is a pretty sweet girl. I will post some birthday pictures tomorrow!

On the less serious side, the plant where I have worked for the last fifteen years is being closed. 300,000 sq feet burned eight months ago, we set up a temporary facility about 30 miles away. The temp facility is being closed and normal operations are being consolidated into a plant in Jackson, TN. I have accepted an expanded position and role in Aiken, SC. I am not relocating from Veal but, I will have to have a residence in Aiken. I will commute there weekly and back home for the weekends. I also would anticipate more business travel.

Summer in Winter.

Wow. So beautiful it makes me eyes water! I wish I had laid hands on this girl. Dr. Bill Newman told me personally that he thought she was the best Mastiff Bitch ever. This was a few years ago at the supported entry in Priceville, AL. I sure hope I told Dianne then but, if I didn't, I have told her now. :)

Susie sang the blues EARLY!

Some folks think that jet setting around the globe is cool. Me, I think settling down and turning a piece of this planet into your own personal piece of heaven is cool. I have a dream to return my property to a nearly 'Pre-Columbian' state. This is a pretty much impossible task when you consider that I own such a small piece of the world. I have even given my views on this topic a name. I call it 'Reasonable Conservatism'.

Every now and then, something happens that gives you hope that the rest of the world may agree with this less than ideal but still practical movement toward a cleaner environment. Seeing 'The Bear' bolstered me tremendously. Additionally, I have seen two flocks of turkeys in a year. I know there are places all over the South that are inundated with Turkeys but Southwest Carroll County has not been one of those places.

An evening with CiCi, Lexus and May...

RoxiToo

Just so y'all know, Chocolate loves PaPa Jim best!

Sid and 'The Pumpkin Kitty'
She thought he would make a good lion.

A picture of Macey while she was at Susie's old house.