Fun on the Ice

One nice thing about there being very little snow at Mammoth right now is that the frozen lake isn't covered over in snow. We all went up to the lake last night with the dogs and a sled, and had a ton of fun!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We are all sitting around in my parents' cabin, after having prepared most of the food for Thanksgiving dinner, and my dad is reading 'Where the Red Fern Grows' out loud to all of us grown kids, my mom, and my little boys. When he first started reading, we could hear the emotion in my dad's voice a couple times from the memories of reading that book together as a family around the campfire when we were all kids. Everyone is just relaxing around the living room, spread out on couches, chairs, and laying on the carpet with our dogs, and all listening to Dad read that story. What a sweet morning. I hope all of our friends and relatives are all able to enjoy the holidays with your families too. Happy Thanksgiving!

Meet Harley

I've been searching for a second dog for a while now, but didn't want to rush into it for just any cute dog. 

We had a few things we were looking for in a dog this time: of course we needed a dog that would be good with kids and would get along well with Brax, but besides that we were looking for a black or brown dog (we love Brax, but his light colored fur all over the dark wood floors in our house is kind of a pain), we also wanted to find a dog with shorter fur than a lab if possible. I liked the idea of a dog a bit larger than Brax (he's 75 lbs), but Michael did not want a big dog. I was considering a mix of two or more of these breeds: lab, greater Swiss mountain dog, great dane, mastiff, rottweiler, German short haired pointer, or maybe weimaraner. 

So the last few weeks I have been scouring the websites of animal shelters in the area, adoptapet.com, and Craigslist looking for the right dog. I found one a few weeks ago that appeared to be perfect -- she was a tri-colored lab mixed with some other breed (from the colors, maybe a Swiss mountain dog or part rottweiler) named Raven. And the description on the rescue group's website made it sound like a very well behaved dog. But then I read further and found out that that dog was already in the process of being adopted. I emailed about it, but they confirmed she wasn't available anymore. 

I was disappointed, but kept searching. I contacted rescue groups about a few other dogs. One was an adorable dog named Sally that Michael and I were both interested in, but when we found out she was only 35 lbs we decided against it since neither of us are really into smaller dogs. (That was probably a good thing, though, because even though she was an adorable dog she was black and white (and we were trying to avoid light-colored dogs), and she was pretty fluffy looking in the picture, so it wasn't really what we were looking for in the first place. 

Last week, on Friday morning, I checked my email, and saw an email from adoptapet.com (because I had set it to automatically send me an email when any new large or extra large dogs were posted online from animal shelter websites). The email showed one photo of the face of a brown dog named Klondike. 

I took a look at the animal shelter's website, and there wasn't a lot of info about the dog. It said he was a male 60 lb Great Dane - Basenji mix with an estimated date of birth of October 1st, 2012 (so they were guessing he was about 1 year and 1 month old). All the website said about him was "Hello!  I am a young and high spirited dog who loves to play with toys. I am smart and fun loving and just need a great friend to teach me how to be the best dog ever!"  All I could get from that description was that it was possibly a high-energy dog, and it didn't sound like it had much training. 

I liked the idea of a Great Dane mix, but didn't know anything about a Basenji. 

I like the look of the beautiful, regal Great Danes you can see online. 

(And this dog at the shelter was a Great Dane mix, but was about a year old and still didn't weigh as much as our lab, so Michael would like that). Plus, even though Great Danes can be very beautiful dogs, you also see a lot of purebred Danes that have very goofy looking faces

 

(and sometimes they're just downright ugly), and this dog at the shelter looked like it had a decent face. 

I looked up Basenjis, and it looks like they are small white and tan dogs with pointy ears, squinty eyes, and curly-cue tails. I didn't see any Basenji in that shelter dog. 

Anyway, I texted Michael the picture of the dog, and decided to take Courtland and go take a look at the dog at the shelter after I played volleyball that morning, even though I figured it might not be the right dog for us. We went and snaked through and around all the dog pens at the Helen Woodward Animal Center, passing lots of barking and yapping dogs, and one pen with 6 adorable little lab-weimaraner puppies, before we found "Klondike."  He was way cuter than he looked in the photo on the website. He was tall and thin (maybe an inch or two taller than Brax, and a lot thinner than him).  And he was brindle colored (which is a black and brown pattern that can almost look striped sometimes).  He had a half-length tail -- not a long tail like a lab, but not a short docked tail either. And he's got big paws. 

I decided I wanted to see how he acted, so we filled out the application and then they went to get him from his pen. It started pouring outside, and there was even hail coming down for a while, so instead of letting us "meet" him in an outdoor area, they brought him into the lobby. Courtland pet him and I walked him on the leash (or rather, he pulled me) around the room for a minute, then they went and put him back in his pen. 

I decided he obviously needed some training, but so did Brax when we got him at a shelter a few years ago and he's a great dog now. I thought he was a beautiful dog, he seemed friendly, and he was dark with short fur like we'd wanted. And he has the big dog build (for me), but isn't actually that big (for Michael). I talked to Michael and he said go for it. So we decided to keep him. 

I asked them if they knew anything about his history, and they said they didn't -- they get most of their animals from other shelters around the country and they don't usually get much info about them. I asked if the breeds of Great Dane and Basenji were just a guess, and they said yes. (You can clearly see Great Dane in him, but I don't know what anyone was thinking when they guessed Basenji). They told me they had only had him at their shelter for one day. And I saw on the paperwork that his name was Klondike at the shelter, and that it was Teeter before that.  So that's all we know about him. 

So we brought him home, and I named him Harley. Harley and Brax get along great -- they are sometimes restful together, and they also play great together (which helps them both get their energy out). Michael likes him a lot too, so that's great. 

We've had Harley almost a week now, and we feel like it was a pretty good decision to get him. He is good with kids and friendly to people and dogs, he and Brax get along great, he house trained quickly and hasn't had a single accident in the house, he likes to go on walks (and doesn't even pull on the leash as much as Brax does - he's been a great walker ever since we put the training collar on him the first day), he and Brax love to play together, he doesn't shed much at all compared to a lab, he is friendly and social with the other dogs at the dog park, he seems to have no interest in tennis balls (so he's kind of the opposite of Brax), and he's a quick learner -- he learned to use the dog door immediately (both Brax and my parents' dog, Makai, took a little while to get used to the dog door), and at first he whined and was very noisy in the crate but Michael trained him to be quiet in the crate after just one night. He doesn't like the crate (luckily he's not a full sized Great Dane, because I just pick him up and put him in the crate for the night). Oh, and sometimes he comes over rests his head on my lap -- I just love that!  The biggest thing we need to work on with his training is recall -- he doesn't try to run away from us, but if he gets outside without a leash on he just wants to run and bound around and play, and he's not perfect about coming whenever we call him. So when we get back to town after Thanksgiving I'm going to really work on training him to come whenever we call. Then he should be a pretty well-behaved dog. 

As for what kind of dog he is, we may never know for sure. He's definitely part Great Dane -- he's tall, has thin legs and big paws, is brindle (which is an accepted Great Dane color), and has the ears and jowls of a Great Dane. By this face is not Dane around the eyes, and he doesn't have the really long thin face that many Danes have. And he's got a funny tail -- could someone have docked it at that half length, or did it grow that length?  He is taller than a lab, but even thinner than a Dane (we actually wondered after bringing him home if maybe he is younger than they guessed at the shelter, and maybe he still has some growing to do?). With him being a mix, we don't know what his ideal weight should be -- he is obviously thin, but it's not like his ribs are sticking way out like our poor Brax was when he had been malnourished before we brought him home from the shelter.  He has a very similar build to my parents' Rhodesian Ridgeback when she was a juvenile -- very thin and sleek looking.  So maybe that's just his build.  I guess we'll just feed him a good amount and see if he bulks up at all or if that's how he stays. 

So, anyway, my best guess is Great Dane & Boxer mix (although those two breeds still don't explain how thin he is). But I think he looks mostly like a smaller Dane, but I think he looks like Boxer just through the eyes and cheeks, and brindle with some white is also an accepted color in Boxers (he's almost all brindle, with two patches of white on his chest, and a few small white areas on some of his paws). 

Brindle Great Dane, Brindle & White Boxer

Anyway, here are some pictures of our sweet Harley-boy:

(Brax taking Harley on a walk). 

BSU vs. SDSU

Tonight I get to be at the Boise State game against SDSU with my sister Jennie and her husband's family.  She got us seats that are just 16 rows up - the closest I've ever been at a game!  So much fun - thanks sis, and thanks to my wife for being with the kids tonight!

-- posted by Michael

Travel Log: October 4th, Part 3, Arriving in Carlsbad/Karlovy Vary

". . .  Then we drove an hour to a town called Karlovy Vary, that used to be called Carlsbad. It's a spa town -- there are natural hot springs here and we have a couple photos of unknown ancestors taken at a studio that used to be here at the hot springs.

After we checked into the hotel Mom & I walked down and looked at the springs.

This is the Colonnade where the water from the hot springs is piped in through little taps.

We don't have any ancestors that we know of (yet) who lived right here in Carlsbad, but we were just looking at a letter from a Josef Strunz who lived in a town called Fischern, which is now called Rybare and apparently is part of Karlovy Vary now. There are 2 surviving envelopes and 1 letter dated 1904 from this Josef to my other 3rd great grandmother, Anna Strunz Ott, who came to America with her daughter Anna Maria Ott (who married Ludwig Spohr), so we are wondering if Josef Strunz was Anna's brother [we know Anna had a brother named Josef, so we are assuming he is the one who sent the letters]. We still need to get that letter translated.

Tomorrow morning we're going on a tour of several of our ancestral towns with a local historian from a museum here in Karlsbad. We're very excited for that and hope we'll be able to understand his accent well enough to get by. Hopefully we'll be able to find more houses that ancestors lived in in these towns tomorrow. And then maybe we'll be going to a local archive in Karlovy Vary to look for census records. I've never looked at a Bohemian census record before, because the ones for the places and dates we would need for these ancestors aren't online yet. So hopefully we'll be able to figure that out.  . . ."

Travel Log: October 4th, Part 2, Eger/Cheb

Cheb: At The Town Square

". . . We drove today to Eger (that's the old German name - now it's called Cheb) in the Czech Republic, where Karl Spohr & Ludmilla Breinl lived, you can tell the boys those are their 4th great grandparents. We quickly saw the cemetery where they have cleared out all the old German headstones and there is just one row of the old stones laying out on the ground, and then further away in a field the remaining headstones that were removed are piled in a huge cross shape laying on the ground and covered in dirt with grass growing over it. So our ancestors who were buried in that cemetery, assuming they had headstones, their stones would be buried there. Too bad.  Mom said the first time they came to the Czech Republic it was a normal cemetery with all the old headstones up, and the next time they came the old stones had all been removed.

And we got into the church just before it closed.  That is the church where Karl worked as a choir master and music teacher, and where Ludwig Spohr was baptized.

Inside the church in Cheb

The Baptismal Font

I LOVED the intricate old doors and doorknobs on the buildings in the Czech Republic!

Then we saw house number 193, where they lived just across from the church, where most of their kids were born (including the boys' 3rd great grandpa, Ludwig, who came to America alone when he was just 14 after his parents and most of his siblings had died).  Mom and Dad had found that church and house before.

House No. 193 on the left, across the cobblestone street from the church on the right.

The old house numbers are posted in blue, with the new numbers in red.

Then we looked for house No. 505, where the family lived when Ludwig's older sister Anna Elisabetha was born, and we found it. It was also across the street from the church, on another side of the circular street that wraps around the church. That was something that hadn't been found before.  And it has offices in it now, so we went in and explored the halls. It looked like maybe it was an apartment building (unless it has changed a lot since back then), and we wondered if maybe the people working for the church back then possibly lived there because it’s directly across from the main church doors. 

House No. 505 on the right.

A stairway inside No. 505.

House No. 505 on the right, with the church across the street in the background.

Then we walked all over the town looking for the house the family lived in when they had their oldest child, Karl Christof, house No. 517, but we didn't find it. The closest we found were 514 & 519, in different parts of town (the houses were originally numbered by the order they were built, not their order on a street, plus some are missing numbers and some of the buildings could possibly not exist anymore). . . ."