I have so much to catch up on posting to this blog.  I am amazed at how many people read my blog and then email me to find out if I am okay as there have been no new posts for a long time.  I am crazed with all the preparations to move our dogs from the former Rattlebridge Farm to our new Rattlebridge FARMLETT (If that is a real word).  Our farm will hit MLS this week;  Cindy Yeager, my sainted Boxer friend who has long taken care of our Cavaliers, and I have been taking turns staying at the farm getting it ready to sell and taking care of our dogs.  The hold up has been getting the dog living arrangements ready at our new home and all is now ready after five months of bad weather.  We have turned one of our all reason rooms into the dog living area and our other all reason room into our family room for dogs and us.  Both are lovely rooms with my  must have TV’s with DVR so I do not have to miss American Idol (yes I rooted for David Cook from the first moment he opened his mouth!!!) because I adore the surly, sarcastic, and very handsome Simon Cowell!  Reminds me of my Brooklyn relatives sporting a different dialect! Both of the all season rooms are heated and cooled and have lots and lots of windows with pretty views; they open up to the same large deck which feeds into our new very large patio which then feeds into a large area with new playground mulch which will adjoin a fenced lawn when we can get to it.  Not the acres of lawn our Cavaliers have had in the past, but certainly sufficient for our downscaled operation.  We still plan to breed our wonderful Cavaliers.

Cavaliers are so very versatile; show dogs, obedience dogs, therapy dogs, agility dogs, lap dogs, hiking dogs, food stealing dogs, and now diabetes alert dogs.  Please read the following from one of my puppy owners, Carmen Nicklaus, about her little “Julie:’

“Julie is taking a nap and snoring here by me while I am on the PC.
Can you believe she will be 7 in October? She is the best little Blenheim ever. And listen to this; she has a certain pitch of bark when I have a low blood sugar and she has prompted me several times to quit what I am doing
and go test my blood sugar and every time it is 60 or less!!

She has saved me from a disaster more than once. I have developed a condition called
hypoglycemia unawareness as a complication of having had diabetes over 44
years. In recent years, people have been training helper dogs to warn
diabetics and or their significant others of low blood sugars. One yellow
lab even goes and fetches the blood sugar machine and gets “his” diabetic
child’s mom up in the middle of the night to treat the child. I guess it
costs about 25 thou to train such a dog–and here my Julie does it on her
own. She does not fetch my glucose machine, but she has this distinctive
bark and she will not stop barking until I heed her and go check my blood
sugar. She has never been wrong and I just realized it recently as I am home
alone with the dogs a lot and I get low and then I get confused and cannot
even think to go check. But since I realized what she was doing, she has
saved me a few 911 calls to say the least. Isn’t that cool?”

Thank you for sharing, Carmen!

From Annette Houdek, the owner of one of the very talented and very sweet Rattlebridge dogs:  Ch. Rattlebridge Over the Top, a great agility dog and great Cavalier.  Thank you to Annette for all she did to bring out his many qualities.  She chose him at eight weeks, earlier than I let most puppies go, so that he would develop into the Cavalier he became.  I loved him also and was terribly proud of him. 

CH. MACH. RATTLEBRIDGE OVER THE TOP UD.
U-ACHX,U-CDX,EAC,EGC,OJC,AD,WWKCRN
” ORBIT ”
12-15-98 – 3-4-08

Orbit has joined all of my other special dog friends at the Rainbow Bridge.
He is happy, running fast, young again, and feeling no pain.
Since the first day that I brought Orbit home, I knew he would give me the
ride of a lifetime, and he did!  Everything he did was over the top.
We had many special moments together, but the most exciting for him was
going to the beach.  He loved to swim, so much so that I bought him his own
pool.  He would stand on his platform and when I launched his ball, he would
fly in the air and land halfway across the pool to retrieve it.
No matter what we did, or where we went together, we had fun.
His heart may have failed him, but his spirit still remains.