Archive for the ‘Rattlebridge Cavaliers’ Category

I keep meaning to update this blog more frequently, but have been so busy with so much going on in our lives.  First of all yard work, yard work, yard work–both here and on our farm.  I go into a planting frenzy every spring and fall; since this was our first fall at our wonderful new home, I have gone crazy extending flower beds, planting probably much too many bulbs, spruce trees, Washington Hawthorn seedlings from our farm to line our property, split perennials from the farm, and my precious daylilies which have followed me from house to house for almost forty years.  Four weeks of yard work from morning until night does wonders for one’s hands–NOT!!!  Al is thanking my upcoming judging assignment this weekend for forcing me to stop the yard work and get my hands and nails done so I look more “lady like,”  a state to which I have never really aspired. 

Our lovely Ch. Rattlebridge Delta Dawn has her first litter of three boys and a girl which are really darling.  The rest of our dogs are doing great at our new home although I am sure they must miss all the acres that they had to run at the farm.  We do field trips to the farm often for them to run and play. 

I do wish the farm would sell, but the market in our former county is so horrible that we can only hope with the election over that things might pick up.  Please pray for our new President and Vice President that God guides them to bring our country back not only economically but internationally also.  We all have to suck it up and do our best to give back to our country which is the best place to live in the world.

I love the following little story and thought others might enjoy reading it.  “Puppy Size” follows:

This little story has been reprinted many times.  Author seems to be unknown. This is one of the neatest stories you will ever hear. You will know precisely what this little girl is talking about at the end (you’ll want to share this one with your loved ones and special friends)! It is called

“Puppy Size”

Danielle keeps repeating it over and over again. “We’ve been back to this

animal shelter at least five times. It has been weeks now since we

started all of this,” the mother told the volunteer.

“What is it she keeps asking for?”, the volunteer asked.

“‘Puppy size!’” replied the mother.

“Well, we have plenty of puppies, if that’s what she’s looking for.”

“I know… we have seen most of them”, the mom said in frustration.

Just then Danielle came walking into the office.

“Well, did you find one?” asked her mom. “No, not this time,” Danielle

said with sadness in her voice. “Can we come back on the weekend?”

The two women looked at each other, shook their heads and laughed.

“You never know when we will get more dogs. Unfortunately, there’s always

a supply,” the volunteer said.

Danielle took her mother by the hand and headed to the door. “Don’t

worry, I’ll find one this weekend,” she said.

Over the next few days both Mom and Dad had long conversations with her.

They both felt she was being too particular. “It’s this weekend or we’re

not looking any more,” Dad finally said in frustration.

“We don’t want to hear anything more about ‘puppy size’, either,” Mom

added.

Sure enough, they were the first ones in the shelter on Saturday morning.

By now Danielle knew her way around, so she ran right for the section

that housed the smaller dogs.

Tired of the routine, mom sat in the small waiting room at the end of the

first row of cages. There was an observation window so you could see the

animals during times when visitors weren’t permitted.

Danielle walked slowly from cage to cage, kneeling periodically to take a

closer look. One by one the dogs were brought out and she held each one.

One by one she said, “Sorry, but you’re not the one.”

It was the last cage on this last day in search of the perfect pup.

The volunteer opened the cage door and the child carefully picked up the

dog and held it closely. This time she took a little longer.

“Mom, that’s it! I found the right puppy! He’s the one! I know it!” She

screamed with joy. “It’s the puppy size!”

“But it’s the same size as all the other puppies you held over the last

few weeks,” Mom said.

“No…not size… The sighs. When I held him in my arms, he sighed”, she

said.

“Don’t you remember? When I asked you one day what love is, you told me

love depends on the sighs of your heart. The more you love, the bigger

the sigh!”

The two women looked at each other for a moment. Mom didn’t know whether

to laugh or cry. As she stooped down to hug the child, she did a little

of both.

“Mom, every time you hold me, I sigh. When you and Daddy come home from

work and hug each other, you both sigh. I knew I would find the right

puppy if it sighed when I held it in my arms”, she said.

Then, holding the puppy up close to her face, she said, “Mom, he loves

me. I heard the sighs of his heart!”

Close your eyes for a moment and think about the love that makes you

sigh. I not only find it in the arms of my loved ones, but in the caress

of a sunset, the kiss of the moonlight and the gentle brush of cool air

on a hot day. Take the time to stop and listen; you will be surprised at

what you hear. ‘Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by the

moments that take our breath away.

Until next time . . .      Meredith

In the past couple of months, we have lost tow of our older Cavalier ladies. Rattlebridge Time after Time loved and owned by Roxy Hayes since “Kelsey” was eight weeks old.  

Roxy bought Time after Time from one of our first litters.  Her sire was my beloved Bounce.  While she did not turn out to be a show girl, she was a wonderful producer beginning Roxy’s Roxian line.  She was also Roxy’s soulmate just as my Bounce, Bandi, and now Clooney have been to me.  Of course, no one comes close to me as my Bandi or as close to Roxy as her Kelsey Sue.  Bounce kids have always been special.

Two weeks ago, I lost my wonderful, yet sometimes annoying, Ch. Rattlebridge Rosie O’Grady, ROM.  Rosie and I had a power play going on since she was a puppy.  She loved me, but certainly would never give me the benefit of showing her utter devotion.  Yet she was devoted to me.  I was the only person who showed her.  She and I were a team and while in the ring she did all I asked, but step out of the ring and she took total control, barking “Yeah, Right.” at me constantly.  She died one month shy of fourteen and I will miss her for a long, long time.  Sleep well, my pushy girl, and give all my other loves a big kiss (in your own sparing way, of course). Tell them one of the benefits of my leaving this earth will be to embrace all my dogs once more as well as hopefully seeing The One who created us all. 

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.

All of us at Rattlebridge wish you a very Happy New Year!  This is an election year and change may be in our future.  We have so many issues to work on in our country that sometimes it might seem hopeless to tackle them all; but there is always hope that our country can pull together and address the critical problems that face us as a nation and put the welfare of our country and its citizens before the welfare of the corporate world and our elected politicians.  One can always hope . . . 

The Ohio State vs LSU football game is on tonight.  I have always disliked sports, except for horses and dog showing;  I became an elementary school principal instead of a secondary principal because middle and high school principals must attend a myriad of sports activities;  I wanted no part of Friday Night Lights!!!  However, I am now a big convert to Ohio State football and especially Jim Tressel, our awesome coach.  I still do not understand football, but I am fast becoming an OSU zealot!!!!!

For anyone interested, we have a couple of darling ruby puppies for sale–puppies I normally would have kept, but with moving, it is impossible for us to keep all the puppies that we feel may be for the show ring.  So we have decided to offer them as pets.  We closed on our new house next week.  We have become good friends with the former owners who are trying to help us prepare the new house while they are still in possession. Cavalier yards must be created; fencing must go up, and of course the house must be readied for the onslaught of the patter of multiple feet.  We all will adjust.  Al and I are truly in love with our new home and can’t wait to move in, although he is quite pleased that he will be in residence before I as I stay here to raise puppies and prepare our house for sale.  I do get a break in January as I go to Charleston, S.C. to judge.  I am taking an extra day there to enjoy the warmth I hope as we are having a taste of real winter here–snow and all.  We are in no ways as badly hit as the east coast, but we do have quite a bit of snow on the ground. 

I just got back from Christmas Mass.  The school children performed a Christmas pageant which was darling.  In all of our planning and activities for Christmas, let us not forget the reason for Christmas and celebrate the coming of Jesus as a humble infant who grew up to become our Savour. His act of sacrifice which is represented in the Mass brought Salvation to what was a very troubled world then which continues into the present time.  You can tell this Irish Catholic gets very sentimental at Christmas. May you have a wonderful Christmas.  May all of our Jewish friends celebrate a wonderful Hanukkah also! 

Thank you to my dear friend Roxy Hayes for doing the above montage of many of our Rattlebridge Cavaliers. Some of the dogs are gone now, but memories are sweet as they live in our hearts forever.

We have wonderful news!  We have found the house of our dreams and will take possession the end of January.  We are so very excited as are our Cavaliers.  We are moving back to the woods which Meredith has always missed.  Our present home, the wonderful Rattlebridge farm, was bought mostly for the dogs; the new house is for us, less acreage, wonderful floor plan to serve our needs as we get older; plenty of  room to raise puppies and closer to everything! Al will move first and I will stay here  going back and forth for a few months so I can raise puppies, get the house ready to sell, and decide what to do with our horses—probably board at least one of them. It is time for new adventures and Al and I are ready.  We will offer our  place to dog fanciers first and then list it on the market; the market is down right now, but the way all of this happened when we were not even looking for a house, we feel it was all in God’s plan.  Picture of new house and address below.  Email and Meredith’s cell phone stay the same 419 560 1548.  Merry Christmas to you all!

Well, my darling husband who was all set to move, has decided not to move–this is after I started the huge task of sorting through every hidden hoard of “STUFF” in the house. The property we wanted to buy that started all this moving business turned out to have serious flaws and we simply cannot find anyplace nicer than our place despite the work of this property. Al is now facing a couple of possible surgeries and now is not the time to take on the physical tasks that come with moving. I do not know how we will ever tackle cleaning out all Al’s stash of baling wire, string, tools, nuts, bolts, pieces of lumber he might just need “someday,” farm equipment, the hay elevator (which I bought for him for his birthday we first moved here–how romantic but you should see what he buys for me! This year I got a Mantis rototiller!); fencing; fence posts, lawn equipment; old lawn chairs that he might need someday–the list could go on. Al says not to worry, he will “take care of it.” Yeah, right! Men say that women are pack rats, but at least what we keep makes some sense. I have gone through years of dog magazines; clothes from my skinny days, to my really heavy days, back to halfway skinny days, back up rotund days, and now wherever the hell I am size wise;old books; notes from high school classes; old term papers; years of dog pictures of assorted breeds, furniture that just may have a spot someday; piles of clutter and more clutter. If I cannot fill up every horizontal surface of the house, I do not seem to be content. I am making a real effort to declutter, but not being as successful as I would like I am afraid. Still, in case we ever do move, I will be prepared . . . HAH!

Dog wise, we are raising a couple of lovely litters and may let a couple of puppies go to show homes as we are serious about not showing dogs. I am looking at a couple of really super looking puppies and when I feel myself weakening, I just remind myself that the last thing that we need right now is the effort it takes to show dogs at the level we have shown. We have just let a few puppies go on our regular spay/neuter contracts to spectacular pet homes in Florida, Oklahoma, and Ohio over the last month or so and gritted our teeth as we kissed the puppies goodbye as they were really nice show prospects that we would have liked to evaluate longer. One of them went to our friends Melissa and Marshall Gimple who just lost their Bounce son at over fourteen. So now they have a ruby Bounce son in their home to be company to their ruby girl “Tessa” who they got from us several years ago.

We have never sold many show dogs as we keenly feel the responsibility of protecting this breed and have been control freaks about where our dogs go. Sadly I have made grave mistakes in judgment in choosing a few show homes; even on co ownerships one cannot control what others do once a dog leaves one’s property. One can hear horror stories in all breeds about co ownerships and selling show dogs; sadly many of the stories are true. I have also been so lucky in continuing to co own dogs with Margaret Valentine and Sherri Meyer who have become very close friends and great partners. Cindy Chandler and Jeff and Tami Byroads have also been wonderful to work with our dogs in continued co ownership and friendship. There are a few people out there whom we consider totally trustworthy enough and we look forward to perhaps seeing a few Rattlebridge dogs continue to be shown in their hands. Of course the puppies we are looking at for show prospects may not turn out to be show dogs and we may then be looking for wonderful pet homes for them.

I am now deep into working on HB 223/SB 173 which is being proposed in both houses; termed the “puppy mill” bill, this bill has real ramifications for legitimate show breeders. My friend, Bobbi Brady, AKC delegate from the Central Ohio Kennel Club, and I have succeeded in meeting with two Ohio Senators, including the sponsor of the bill. We will meet next week with the sponsor of the bill in the House of Representatives. Walt Bebout, director of legislation for the AKC has been most helpful to us. So far our legislators are at least willing to listen to our concerns. The wave of anti dog and anti breeding legislation throughout our country is very scary. The so called animal activists are well organized and well financed; our ability to own pets is being challenged as if one reads the fine print in Peta’s manifesto one would see that Peta is against any ownership of animals.

Enough for tonight. Thank you to my friend and webmaster, Roxy Hayes, for continuing to monitor our website and news items.

I cannot believe that I have not posted in almost a month, but the days have flown and we have been busy.  We are getting ready for hearings on Ohio Senate Bill 173.  Had the opportunity to meet for an hour with the sponsor of the bill, Senator Cates, who seemed to listen to concerns.  We are hoping that we can change the language of the bill so that reputable show breeders are not penalized. 

Al and I went to up state New York for his brother’s 80th birthday and family reunion.  We stayed in a lovely bed and breakfast in Trumansburg on Lake Cuyaga. We went sailing on the lake; for me it was a first to sail on a big boat.  I even got to steer or whatever you call it.  I can see why my husband and his brother are so addicted to sailing.  I just came back from judging in Massachusetts.  Had a great time.

While we were in New York, we fell in love with the area and decided that Trumansburg would be an ideal place to relocate.  However, the facts about the winters dissuaded us from really considering up state New York but our discussion of relocating led to our really considering our desires for our future.  We presently have a beautiful small farm that is ideal for raising dogs and having horses.  However, the work load to keep up the property is enormous for the both of us.  So we have decided to sell our farm and relocate in the central Ohio area where we both have lived for many years.  We will still have our Cavaliers and I will still breed on a limited basis and still judge, but my obsession with showing dogs must come to an end.  I have a few puppies now who I think can really contribute to the breed when they grow up, so the Rattlebridge Cavaliers will continue for my own pleasure and the wonderful owners who seek us out for beloved pets.  I just do not want to live for showing and winning.  We have done everything in Cavaliers I have wanted to do and it is time to rest a bit. For our selection of our own pets for the future, we have just had a litter we have planned for a very long time.  Using frozen semen from our foundation sire, Aust. Best in Show, Canadian and CKCSC/USA champion Werrington Buoyancy of Rattlebridge we have had a wholecolor litter out of Harana Star Appeal.  I have long wanted to put a little Bounce back in my life especially since losing my beloved Bandi, a Bounce son, last year. 

Al is now 78.  We simply need a smaller property.  Life changes and we must change with it.  I will continue to keep up this blog as I enjoy doing so.  So stay tuned to see what the future will bring us as we shift our goals a bit. 

Today AB 1634 was passed and retained which means it is tabled until later in the week because evidently Levine, the bill’s sponsor, did not have enough votes to pass it. If it is not voted on by Friday, the bill will not appear again until next session. It is interesting to note that Levine was not available today. The battle is not won yet, but the opposition is finally being heard.

Now on another note, Ch. Rattlebridge Delta Dawn went to the World Show winning Best of Breed two of the four days. Delta was co bred with my great friend, Margaret Valentine, and is co owned by another great friend, Sherri Meyer. Delta was shown by Sherri’s lovely daughter Nicole Newkirk. Way to go! Judge is Mr. Norm Patton.

Today AB 1634 was passed and retained which means it is tabled until later in the week because evidently Levine, the bill’s sponsor, did not have enough votes to pass it. If it is not voted on by Friday, the bill will not appear again until next session. It is interesting to note that Levine was not available today. The battle is not won yet, but the opposition is finally being heard.

Now on another note, Ch. Rattlebridge Delta Dawn went to the World Show winning Best of Breed two of the four days. Delta was co bred with my great friend, Margaret Valentine, and is co owned by another great friend, Sherri Meyer. Delta was shown by Sherri’s lovely daughter Nicole Newkirk. Way to go! Judge is Mr. Norm Patton.