Happy Third Birthday, Leo!

Well I'm a bit late with this (I know, I know, I'm TRYING to get better!), but Leo turned three on October 12th. :) I've put together some updated photos of he, his littermates, and his parents! You can see photos from the first time I did this back in 2008 here, in this blog entry for his first birthday!

Below are a couple shots of Leo's brother (the only other boy in his litter), MC. MC's human mom Anne was nice enough to take some beautiful photos of the handsome MC for his birthday! You can see MC and his Shiloh housemates (Kola and Grissom) on Anne's new site, Diamondwood ISSR Shilohs!



Leo had only one smooth litter mate, the beautiful Nana--so different from the rest of her sibs, with that lovely pale silver coat and dark markings around her eyes!


Leo's sister Sunny has coloring that's a lot like their sire, Acer, though she is darker. We are so proud of Sunny for her Best of Opposites win at our CSSC Chapter Specialty this year! Here she is posing with her human mom Liz and judge Fred Lanting. The second photo is my favorite "Sunny hiking" photo--Sunny is lucky to live in gorgeous Colorado, amidst the mountains and snow! Leo is jealous...he wishes we had more snow.



Leo's sister Ginger is almost his twin! They look so much alike now that they are mature that we tease Ginger's human mom, Michelle, that she must sneak into our house and take pictures of OUR dog when we are not looking! Here is my favorite Ginger photo, taken last winter by Michelle. You can see she is also lucky to live where it snows!


Finally, I wanted to do something I have not done before, which is post photos of Leo's sire and dam. We had a photo of Acer but had never succeeded in getting a good one of his dam, Holly. But this year, Karen Ursel was gracious enough to take a lovely photo of Holly for us to use on the litter collage for Leo's first (upcoming) litter! So here they are, finally, Acer and Holly!



We hope you enjoyed Leo's latest birthday retrospective!

CSSC Shiloh Specialty In Oklahoma, June 2010

Late with the updates again! Not quite as bad as last year, though. I'm improving! Lura, our Chapter President, took the lovely photo of Leo you see above the day before the show. It's my new favorite photo of our boy!


In early June our local chapter of the SSDCA (Shiloh Shepherd Dog Club of America), the CSSC, organized a Shiloh Specialty Show at the Riverwind farm just outside of Oklahoma City. We had a wonderful turnout, with NINETEEN wonderful Shilohs and their families attending from as far away as Nebraska, Colorado, California, Arkansas, Arizona, and Louisiana! WOW! One of our LB's, Laura Kathryn of Solace Shilohs, came down from Washington State, too! Below, you can see the ring being set up:


I took a LOT of photos (of everyone else's dogs, of course...I can always take pictures of my own!) and will share them here. First off, below is Grand Victor and International and Breed Champion Big Jake with his son, The Duke! Ken drove all the way from California to hang out with us and to see Jake's sons and daughters: BJ, Junebug, and Batman.


Here is BJ in the ring, nicely showing her teeth:


And a couple of the handsome Batman:



And Junebug in the ring, with her sister behind her:


One of Big Jake's other progeny also made it to the show: Travis, from the Venus/Big Jake litter! Travis is The Duke's littermate. Here are some photos of Travis in the ring:



And here is Travis (left) with his housemate, Chester (right)! Chester is our Kyrie's younger brother, and took BEST IN SHOW at the event!!


Having a couple issues with uploading photos right now, so I'll add to this later. Stay tuned!

Leo's Color

On our Shiloh Shepherd boards, Ma (our breed founder) made a post that there have been lots of questions about sables and duals and how our dogs change color from when they are puppies to what they look like as adults. Sables will often darken, sometimes dramatically! If you click on the right sidebar on the 2007 posts, you will see what Leo looked like as a puppy. The photos above and below are what he looks like now! Apologies for the photo quality--we were outside after a rain and I snapped these with my cell phone. :)



When Leo was a pup, we thought he was a golden sable. Now I think he might be a dark brown sable. They change so much, often it is hard to tell!

Dog Days of Denton, June 2010!

Dog Days of Denton this year was pretty lonely, with only Leo to hold down the fort! Our Shiloh friends were at the Tulsa IABCA show, getting themselves some ribbons; Thorn had a sore paw; and Kyrie had just gone into heat the week before, so bringing her wasn't going to happen. Nonetheless, we had a great time! Above you can see Leo and Zak, posing behind our table. This year we had our usual trifolds, "You've Met Leo!" cards, and a flyer about Shiloh Size, Hips, and Temperament. We also added a flyer about Shiloh Rescues and Re-Homes, since we are always in the rescue section of the festival and get lots of enquiries!

Above, Zak talked to one of our booth neighbors about Shilohs after Leo greeted her. Below, Leo putting on his "Majestic Leo" expression. He enjoyed being out and about with his humans for the morning! In the background you can see the marked fields where they were running flyball and disc dog demos. We were in a great position to watch, and picked up some discs for the dogs to play with at home!

Below is our booth neighbor, the "Barkery" Dog Bakery! Her home-baked dog biscuits were AWESOME! Our dogs especially loved the "Beefy Beagles" and "Piggy Pugs" and "Peanut Butter Paws". I told her she needed to add some "Cinnamon Shepherds" to go with her "Great Danishes"!!

We had more than a few shepherds and shepherd mixes stop by to say hello to fellow shepherd people! Below, a German-lines GSD, who was very confident and friendly (but really, REALLY wanted to get those frisbees away from the disc dogs!).

And the absolute sweetest shepherd mix we ever met--she was a husky/shepherd mix. Look at that great deep silvery-gray color! She was a big ham and really liked my camera! I couldn't resist feeding her a few nibbles of our Beefy Beagles biscuits (don't tell Leo!):

About the time it hit 95 degrees Leo decided that he was a giant lap-dog and that if he just sat on Zak long enough, we would take him to some air conditioning! We gave in and did take him home shortly after. The heat was brutal this year!

Unfortunately it was pretty busy and I didn't get more photos. But we had a great time, and would encourage anyone in the neighborhood to come out and enjoy the fun next year!!

Catching Up - Homecoming, August '09 Part 2!

Okay, here's our second set of photos from Homecoming 2009--if you'd like to see the first set, scroll down to the entry below this one! ;) As I said there, I get sad that we don't have more photos of some of the Shilohs behind our current dogs, so now when I go to shows I take pictures of as many of them as possible!

Without further ado, here we go! On our New Zion tour I got a great shot of Lucky, peeking out of his kennel door!


Sometimes when you're shooting the dogs going around the ring you hit the button at the weirdest moments; here's Koda in mid-treat!

And another shot of Koda, being judged by Lisa and Olga:

Here's Leo's litter-brother, MC--such a handsome boy, with the dark coloring I love!

And here is MC again, with his puppy "brother" Grissom from the last Star/Tango litter:

Here is Penny, from the Snow/Blue litter. She's littermate to Ella "Boots", who you saw in Part One of this update:

And Nova, one of our favorites since he was a little pup--now I think he's taller than Leo!

Wanda and her girl Misty were in the pop-up next to us and shared some AWESOME duck and sweet potato treats with our gang!

Famous Mira, who went on to land a role in the new "Red Dawn" movie with her uncle, Shadow!

Here is a head shot of Teddy, Leo's half-brother, from the Spirit/Acer litter. Teddy and Leo used to look like twins! Leo has since darkened a lot more. Teddy is one handsome Shiloh, and took a Best in Show at Homecoming this past year!!

Here is Sparky, a truly lovely bi-color girl, trying to tell her handler that she can surely run herself around this silly show ring!

Here is Olga's Orion, who passed away this last year. We caught him in "sleepy mode"--it was warm enough that a lot of the dogs were dozing in their x-pens!

Here is one of my favorite photos! Shawnee (one of the Maggie/Rufus girls) is beautiful, and I love how friendly and eager she is in this photo! Thank you for posing for me, Shawnee!

And one of Shawnee standing:

Linda with her Zephyr (sire of the upcoming Yuki/Z litter!!):

And finally, we were very lucky to meet Ursa, Leo's great-granddam on Acer's side!

Thanks so much for looking--remember, look down below for Part One and more photos of gorgeous dogs!!

Catching Up - Homecoming, August '09 Part 1!

All right, last real "catching up" post and then I can actually get to stuff we did THIS year!! In August of 2009 we rented an RV for the first time ever and road-tripped to Homecoming in style--you can see Kyrie lounging on the couch as we drove, below! We got to camp out on the grounds at Willard's, and decided that we loved cooking and camping out with Shiloh friends (even better when you have air conditioning...yay for the RV!). We learned a lot at the Licensed Breeder meeting and took a TON of photos...of everyone ELSE'S dogs!! The photo above was taken by Jolanda and she kindly sent me a copy. Thanks so much for catching Leo and Zak accepting Best Plush Male of 2009 AND Leo's National Select award, Jolanda!!


Without further ado, here are our photos of everyone else's lovely Shilohs. I tried hard this year to get as many photos as I could. Often I am saddened that there are not more photos of dogs whose names I find in our ISSR pedigrees. They were very well-known when they were showing, but now it is very hard to find photos. So I resolved to take as many as I could, and I managed to get quite a few for the first couple days, at least. It always seems that you run out of steam--or get way too distracted!--later on. I'll try to label all of the dogs in the photos when I can, and I'll do it in two batches. Here we go!

We usually try to go to New Zion for the tour early on, before everything gets so busy! This year I had the presence of mind to take photos of some of my favorite dogs. :) Below, Blue was nice enough to let me get a great profile shot of him in his run:


And Acer was out front, very disgruntled that we'd intruded on his latest "date":


THIS time I even remembered to get a shot of Leo's mom!! Here is Holly, who was such a sweet girl. She was unsure about my hat but let me get a marvelous profile shot of her beautiful face. :)


And finally, that beautiful little pup from the previous year has grown into a lovely lady!! I think this is Grizzla, out in a private run in the garage. I think she was a Gem/Acer pup? All of us were lusting after her in her puppy photos!

Zeus, below, is Holly's brother--which makes him our Leo's uncle!


On the subject of handsome smooth boys, here is the amazing Buckshot, giving us a smile:


Earlier I had a photo of Blue. Here is his daughter, Ella "Boots", in the ring:


And here she is, asking if she really has to go back and run AGAIN:


And on the subject of hot Shiloh guys, Kyrie informs me that I had better put up this photo of Leo's half-brother, Iso. Apparently he's on Kyrie's "hunk" list. I wouldn't be surprised if she's printing out this photo in poster form to put up in her crate right now!


And a head shot (can't tell I really like Iso either, huh?):


Here is Sheila with the lovely Joy, who has won so many awards that I, slacker that I am, can't even recite them all:


Here is our friend Carla with the always-handsome Ender in the ring! Ender is Leo's half-brother:


A few more in-the-ring photos, from Friday I think:




And we will close this entry with a gorgeous upstate sunset!



We hope you enjoyed our photos—check back soon for another Leo update!