Dayton, OH IABCA Show, Part 1!

This month Leo and I decided to be completely crazy and drive the sixteen hours to Dayton, OH for an IABCA show! Jan of Shamira Shilohs also organized a Shiloh Specialty show for us there, and we had EIGHTEEN Shilohs in the ring! It was fantastic! Here's a shot of The Gang, hanging out. We took up pretty much a whole wall!


The good news: I got photos. The bad news: The lighting was terrible! Apologies for all the blurry shots. :( We had to use no flash to get anything, so the movement shots just didn't turn out. That said, I did get some decent shots--like this great cameo of Piston, who really hit his stride at this show, with three Best of Breed awards AND a Best In Specialty!



I'll be splitting this into three blog entries. We'll start with the shots I'll call "candid"--just people and dogs, hanging out!

The charismatic Hemi--if only I could have smuggled her into my car!

Jan's Shadow, Leo's uncle, side shot:

Jan's Shadow, a portrait: so photogenic!

Jan's Shadow--with an extra set of ears!

Leslee's Sasha, such a beautiful girl with a wonderful temperament!

Mindy's Midori, ready to give a kiss to anyone who greeted her!

Sweet Farrah, bashful about me taking a photo of her with her latest medal!

I didn't get any pictures of Colt, but I did get a photo of "his" baby, Erik. The Shiloh Family did a fantastic job keeping Eric entertained while Rachel was in the ring! Here, Leslee wheeled him in his stroller until he finally fell asleep!

Hemi and Piston, waiting for the next show:

Treasure and Guido, getting ready for the ring:

Jan's lovely Shanna. In the background, Bisou telling her mommy that she loves her!

Bisou. Sadly I had the flash on for this one!

Moose and Guido hanging out:

Bisou, and Sir Tylar catching a nap:

Sir Tylar's back--just could not get a good photo of that boy all weekend!

A couple of Bravo, from the Tanna/Shadow litter. His ears were awesome!



Here's Z and Linda, outside of the ring at the Specialty:

And Bisou, all tired out! Thanks for looking everyone, I'll have more photos up--this time, shots of the dogs in the ring--in a jiffy!

Color Changes From Pup to Adult

A while back I posted some new photos of how dark Leo had gotten since his puppy days. Well, there have been lots of questions about how colors change as our dogs grow recently on our Shiloh Shepherd Friends forum, so I thought I would do up a comparison picture. You can see it up top. This may also help people who are looking at a Kyrie/Leo puppy understand how dark even a light-looking pup can get!

If you would like to see a larger version, please click on the photo. I love seeing old photos of Leo as a baby...he has changed so much, but his puppy expressions are just like his adult ones!

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!!