New Year – Sand Spring Chesapeakes

Another year has passed at Sand Spring Chesapeakes. We have had a wonderful blessed year with a number of accomplishments. Our blessed 2012 started December 4th 2011 with the birth of Glory. Glory was one of four girls in a litter by our girl Nellie. This was a special litter as it was going to be Nellie’s last litter and we were going to keep a female from this litter. So Glory was the one we kept. Here is a picture of her only 4 weeks old on January 4th 2012.

Glory is the precious girl in the front. So our year started out with a bang and a 4 week old to share our home. At the time Glory was 4 weeks old our home consist of Norman 11 yrs old, Nellie his daughter 7 years old & Gambler, Normans son at 8 months. A full house to say the least.

January 5th 2012 Gamblers littermate Marie took a plane ride across the pond to live in the United Kingdom. Gambler and Marie grew up together until the law passed in the UK where as of January 1st dogs could be imported easier than in the past. She had all her health clearances, vaccinations up to date so she was ready to go. Marie is the first dog out of a litter of Sand Springs that has gone international. Hopefully she will turn out to be a candidate that will improve the Chesapeake lines over in the UK and the Sand Spring line will continue there as well as in the US. This was a very sad day for me as I had grown very attached to Marie but I knew she was going to a great home and that one day I would see her again on her own home territory. Here is a picture of Marie.

Marie

Spring time was right around the corner and it was time to start training Gambler for his upcoming hunt tests. We had a great hunt test season with Gambler adding a prefix and a suffix to his name.

His registered name is now SHR Sand Spring Ev’ry Paw’s a Winner JH.

Gambler competed in AKC (American Kennel Club) and UKC (United Kennel Club) hunt tests during the summer of 2012. He first got his AKC Junior Hunter title on June 10th 2012. Here is a picture of us with his ribbons.

Gambler Junior Hunter

July 1st 2012 Gambler received his UKC started title. Here is a picture of us with his title ribbons.

Gambler Started title.

Here is the start of Gamblers ribbon wall in our laundry room.

The ribbon wall.

July 15th 2012 my friend from North Carolina came up and showed Gambler and Glory in UKC conformation. I have never shown any of my dogs as we were into running hunt tests and didn’t have money for both venues so we stuck to the field work as our dogs were hunting dogs. This was a whole new world for me. Kathy did a great job showing them, she got 2 competition wins and 120 points needed towards their titles. Kathy then showed me what I needed to do at the next show so it was up to me to get the last remaining win on them. August 25-26th 2012 was the day those wins happened. I first titled Gambler on Saturday then I titled Glory on Sunday. It was a fabulous weekend and I couldn’t of been prouder of my to puppies.

Our big news for the UKC show ring is that Gambler was in the number one spot and Glory was in the 6th spot for the 2012 Top Ten Breed and Dog Standings. Since they are in the top ten they will get invited to the UKC Premier in June 2013. So that is an event we will be looking forward to and will be going to.

Gambler added another prefix to his name. He is now SHR U-CH Sand Spring Ev’ry Paw’s a Winner JH.

Glory added a prefix to her name also. She is now U-CH Sand Spring No Guts No Glory.

Here are their show pictures.

Gambler

Glory

Nellie was the chosen dog to go to Canada this fall since she didn’t get to go last year. John and Nellie went on their way to Saskatchewan with our friends to go snow goose hunting for a week. This was my first year I didn’t get to go. I had bigger plans for later in the month. They had a great time and got a lot of geese. This year was the most birds that John had gotten since going up there. I was sad that I didn’t get to go with but there is always next year. Here are a couple pictures from their trip.

Nellie isn’t in the above photo but her daughter Pearl is. She is the dog in the middle. Nellie was camera shy this day.

Nellie blessed me also with another year of life. She turned 8 on Oct 7th 2012. She just got home from Saskatchewan and had a big old party with hats and cake. Can’t get better than that!

Norman blessed me with another year of life too. As he gets older we take one day at a time and cherish each moment. He turned 12 on November 3rd 2012. Norman was even able to go pheasant hunting with us in December and retrieve a pheasant for me. He is such a love. I hope to have many more years with him.

Glory turned 1 on December 4th 2012. She has turned out to be such a pretty young lady. She has a different personality than the other dogs we own which is unique and gives her character. This coming year we hope to get some hunt test titles on her. So let the training begin.

We close this year with over a foot of snow. The dogs are having so much fun in it. I take them on walks around the property to try and tire them out and as you guessed it doesn’t work. These two young adults have so much energy. Hopefully we can channel it together come hunt test time and add some more ribbons to the wall. I am so blessed to have a wonderful healthy fur family.

I leave you this year with a picture from our walk. Gambler was trying to catch the snow flakes.