Final Winners!

We've reached the end of our summer road trip and it's time to announce the final winners. Yesterday's secret location was Charlottesville, Virginia and the first correct guess came from Team Husky! Way to go!

Here is a wrap-up of all of our daily winners:

Day 1: The Bumpass Hounds

Day 2: Kayla & Maebe

Day 3: Huffle Mawson

Day 4: Wild Dingo

Day 5: Turbo

Day 6: Kira & Scampi

Day 7: Lorenza

Day 8: Mango

Day 9: OP Pack

Day 10: Team Husky

We also took everyone else who commented on any of the summer road trip posts and drew two names for additional winners. The winners are Edda and Jack & Moo.

Let's take a look at our final map.

As you can see, we travelled all the way across the country in the 10 days of our summer road trip contest. We spent several days at our Missouri grandparents' house before continuing our journey to Virginia. You might be wondering why we decided to go to Virginia where it is almost 100 degrees. The answer is because our mom is going to start law school at the University of Virginia next week and we had to help her move! Of course, we have moved with her. So we are beginning our journey as law dogs.

To go along with our new jobs as law school canines, we are also changing the name of our blog and moving to a real domain name. Please update your links so you can still follow along with us. We will now be over at Blawg & Disorder. See ya there!

Summer Road Trip - Day 8

It's day 8 of 10 of our summer road trip! Yesterday's winner was Lorenza, who was the first pup (who hadn't already won a prize) to guess that we were in Fort Scott, Kansas! Here is another picture Mom took of us while we were there.


Let's check the map. We're getting quite a few pins in southwest Missouri and southeast Kansas.


For today, our secret location might be kind of hard to guess, but we did have a lot of fun while we were there. According to the website of this destination, it is ranked in the top 10 sailing lakes in the United States and boasts 25,000 acres of clean, clear water. Where are we?






Answer and the next clue will be posted at 6PM Pacific time tomorrow.

Summer Road Trip - Day 6

We're halfway done with our summer road trip contest now that it is Day 6! Yesterday's winner was Turbo, who correctly guessed that we were in Lamar, Missouri, at Harry S. Truman's birthplace. The "S" in his name isn't actually an initial of a longer middle name, it's just an "S"!

Here is our map.


For today's secret location, we will accept either the city and state of our location or the name of who's house we are visiting. Hopefully this will be a pretty easy one.




Good luck! Answers and Day 7's clue will be posted tomorrow at 6PM Pacific Time.

Summer Road Trip - Day 5

It's Day 5! I guess our clue for yesterday was a bit too difficult because no one got the right answer. We were at Prairie State Park, just outside of Liberal, Missouri. Since no one got the right answer, we used a random number generator and it picked #8, which means that Wild Dingo, who left the 8th comment wins for today!

So now that you know where we were, let's check our map.


For today's secret location, we are going to give another clue along with the picture:
We are at the birthplace of a US President, who had a middle initial, but no middle name. What city are we in?


Leave your guess in the comments and we will reveal the answer and the next clue tomorrow at 6PM Pacific time!

Summer Road Trip - Day 4

Here we are, Day 4 of our Summer Road Trip contest. Our winner for yesterday was Huffle Mawson, for being the first to correctly guess that we were in Mitchell, South Dakota. The building behind us in one of the pictures is the World's Largest Corn Palace. It had some really neat murals made only out of corn. Who knew corn was so artistic! We were sitting on the bench in another picture with a guy who had a sign next to him that said "Do Not Touch". Luckily it didn't say "Do Not Lick" because Kat got a couple licks in before Mom caught her. The person in the pictures with us is our Aunt Kari. She is super stylish and cute, so we had to up our game so we were still cuter than her. :-)

Now that we have revealed our location for yesterday, let's check the map! Does anyone have a guess as to our final destination yet?


For today's secret location, we are going to give out a couple pictures and supplement the pictures with this clue:
In this picture, we are standing in the largest remaining tallgrass prairie in a certain state, where less than 1 percent of the original prairie remains.



We're not in this picture, probably for obvious reasons.


Good luck! The answer and the next clue will be posted tomorrow at 6PM Pacific Time.

Summer Road Trip - Day 3

It's day 3 and we have our winner from yesterday - Kayla and Maebe! Way to go! Now we have had two days of winners, who will be next?

The secret location from yesterday was, of course, Mount Rushmore. Unfortunately pets are not allowed very close to the viewing area so our picture wasn't very good. Now that you know where we were yesterday, let's check the map.


Our secret location for today is more obscure, so we are going to give you three photo clues.




As always, good luck and we will post the winner and the next secret location tomorrow at 6PM Pacific time.

Summer Road Trip - Day 2

Wow! We had lots of great guesses for yesterdays contest. Lots of guesses of Idaho, which were all right. However we are going to have to award the prize to The Bumpass Hounds, who were the first to guess that we were specifically in Coeur d' Alene, Idaho. Great job to all the guessers!

Here is our road trip map so far. We will update this every day.


Today's secret location is probably going to be a bit more obvious, so we will only give one picture today.


Good luck! We will post the answer and the next clue at 6:00 PM Pacific Time tomorrow.

Note: this post is late due to bad 3G coverage for the iPad. :-)

Summer Road Trip - Day 1

Welcome to the first day of our summer road trip contest! Today we are giving you two clues to our location. Leave your guess in the comments and tell your friends to play along too!




We will post the answer, as well as tomorrow's clue at 6PM Pacific time tomorrow! Good luck!

Mount St. Helens

Yesterday we went to Mount St. Helens. Perhaps I should really say that Steve and I just rode in the car, got out at the parking lot, walked around the parking lot and got back in the car while Mom and Dad went to see Mount St. Helens. Pets aren't allowed in most areas there, so it was kind of boring for us. Dad did take a picture of us in the parking lot.

That's not Mount St. Helens in the background, it's just some other spot. Here's a picture of Mount St. Helens.

As you can see, Mom and Dad didn't get to see the top of it, but I guess they got the idea of the whole thing. At any rate, it's better than what they saw when we went there a couple weeks ago during our camping trip when they saw this.

Even if we didn't get to actually see Mount St. Helens because of the no-pets rule, a day of riding in the car is much better than a day at home listening to fireworks, at least if you ask Steve.

We hope you are all having a Happy Independence Day if you're in the USA and if you're not, we hope you're having a happy July 4th!
Kat

I love my mom

Mother's Day is coming up in a few days and I suppose I could have saved this picture for then, but I'm not going to do so. I love my mom so much that I think any day is a good day to tell her that I love her. That's why I cuddled up with her on the couch.

I'm pretty sure she likes it when I cuddle. I mean, sure she said her arm went to sleep, but then I helped her with the sudoku on her iPhone, so I think all was forgiven.

Steve
PS. I have decided to take Jack a-Roo's (NACGCY) advice and just go by Steve with my friends and Steven Oliver, CGC when I need to impress and get steaks.
PPS. NACGCY stands for (according to Jack) Not a Canine Good Citizen Yet. I'm sure the only reason Jack is still NACGCY is because his mom is really struggling with the training. It's a pretty difficult test for humans.

I'm a good boy!

Breaking news! (Or a few days old news!)

I'm a Canine Good Citizen! I took my test on Thursday and passed. Dad says I'm now a CGB, Certified Good Boy. Don't worry though, I still don't listen to a word he says. He never hands out treats, so I have no reason to listen to him. Mom, on the other paw, is pretty sneaky with the treats. I can never tell when she's going to pull a piece of hotdog or cheese out of her pocket, so I try to listen to what she tells me to do and that's how I ended up being a CGC or CGB, whatever.

So what do you all think? Should I sign my name Steven Oliver, CGC or Steve, CGC or just Steve? I'll do all three for today. ;-)

Steven Oliver, CGC
Steve, CGC
Steve

Medical Care by SKW

The other day, Mom stayed home from work because she was sick. When Dad came into the bedroom to tell her goodbye, this is what he found.

Please excuse our eyes, the lights were off in the room when Dad took the picture.

So as you can see, we are very good at taking care of our sick Mom.

Kat
(I'm also very good at stealing Steve's favorite toy, which you can see under my head if you look closely.)

Organizing the Garage

Dad decided that he would organize the garage this past weekend. We didn't want Dad to have to do all the work, so we all pitched in (except Wilbur, who knows what he was doing).

I helped by smashing down the dirty dog towels.

Steve helped by supervising and Mom helped by checking her email.

The garage is now organized and I'm not sure how Dad would have done it without us!

Kat

Me too!

Steve told you about how he's taking Mom to school for training (here and here). Apparently Steve needs some help with the Mom training because now I am taking Mom to school.

Before school starts, I have to find a nice chair where Mom can put her stuff. (Note to the Ao4's mom: the Boo Tote is great for school supplies!)

During school, we work hard on leash walking and greeting strangers. I have to eat a lot of hot dogs during leash walking time. It's hard work, but I still take time to look cute.

In fact, we've been working so hard that I have graduated! Mom is holding the certificate like she earned it or something, but really, it was all me.

I even had to walk nicely on a leash while ignoring the horses. If that's not diploma-worthy, I don't know what is!

Kat

New York Style Pretzel Bones

It's been a really long time since I did an episode of Kat's Crazy Kitchen and for that, I fully blame my mom. I gave her a guilt trip this weekend and we worked together to bring you a new episode. Today, we're going to make New York Style Pretzel Bones.

First, gather up your ingredients. Mix up 1.5 cups of oat flour, 1.5 cups of brown rice flour and 0.5 cups of oat bran.

Add to that 0.5 cups of grated parmesan cheese, 0.25 teaspoon garlic powder, 1 egg and 1.25 cups chicken broth. Mix everything up to form a soft dough.

Roll the dough out on a floured surface to about a quarter of an inch thick. Use a cookie cutter to cut the dough into your desired shape.

Place the cookies on an ungreased cookie sheet. My mom cuts the bones in half, but hopefully your mom isn't stingy and will give you the whole bone. Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes.

Let cool on a wire rack and store in the refrigerator.

These cookies were very easy to make. The dough rolled out nicely. You can also brush the cookies with egg and top with sesame seeds if you want to make them more pretzel-like, but we did not do this step.

As you can see, Steve and I were eager to try the cookies! We both give them two paws up.

Hopefully it won't be as long before I do another Kat's Crazy Kitchen episode. In the meantime, try out the recipe Shiloh and Shelby posted on their blog. It looks really tasty.

Kat

Steve and Kat do Vancouver

We will post the results of our laser chasing Woolympic event tomorrow, but for today, we are going to show you how the Woolympics met the Olympics!

Mom and Dad heard that one of Mom's favorite shows, The Colbert Report, was doing a filming in Vancouver. Mom convinced Dad that they should go and then she convinced him that we should go too!

We had to get up really early to hit the road. Mom was a little nervous about crossing the border with us, but it all went well. In fact, the Canadian border patrol lady had her own husky at home!

Once we got to Vancouver, we headed straight to the park where The Colbert Report taping was supposed to take place. It was in a park and boy, the park was muddy! Steve and I got really muddy and so did Mom and Dad's shoes and pants. (So the pants could be from us stepping on them.) We had to wait for quite a while for the show to start.

Waiting...

Waiting...

And more waiting!

Finally the show started. This picture is proof that we were there because you can see the stage in the background. During this picture, Stephen Colbert was interviewing Bob Costas.

This is what we mostly did during the taping.

After the TV taping, we headed off to find the Winter Olympics flame. On the way we stopped for a family picture. Steve thinks he did a particularly good job in this picture.

We kept walking and walking, stopping for a picture along the way to document where we were.

Finally we got to the Olympic Flame. It was packed with people, so we didn't try to get too close. Tons of people asked to take our picture, including some people with Korean broadcasting badges. Maybe we are famous in Korea? Anyway, here is our picture with the torch in the background. It's hard to tell that it's on fire, but I promise, it was.

When we got back in the car to go home, boy, we were so tired. Not only did we walk around for about 6 miles, but we had to concentrate on being good for the entire day since we were surrounded by people the whole day. Now, I know you probably think we are just naturally good, and we are, but we still have to think extra hard about being good when there are so many distractions.

Thanks for sharing our Olympic fun with us. Stay tuned tomorrow for the next Woolympic fun!
Kat

This does not make me happy

While Steve was getting pictures off the camera from his training, I found these pictures of what my parents were doing while Steve and I were on vacation.

It must have been really scary because my dad almost got hit by an airplane.


And I guess they went to outer space.


But what I found most disturbing was this picture of my mom.


Did you see where she was? She was in a winter wonderland!! So apparently, despite all the pouting I have done about a snowless winter, Mom and Dad decided that it would be a good idea to leave us at home to go play in the snow. I am really disturbed by this. I'm considering running away to go live with a nice family on the east coast.

Kat