First up – self taken picture of the guys in the bleachers, watching the tractor pull watching the tractor pull…[/caption]
This next tractor is interesting. Grandpa was telling us that the manufacturer, trying to add another useful function to the family tractor, envisioned and built a tractor that a farmer could use to both till the fields and drive to church. Apparently the tractor had some issues with the front suspension not working that well, and the go-to-meeting aspect didn’t work out quite as hoped.
And the last tractor picture that I will post is this Minneapolis-Moline 4 wheel drive tractor. This is the first MM 4 wheel drive that I had seen, and while I admit that I am not a tractor historian, I never knew that they made them.
Event: Pioneer Days at Irricana, August 12th, 2012…
The girls weren’t totally thrilled with watching tractors drive by, and besides there was lots of other stuff to look at, so they headed off to wander around, leaving us guys to watch the tractors.
Sadly, Davison brought along his knock-knock joke book, and did some afflicting.
and here are some more tractor pictures
Grandpa was telling me stories about these old Caterpillar tractors. Apparently starting them was a bit of work – basically sticking a long iron bar in holes in a flywheel mid-tractor and yanking on it to get it started. That just sounds way too dangerous…
This is the first of probably three posts, chronicling our trip to Irricana on Sunday, April 12th. The event was the annual “Pioneer Days” and we went to meet up with Grandpa and Grandma Huber who were there for the weekend. We arrived mid-afternoon, paid way too much to get in (even after getting a 30% discount), and met up with Grandpa and Grandma right away.
The main event for us guys was the “Parade of Tractors” and the “Tractor Pull” – done with vintage stock tractors rather than custom built ones. Here’s some pictures of some of the really old tractors that were driven in the parade.
The steam whistle from this tractor was really, really loud.
And here are a couple of the other really old ones that had been restored and were in working order..
An alternate post title that I was considering was “A few of my favorite dogs”, so those of you who are hyper-grammatic can consider that to be the name of this post.
Very last, last, last dog show post I promise. I wanted to post some of the pictures of the dogs that I really liked (and took pictures of). Early at the dog show, before we found out that visitors weren’t allowed to stand in the shade provided for participants, I chatted a bit with a gal who had an Italian Greyhound. It was a very fast, but fragile looking dog. One of the things that she talked about with the breed is that they have to be kept on a leash at all times when being walked. If they see a rabbit or some other distraction, they are gone like a shot – and that the biggest cause of death for the breed was being hit by cars.
All right, that’s it – no more dogs, well – until we start posting pictures of Bailey and Oliver, who we’re likely to bump into on our upcoming vacation.
In the Dog Show Redux post, I reference some of the odd pictures that showed up on my camera, in particular those of Davison’s feet. Aunt Marta commented that she was hoping to see some of said pictures, so without any further ado, may we present “The feet of Davison”…
Following are some pictures from the dog show, all of which (I think) were taken by Davison. So, in other words, the quality and appropriate subject matter may diverge from the theme of “dog show” other than the location being at the Spruce Meadows grounds where the dog show was taking place.
and
Although I suspect that I was the one that took the picture of Brock, the light bulb and the smiley guy definitely weren’t taken by me. Often enough, on my camera, I will find pictures of Davison’s feet.
And according to dictionary.com, “redux” means “to bring back.”
This is the last post in the agility dog series, and I’ve saved the toughest two elements until last. Those elements, using my un-official but possibly close to reality names, are the sitting platform and the weaving poles.
I don’t have a picture of the sitting platform, but it was a black platform about two feet by two feet that was about four inches off the ground. It was situated about half-way through the course, and when the dogs got to it, they had to jump up and it and sit down, in a fully down position – stomach on the floor. Then the course official counted to 5 and when the count was complete it was off to the next obstacle. It appeared that one of the rules was that the trainer could not touch the dog at all during the whole run, so in this case they sort of had to cajole the dog to lie down for those dogs who didn’t quite get it. Most of the dogs took a few seconds to sit properly. Oh, and if they popped up during the count, the count started over once they were back in the proper position.
And then it was on to the weaving poles. I didn’t count, but there was 10 to 12 of them. The dogs had to start on a particular side (I’m thinking it might have been the right side, because I just flipped a coin to help me remember, and it came up heads) and then weave back and forth between the poles. Any missed poles resulted in them going back to the start and trying it again. I’m guessing that this took quite a bit of training – some dogs had it down pat, other ones needing extra cajoling and a couple of restarts.
And that was it for the obstacle/agility course – unless Mikaela wants to add anything. On the exercise front, the trainers got way more exercise than the dogs as they had to run the course with the dog and point to the next obstacle, and sometimes say what needed to be done. Most of the trainers were in need of additional training.
Both of the obstacle courses had tunnels that the dogs had to run through. One of them was a fabric tunnel which was open on the entrance end, but then opened as the dogs ran through it. I don’t have any pictures of that one – of course all you would see is a big (or little or just-right) sized bump moving down the length of the tunnel.
However, there were also these green pipe tunnels. The dogs didn’t have any troubles at all with the tunnels (none of them stopped inside and refused to come out or anything).
and don’t look too closely as this next one has the tunnel more in focus than the canine…
Hey, you weren’t supposed closely to see how badly the dog was out of focus!!! Besides, I wasn’t taking the picture of the dog – there were thousands of them there that day. But, there were only three of those really cool green tunnels – much rarer and unique I would say.
There were two different dog obstacle courses at the dog show, one of which was more basic in nature (having only tunnels, jumps, and the weave poles), the other had quite a variety of equipment. Two of those equipment pieces are the A-frame and the teeter-totter.
The A-Frame is a tepee shaped walkway – probably 6 feet high (although I didn’t go onto the course to measure it) which the dog must go up one side, possibly halt at the top (not sure if this is necessary but they all seemed to do so) and then walk down the other side. It’s not quite as steep as this head-on picture shows, but was still pretty steep.
The teeter totter apparatus is similar to that in playgrounds. The dog needs to walk up it, wait until it teeters downward and touches and then is allowed to proceed.
There was another apparatus, the dog walk, that I didn’t get any pictures of. It was the dog walk, which was like a balance beam (wide enough for all the dogs to walk on, no matter what size) with a ramp leading up to it and leading down.
The dogs that we watched all went through these apparatus without any trouble (except for a couple who were easily distracted and tried to avoid the teeter-totter). It was fun watching them do so.