Merry Christmas to All From the Maltese Gang

 Patiently watching me open my presents

Joey the Reindeer

Merry Christmas!!

Christmas Eve

 Today's countdown inspiration was Joey holding my stocking.

For some reason Joey didn't want to hang on to the stocking and it lead to pictures...

 ..like this.

Finally, I did get a picture, but Joey looks rather cross.

So much for Christmas cheer.

Tracking

Today I went tracking with Joey. I was curious to see how Joey would do since we haven't touched tracking for a few months. Joey actually did very well. He has forgotten about articles and was a little messy around the corners, but other than that I was pretty happy. He didn't give up when he got lost and he kept using his nose until he found the track again. I hope to start tracking more and try for that TR1 in the spring. Maybe it will elude us again, but it cannot hurt to practice tracking a little more.

I did take some pictures and between them all, I think I got a countdown picture.

 Tracking

Waiting for my Mom to finish tracking her GSD.

Playing with Reflections

Presenting Joey

Presenting Joey in our countdown picture of the day. 
The ribbon on Joey is pink for a number of reasons, the biggest reason being that my little brother gave me a pink one and I was too lazy to find a more boyish colored ribbon.

Sugar and Spice

Today's countdown picture was taken in "Gingerbread village". 

Joey was very good about not trying to taste anything, except for the one time he checked the candy tree out. 

Future pictures

Today's countdown picture is a picture of Joey in his green and red sweater retrieving a glove.

Our training is going well. Today we worked on the directed retrieve. Hence the retrieving glove picture. Right now I haven't bought the set of three white gloves. WE are just practicing with my black gloves and there is only two gloves. But I figure it's best to start small and once Joey gets the idea the color of the gloves will not matter much.

Twirly ribbons

I haven't been good about posting a picture everyday, but even some pictures are better than none at all. So here is our countdown picture and the story behind it. I was cleaning out my closet and found my old twirly ribbon, the kind people use in Rhythmic gymnastics. I was twirling it for fun when Joey went crazy trying to get it. Since I been trying to get Joey to be more toy motivated, I let him play with the ribbon. I tried to take it outside and let him play with it where the green grass and red ribbon would make a perfect countdown picture, but of course Joey didn't care as much when there was a camera. Oh well, we still got a few pictures.

Effectively ignoring the ribbon

Finally, an action photo