Last month I was invited to join the My Writing Process Tour by Janet at Wag ‘N’ Woof Pets. Unfortunately, it was during the time I was moving my blog from wordpress to being self-hosted and I did not want to commit to something that I might not be able to follow throw with. Sadly, I had to decline.
Last week Hawk invited me to join and this time I was able to accept. Thanks so much to Hawk for the second chance.
By the way, do you know Hawk? He and the brown dawgs have been pals for years. He is another Chesapeake Bay Retriever and his blog was one of the first ones that I started to follow yeas ago.
Now down to business and down to the point of the tour.
I am supposed to answer three questions and then invite some bloggers to join the tour.
The questions:
1. What am I working on?
This time of year I write about our adventures hunt testing, including our training.
I have also been working on my Canine Health Screening Series (more about that in the next answer).
2. Why do I write what I do?
I hope that my blog will help people understand the value of a trained retriever. Most people have never heard of “hunt tests” and to be honest, until I went to my first one, I hadn’t either. But from the moment I watched a well-trained dog do what it was bred to do, I was hooked. I hope my blog helps readers to see the value in purposefully bred working dogs.
I started my Canine Health Screening Series to help puppy buyers understand some of the tests that are available to breeders to screen for inherited diseases. I began with some of the screening tests our dogs have had. Eventually, I hope to move on to some other tests for diseases that are not prevalent in Chessies.
3. How does my writing process work?
Normally I let our activities dictate my posts. Sometimes I am inspired by an event, sometimes a picture, and sometimes hubby gives me ideas. I hate to admit it, but usually I write my posts right before I post them.
The exception is my Health Screening Series. Those posts require some research and editing. I try to have those posts completed a few days before I intend to post them so that I can revise as I feel necessary.
Now I am pleases to introduce the writers that accepted my invitation to the tour:
We Live In A Flat Donna and her people live in Singapore and have great walking adventures. Donna was an adult dog when she was adopted and her people have done a great job working with her on tricks and her obedience. Donna’s people also take some awesome photos.
How I Adopted Your Brother I actually met this blogger in person so right away I thought of her for the tour. Gabi has a house full of dogs and a cat too. Among her dogs are Icelandic Sheepdogs. Super cute. 🙂 She shows the Icelandics and does obedience and other dogs sports with all of her dogs. She also takes in the occasional foster.
This is the Thursday Bark And Bytes Blog Hop hosted by 2 Brown Dawgs and Heart Like A Dog.
The Barks And Bytes hop is for anything at all and all bloggers are welcome. You don’t have to be a dog blog to join. Why not try it out!
For new blog hoppers, a blog hop is a linky list that is shared on multiple blogs. In order to be fair to all participants we ask you to please display the linky list or link back to your hosts.
I like it to hear more about training and tests. I learnt some things I can use for Easy and I always enjoy your photos :o) Your post about the DNA-test is great, it was very interesting to read .
We have enjoyed these and we always learn something new when we pop over. We truly never realised how complicated it all is. The posts really opened our eyes. Have a tremendous Thursday.
Best wishes Molly
We see retrievers practicing but never really knew anything about it until we started reading your blog. You do a great job of explaining.
You know I’m a fan of the health screening series 😀 and also the grumpy brown dogs when they have to have their photo taken… HAHA!
I have been having trouble getting on your blog the last couple of days. It won’t load for me. I will try again later.
No worries, it’s up and down… Bluehost isn’t the most reliable service unfortunately. 🙁
Really? I am using Bluehost and haven’t had issues. I think I got notice once of it going down a week or so ago.
I’m close to being one year with them… I’ve had the site go down frequently for long periods of time 1-2 days on two occasions. Basically I was parked on a server with bad users, i.e. their sites got compromised so the server was taken offline while their IT team try to resolve the issue.
Theoretically, I can write to another team to request they move my content to a different server, but I hadn’t had a bad enough episode to push me to do that 😛 since server migration can create more problems too.
On a daily basis I do get jetpack notifications that site is up and down… these typically last for a few minutes only and since I didn’t get feedback from anybody that they couldn’t access the site, I don’t bother. 😛
This was awesome! Great process. You write about hunt tests and training so well.
Great post. I’ve enjoyed reading about how all of you write! I love your health series and as you probably know, I had no idea about hunt testing until I began following your blog, and it has been a wonderful learning experience for me.
Thanks for sharing your process with us. I’m with you – love watching a trained working or sporting dog doing their thing. Love the videos you and JoAnn post.
Hi Y’all!
My Human was lucky. As a young woman she got to work with a field trial trainer of Labs. He had one dog that needed one of the early versions of the training collar. My Human used to go out with the trainer when they went at dawn to train on the Chesapeake Bay. (A funny side note…she’s never had a Lab)
We love reading your blog because there are so many new training tips you drop. Plus, often times y’all remind her of a drill that she’d forgotten or never knew and she’ll set it up for me. Great fun!
Y’all come by now,
Hawk aka BrownDog
I love reading about your hunt tests and all the work that you do in preparing for the competitions. Before “meeting” you and the Sand Spring Chesapeakes, I didn’t know the first thing about hunt tests. Now I share your blog posts with a friend who recently started working with his lab and attending events. He says they’ve been a really big help. And I cannot thank you enough for the health screening series. I will be selecting Harper Lee’s little sister very, very carefully!
I’m glad you were able to join after all! I’m happy to hear of someone else who doesn’t always write their posts way ahead of time….I more often than not am also writing right before I post.
I enjoy reading and learning about hunting dogs, I think it’s a fascinating subject, and you explain things so well…..of course I totally enjoy your action photos as well.
We just moved our site from WordPress, too! It was quite the process but we’re very pleased with the result (and hope you are as well). We never plan to write and only do so when inspiration hits and time allows for it. Loved learning about your writing process and you already know how much we enjoy your photos! Much love, The Scottie Mom.
I love your blog and have learned a huge amount from you and Sand Spring Chessies about your amazing dogs. They are so impressive!!
I love your blog because it provides great information on a sporting dog breed at work. Your Chessies are both working dogs and a valuable part of the family. I think that’s fantastic. I knew there were still working sporting dogs out there but I had never seen them at work until I found this blog. I actually found your blog through Hawk’s blog.
It’s been fun to read all these ‘writing process’ posts. And add me to the group of folks that mostly writes posts right before they go live! I’m *usually* a plan ahead type, but that usually goes out the window for the blog!