Rhys' first birthday was on January 24. . .yeah, I know, just getting round to blogging about it now. I still can't believe he's a year old already! How crazy is that! It's been so neat to watch him grow up (and keep growing and growing. . .your suppose to be a "small" dog). Bless his heart, he's such a good boy! He is such a sweetheart and loves to cuddle. I call him my little lovebug cause if you sit down, he wants to be right there touching you. I always say Riley has had to put up with my slow learning curve, but apparently Rhys is falling in to that same category too. Unfortunately, he's had to deal with my ineptitude as a show groomer and conformation handler, and performance handler so he's another "trainer dog".

So in honor of this milestone, I had gotten these little "pupcakes" from Three Dog Bakery and tried to commerate the moment with pictures, etc. However, I attempted to borrow my mom's camera, which did not go well. It apparently is extremely sensitive to movement so most of the pictures did not turn out that great. However, this is one of the better ones I got. Cheryl pointed out to me a couple weeks ago that I should make training sessions out of meal times (another duh moment) and make them wait for their food. . .sort of builds control, etc. So they've really picked up on it well, as can be seen. In the second one, if I make them wait for any length of time, Rhys kind of poops out and figures "why bother stressing about this, might as well take a nap".

I finally gave up on taking still pictures and used the video function on the camera. Again, don't expect high quality footage as a) I'm using a little point and shoot camera and b) I'm also trying to hold a cake in my other hand.

Once I released them, they had no idea what to do with these cake thingys. . .the cakes are kind of hard, and they've been used to eating raw so it threw them for a loop. It's kind of like a typical "first birthday" video of any kid anywhere-cake and icing go every where, kids looks messy, laughter is had by the onlooking parents. You can hear me snickering in the background at their antics. Riley figured it out and started taking her cake down. I eventually ended up holding Rhys' cause he was having some serious struggles. Apparently, the icing is really gummy cause he was smacking his lips like crazy. This attracted my mom's cat Piper, who comes in at the end and finds the icing to be of interest and helps with clean up.
Happy Birthday big guy! I look forward to many more birthdays to come!