use real butter

Last month I finally got around to ordering a Wisdom Panel Canine DNA Test. For Yuki. It’s not that we needed to know our little rescue mutt’s ancestry – we love this adorable goofball no matter what she is! But we thought it would be fun to know because science is AWESOME.

unlocking yuki’s secrets

The results came in a couple of weeks ago and… You’ll have to guess what she is! I’m turning this into a giveaway because I love a good puzzle. Wisdom Panel analyzed Yuki’s ancestry back three generations (great-grandparents). They identified four distinct breeds from her DNA as well as a mishmash of breed groups.

Your task is to guess Yuki’s four main breeds. The closest guess wins! In the event of a tie, Yuki will select the winner. Here is a list of all the breeds that Wisdom Panel tests for. Scroll down through Yuki puppy cuteness to get the rules for entry!

yuki in profile: 20 inches at the shoulders, 42 pounds, 8.5 months old

that face

spots on her paws and belly

***THE RULES***

1) Leave your guess on THIS POST in the comments below by midnight (MDT), Saturday, October 20, 2018.

2) One entry per person. If you submit multiple guesses, only the first will be considered.

3) The winner and Yuki’s results will be announced on Monday, October 22, 2018.

***THE PRIZE(S)***

If the winner is in the U.S.: The prize is a choice of a care package of homemade treats made by me OR an 8×12-inch signed matted archival photo, also made by me (choose from the images below).

If the winner is outside of the U.S.: The prize is a choice of an 8×12-inch signed matted archival photo from the images below.

WHO IS ELIGIBLE TO ENTER

This contest is open to everyone except for the handful of people who already know Yuki’s results (you know who you are!).

BUT THERE IS MORE! As a thank you to Rezdawg Rescue, the wonderful organization that brought Yuki into our family, I will donate a dollar to Rezdawg Rescue for each valid (not multiple) entry – up to $350.

aspens and snow (crested butte, colorado)

aspen canopy (gunnison national forest, colorado)

snowstorm in yosemite valley (yosemite national park, california)

sandhill cranes at sunset (monte vista, colorado)

summer wildflowers (maroon bells-snowmass wilderness, colorado)

The staff and volunteers at Rezdawg Rescue have the biggest hearts and give so much of their time, energy, and love to save dogs and cats off the Navajo reservation and bring them safely to foster homes in Colorado, and eventually to their forever families. If you follow Rezdawg Rescue on Instagram or Facebook, you will get an idea of how hard these good people work. There is a constant parade of adorable fluffy faces and sometimes these sweet animals have the saddest stories (I cry a lot when I read them). Rezdawg Rescue turns those sad stories into a chance for a happy life through veterinary care, loving foster families, and assessing the best match for each dog or cat.

If interested, you can make a direct contribution to help Rezdawg Rescue continue their important work. They educate the local reservation community and provide mobile spay and neuter services in addition to their rescue efforts. And I recently designated Rezdawg Rescue as my Amazon Smile charitable organization recipient. If you aren’t familiar with Amazon Smile, I encourage you to check it out and help a charitable organization of your choice.

our silly, rompy, lovable little girl

Good luck, everyone! I hope you will find the results as fascinating and puzzling as we did. Yuki’s mix is like an ingredient list and the result is the sweetest little mutt cupcake baby dog we could have wished for.

Full Disclosure: I have not received compensation from Wisdom Panel or Rezdawg Rescue. This giveaway is entirely funded by myself and fully endorsed by Yuki and Neva.

more goodness from the use real butter archives

homemade beef jerky for dogs

meet neva

apple bacon cheddar dog (abcd) treats

kaweah

I watched longingly as the gentleman opened his car door at the trailhead and let his chunky yellow dog plop out. Tail wagging, gently bouncing in place with excitement, the pup’s eyes were steadfastly trained on his human. The man paid him little attention as he gathered his day pack and rummaged around for a hat. He didn’t have to pay attention, because the dog was right at his side making slight adjustments to avoid getting stepped on – like a good dance partner.

“Why can’t Neva be good like that?” I said this to Jeremy and to myself EVERY TIME I spotted a good dog, because my dog was not a good dog. She was a crazy dog. It felt like most people had a good dog without even trying, and we had a maniac despite our best efforts. We had Neva.

We had been determined to train Neva, our second dog, from the beginning when we brought her home in late May of 2015. Springtime in the mountains was the perfect opportunity to introduce Neva to all of the world that would be her doggy life with us. She met other dogs, played in the snow, hiked on trails, learned to swim, got tons of exercise, and grew into a leggy, athletic, smallish Labrador Retriever. We trained Neva ourselves following the guidance of “Perfect Puppy in 7 Days” by Dr. Sophia Yin, because yeah, we wanted a perfect puppy.

meeting banjo (and getting a treat from jeremy)

relaxing in the flowers

biting pants seemed like more fun than actual hiking

this one actually retrieves!

testing her first night in the tent (on the deck)

Neva landed far from perfect, but we would have been happy with a half-perfect or even a quarter-perfect dog. Training Neva proved difficult from the start, which made loving Neva harder than I thought it would be. We got there eventually. We put a lot of time and effort into Neva, but she never seemed to be anything other than crazy. At almost two years old, our biggest issues with Neva were 1) she would run off when she wasn’t on leash and 2) she pulled on the leash as if she were running off anyway. That’s a bit of an over simplification. Bred for hunting, Neva’s nose catches every scent on the air or ground and her instinct is to track every single one. Add to that the fact that her excitement level would shoot from zero to 100 mph in an instant and we had ourselves a dog that we didn’t know how to handle. This made time in the backcountry particularly difficult.

A friend suggested trying an e-collar – a stimulation collar which can be adjusted to a range of 100 different levels used for training dogs – used more like a tap on the shoulder to get their attention. She had great success with her own dog, Gretel, on the e-collar. We went ahead and bought one, but waited to try it out until after our friend emailed us her “notes”. I was nervous about using the e-collar incorrectly and potentially making Neva’s training even harder. Turned out the notes were instructions written specifically for Gretel by a professional dog trainer. There was a thorough analysis of Gretel’s behaviors, reactions in certain situations, and needs from her person. I read through the instructions several times, coming to the realization that what I needed was not the e-collar, but the dog trainer, Backcountry Buddies.

the e-collar

I checked out the website and Facebook page, and read reviews before contacting Backcountry Buddies. I exchanged emails with Claire describing Neva’s behaviors and our goals for her training. [Note: Claire is not the only trainer at Backcountry Buddies, but she was our main point of contact.] In Late January, Claire came up to our house for an hour to meet Neva, administered a few behavior tests (to check for aggression – Neva isn’t aggressive, thank goodness), and gave us a consultation. She assessed Neva’s personality and told us that she thought Neva could benefit from their program. Claire described how the program works: two weeks of intensive training for Neva at Backcountry Buddies without visitation, then if after two weeks Neva requires more work, they keep her for another week of training at no additional cost. There were also warnings, like if the dog became unmanageable due to separation anxiety, we would be called to come get her and receive a refund. Before leaving, Claire showed us a few basic training exercises to practice with Neva to prepare her for camp if we decided to send her.

We had a good feeling about Claire based on her ability to read Neva, and how confidently she worked with the pup in such a short time. Neva was already very much in love with Claire. After we reserved a spot for Neva, Claire sent “homework” instructions for Neva and us in the month preceding camp and we submitted our down payment for the Board and Train 14-day Obedience 2/Adventure Prep.

On March 1, 2017, we drove Neva down to Westminster and got her acquainted with her new surroundings. She paced about in anxious frenzied excitement. Claire went over a bullet list on her whiteboard of our goals for Neva’s training, asking if there was anything else to add, then ran through her training plan based on the progress Neva may or may not make. We must have given Claire the impression that Neva was a completely feral remedial maniac because she didn’t seem to have high expectations. Our attitude towards our dogs has always been one of pessimistic realism as opposed to delusional wishful thinking (people who think their dogs are angels when, in fact, they’re assholes). Even though it was a relief to drop Neva off and let someone else deal with Crazy, by the end of the day I was already missing her.

dropping neva off with claire at backcountry buddies

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March 3, 2017: I updated my spam filter a few days ago and it seems that it wasn’t letting any comments through at all. I only found out after some readers let me know (please, if you run into any issues, don’t hesitate to drop me a line so we can try to fix it). I think it’s working now, but we’ll spend a little more time on it this weekend. Thanks for your patience! xo -jen

In the beginning, when Jeremy and I were newly wed, our wedding anniversary felt like an imposter. It wasn’t the day that was most important to us because getting married didn’t change much in our lives with the exception of the car insurance discount (the discount was awesome). Our special day was and remains November 1, 1992 when we decided we liked one another enough to be a couple. As we progress through life, that first kiss in the mechanical engineering building and that 13-person, 1-dog wedding in my graduate advisor’s living room begin to merge in retrospective. We now count our life together in decades rather than years.

anniversary dinner at frasca (last night)

Today marks our 20th wedding anniversary. Something about nice round numbers – because I am partial to decimal – grabs my attention. I assembled some photographs of us from the last couple of decades, which was no small feat prior to the smart phone. How time flies. Instead of making me feel old, it makes me feel very, very fortunate.

horse flats, california (1993)

strawberry peak, california (1994)

lassen volcanic national park shortly after getting married (1997)

redwoods national park (1997)

kaweah gap in the high sierra, california – name ring a bell? (1999)

single cone, new zealand (2003)

wine country, california (2003)

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