Articles Published About San Juan County

This blog initially was used to archive articles written by Janet Wilcox and published by Neil and Becky Joslin in the Blue Mountain Panorama. In 2019 it was revived and includes articles printed in the San Juan Record, as well as other venues. By republishing digitally, more photographs can be added, and comments and corrections can be quickly upgraded. A blog is a more permanent historical location and is searchable. Thank you for reading my articles in the newspaper, as well as on the Internet. If you have ideas for stories, please contact me at 42janetkw@gmail.com

Friday, January 31, 2025

Pups, People and Preparation: Wendy Ward-- Successful Dog Competitor and Breeder

Wendy Ward’s endeavors with her dogs, (AKC Kennel name: Blue House Cavaliers)is a lot like raising children; it requires teaching, training, cleaning, care and feeding, and coaching them as they work with and compete with others. Her focus and commitment to do this has led to great success in the winner’s circle at competitions as far away as Alaska and Alabama and as close as Arizona and Utah. Her next dog competition is May 16,17, and 18 in Farmington, New Mexico and visitors are invited to come. Other competitions are held in Colorado, Idaho, Pennsylvania, Nebraska and all over the U.S. Wendy is quick to point out that her first attempts were awkward and unschooled. She has now progressed to awkward & totally trained (in her own words)!
There are all kinds of competitive dogs but Wendy’s preference is the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. She initially started with Yorkies, but they had to be taken to the vet often which was not cost effective. The Spaniels are cute, small in size, even tempered and outgoing. Unlike the Yorkies, they are large enough to not be confused with prairie dogs if they get out and run down the road. They are also very affectionate, gentle, and adaptable to children and families. The Wards’ four grandsons have informally temperament tested the cavaliers by sitting on them, pulling their ears, dragging them around and taking bones out of their mouth. These are patient, gentle dogs!
Like any sporting competition, rigorous training, testing, and nutrition are vital to success in Conformation showing. This is where expert AKC judges evaluate dogs for a myriad of qualities to see if they conform to the official breed standard and are good examples of the breed. Everything from temperament to coat, expression, ear and tail set, top line, gait, movement, musculature, angulation of shoulders, hips and feet is considered and examined. For competitive Blue House Cavaliers this begins with testing DNA, patella and hip exams by a veterinarian in addition to yearly exams from veterinary cardiologists and ophthalmologists for heart and eye clearances. Training first begins in Wendy’s home, supplemented with frequent trips to Durango or Grand Junction for obedience or conformation training. Grooming is also vital to success in the show ring. A pristinely groomed dog makes it easy for the judge to see the strengths and weaknesses of the animal being judged. Winning in the show ring confirms that the breeding stock is excellent in many ways. The main focus of Blue House Cavaliers is breeding and selling the very best Cavaliers who will become beloved pets for new owners. There are Blue House pups living in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Utah and Washington. Before going to their homes, the puppies receive vaccines and a microchip from the Blue House Cavaliers “chief medical officer” (Richard Ward) and hundreds of hours of nutrition, care, socialization, handling, playing and the beginnings of training.
Wendy’s breeding stock hails from Serbia, Poland/Ukraine and Utah, which has made for many interesting experiences and travels. Between importing dogs, training, health testing, traveling to shows and delivering puppies to buyers, she’s logged 24,000 miles in her trusty Suburban in 2024 just for her dog business. The Wards got their first dog when youngest son, Toby, was 4 years old so they were trained together! Kids and dogs in Richard and Wendy’s home all know that pushy, bad behavior won’t get you what you want! Toby has been the most heavily involved of the six Ward kids in caring for and raising puppies. There’s nothing he loves more than lying on the floor in a crowd of puppies while they eat his hair and try to untie his shoelaces. He also has a talent for encouraging their calm confidence (a wonderful quality in a puppy) by securely holding them on their backs in his hands and teaching them to trust humans. He misses the puppies almost as much as his parents now that he’s serving in the Philippines.
One of Wendy’s dogs, “Trixie Haute Ton” just received her first FastCAT title on Saturday, January 25th. FastCAT is a dog sport that is open to all dogs whether they are purebred or spayed/neutered or not (the CAT stands for Coursing Ability Test). This is a wildly fun, timed, 100-yard race where the dog chases a lure (affectionately called a ‘trash bunny’) down a fenced stretch. The dog’s time is converted to mph and then a ‘handicap’, or multiplier is used to determine the dog’s score. Greyhounds don’t have any handicap at all, and Cavaliers have a multiplier of 2. Even Pekingese dogs can race in FastCAT, and they get a generous multiplier to make up for their tiny legs. If your dog likes to chase, this sport is for you! When a dog has run enough races (only two allowed per dog per day, per event) to accumulate 150 points, they earn their FastCAT Bronze title.
Wendy’s long-term goal is to be identified by the American Kennel Club as a Breeder of Merit, which requires 5 years of participation in AKC dog events and four titled offspring from her kennel. Right now, Wendy’s three AKC Champions and one AKC Grand Champion are all dogs that she acquired from other breeders as puppies, and then trained and competed with to get their titles. Wendy jokes that she has a talent for buying GOOD dogs. She is now set up professionally to start producing Champions of her own in the near future. Trixie’s FastCAT title is step 1 out of 4, so she’s on her way! †To learn more about this dog sport go to: Fast CAT – American Kennel Club. To learn more about Wendy’s experiences, training, and success go to BlueHouseCavaliers.com
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Saturday, January 4, 2025

Best Christmas Story Started in Blanding

With the recent movie release of “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” (which comes to Blanding Dec 13-19) some may not know it has a strong Blanding connection which started in 1981, when Melissa Tatro was a teacher at Blanding Elementary. She loved working with students was very pro-active in enhancing student experiences. She contacted our PTA officers and let them know that Barbara Robinson was her aunt, and that she might be willing to come to Blanding to talkabout writing and her recent publishing success, Best Christmas Pageant Ever! Thus began San Juan’s love for the Herdman family and their Christmas antics!
~~ The Blanding PTA wrote a proposal to the Utah Council for the Humanities asking for financial help to pay for Mrs. Robinson to travel from Ohio and to conduct 3 days of workshops in the San Juan School District in April of 1982. She was a great presenter and walked us through the creation and writing process of the Christmas Pageant creation. Robinson wrote more than 40 short stories for newspapers and magazines, including McCall’s and Ladies’ Home Journal; however, her most popular work, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, however was her big runaway success. In the novel, the Herdmans (none of whom had ever heard the Bible’s Christmas story) offer their own wild and irreverent interpretation of the celebration, when they take over the annual holiday pageant one Sunday at church. Robinson went on to adapt the book for both the stage and for television in the 1980s, and it has sold more than 3.3 million copies in all editions.
~~ Since then, the “Pageant” has been performed in Blanding at least five times. When Emma Ward was 11, she was in the play. Emma recalled, “At that time I wore glasses, but Mrs. Adams didn’t want me to wear them, and I could hardly see where the edge of the stage was, I was so blind. I was always afraid I was going to fall off.” She went on to be SJHS senior & Sterling Scholar candidate in Drama. Robinson created two sequels starring the Herdmans, The Best School Year Ever (HarperCollins, 1994) and The Best Halloween Ever (HarperCollins, 2004). Though she enjoyed various styles of writing over the course of her career, she noted on her web site that she was “most happily an author of children’s books, because there’s no greater audience than boys and girls who read books and demand that those books be the most exciting, the most mysterious, the most touching, the funniest... the best.”
~~ Other books of Barbara Robinson are The Fattest Bear in the First Grade, Across from Indian Shore, My Brother Louis Measures Worms and other Louis stories, Temporary Times, Temporary Places and Trace through the Forest, My Brother Louis Measures Worms, Robinson was born and grew up in southern Ohio, in the river town of Portsmouth. She often credited her life in that small town as inspiring her writing, saying that it provided “great stuff to feed the imagination.” An avid reader and writer from an early age, Robinson followed her passion for both drama and writing when she attended Allegheny College in Pennsylvania. She graduated in 1948 and passed awayJuly 9, 2013.
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever was first performed Dec. 2017 by Edge of the Seaters, Blanding’s local theatre group. But that grant written many years ago by the PTA had a profound effect on many families and San Juan County residents.
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