Keepin' the Big Dog happy...

Ruger, our German Shepherd, is two years old now and is the self-appointed Big Dog... at least among the gals and his four-legged friends.  We had various friends and family visit during the Christmas weekend and Ruger made sure he had all his dog toys, Sasha's dog toys, and all the other visiting dogs' toys and bones claimed and accounted for.  It's just his way of keepin' the Big Dog happy.

Unfortunately, this Big Dog hasn't been too happy.  Christmas morning started with a sinus cold and by the time I managed to get in to see the doctor on Tuesday, my sinus cold had turned into a full-blown infection along with a fever and a touch of wheezing bronchitis.  Fortunately, I did have the opportunity to spend some shooting time with some friends out at Farmer Phil's place.

That would be Robert and Daniel setting up some targets along with some bowling alley rejects.  It was good to see old friends we haven't had time to catch up with for a while.  I set out some of the new target stands to the left we had picked up from Target Meister a few weeks back.

So far, they seem like really nice stands and would work well for IDPA or IPSC shooting too.  I have six of them and after a few more uses I'll probably give you folks a review about our experiences, which so far have been very positive.  They're built like brick outhouses... strong and functional.

We spent a lot of time shooting handguns.  Seemed like 1911 was the lucky number with offerings from Colt, Ruger, Kimber, Taurus, and Springfield Armory on hand along with other assorted semi-autos and wheel-guns.

Shooting FMJs or "ball" ammo is great for practice, but if you carry your gun concealed or otherwise it never hurts to run some of your carry ammo through it regularly to check reliability... even if it does lighten your wallet a bit.

Robert had a beautiful set of sequentially numbered Ruger Vaqueros in .45 Long Colt.  We shoot cowboy action with our 4H Shooting Sports kids mostly using .22s, but I'd sure like to have a leather rig with a pair of these in the future to shoot some cowboy action myself.

There were a lot of holes in a lot of targets when everything was said and done.  Even some ARs, .22s, and a Savage bolt-action in .22-250 had a good, long-range workout.  Discussions on guns, reloading, gunpowder, politics, and family seemed to get everybody back on the same page until too much time has again passed by and we finally get around to all of us meetin' back up again.

Today, it's just a day of rest while I try to break a fever and beat this stupid sinus and chest cold.  This is not exactly how I had planned to spend a few days off work, but I'm thankful for my gals who are takin' care of me... as my main gal says, "Keepin' the Big Dog happy"...