First blog of the new blog

Well hi y'all :)  Glad y'all stopped by!  This is the first of my new blogs on Running with Reds!  You may ask, who are you and why do you blog?  I'll tell you who and why.  My name is Michelle and I am a mom to one red headed two year old, two legger, and 4 red australian shepherds, including two red merles, one red bi and one red tri.  Thus the name, running with reds.  I am southern by birth and midwestern by grad school.  I moved to Kansas, hated it, fell in love, and now never want to leave.  I am a full time scientist who has studied in the areas of animal science, food science/food safety pre-harvest and now,  I work in molecular biology/genome sequencing.

I am blessed to live in a small town that offers many roads both gravel and paved to run on.  My dogs and my son go with me on runs, as well as my awesome running partner, so you will commonly see me out with my jogging stroller and red dogs.  I am very passionate about running, dogs, and my kiddo.  I use to be very addicted to dog agility with my old man miller, who has his own blog at Michelle's Agility Blog and 

Deuce, who has his own blog at Deuce's puppy blog.  I had morphed deuce's blog into my agility/running/parenting blog, which was fine, but I was starting to get interest in running directors wanting me to blog about their races and mommy blogs wanting me to blog about being an active mom.  I decided to get a blog name and domain that reflected what I really do now a days, which will also be easier to find for the running aspect.  Mind you, I have not given up on my agility passion, but I have had to pull back as it is very expensive hobby. Funny, running seems to be expensive as well but not near as bad.  I will try to blog about all things in this new blog because you know what, life changes our passions and interests and a blog should be able to keep up with that.  I have blogged since 2009 mainly as a way to keep up with my training of my dogs and to chronicle big national events such as USDAA nationals and AKC nationals.  It has been of huge value to me as a dog trainer,  as I look back to find when problems started or to see what i have trained when.  I really committed to blogging when I brought deuce into our household.

He was the first puppy I had trained with purely positive, shaping exercises with tons of tricks and body conditioning, as well as agility.  I wanted people to follow me on my journey of training triumphs and failures.  I wanted to be honest with people on how I felt about everything that involved training and showing, the ups and the downs that we all encounter.  Deuce was and is my dream agility dog.  We have come so far in our life together and I can't wait to see where we go when I can commit more time back to dog agility.

I also blog about being a parent.  I came to the game of parenting much later in life so I think I have a different take on some things.  I had the best example in the whole wide world of what a super mom should be, and I am trying to live up to that, but put my own spin on it, as Andrew is not the child I was (according to my mom, i was perfect, hi mom:)  I am a super Type A personality, so being a new parent has tested that to the limits, but it has taught me to be more flexible which has helped me in all areas of my life.  I know I am not perfect and I like to share stories of my adventures in being an older parent.

Anyway, I normally blog a few times a week so won't you come back now, ya hear?