Check out the photo page for this trip.

On Saturday night, Jacquie and I left work to head down to Woodburn, Oregon. We crossed the border around 7:30 and set the cruise control in an attempt to make Portland by midnight! We weren’t quite so lucky, and we ended up crashing in a nasty little hotel just south of Portland at around 1:30 am!

We rose early on Sunday morning to get to Woodburn for 10 am, which was the time we had arranged to meet Ellen and Doug, the breeders.

We ended up getting to Woodburn much quicker than anticipated so stopped at Denny’s for a breakfast (yes, I had moons over my hammy!!).

At just after 10 we pulled up at Ellen and Doug’s place! Needless to say I was beside myself and Jacquie was extremely excited - maybe more for me than anything - as she had never met a harrier in person!

We were greeted by Luna (picture below), who is the mum of the litter we were looking at.

We were also greeted by an absolutely beautiful Beagle, Nika, who had just had a litter as well! Here’s a picture of Nika:

I was quite surprised how docile both Nika and Luna were! Luna gladly let us pick up her pups and play with them.

Ellen and Doug asked us if we’d like to play with the puppies outside, and of course we answered yes!! We played in the area that Doug and Ellen had created outside for a good half hour - we could have gone on longer!!! When the puppies started to get cold, we headed in and played with the puppies in their pen. Fairly soon after moving back inside the puppies started crashing, but not before Jacquie snapped some unbelievably cute pictures of Quincy and Quinton asleep in my lap!

Just before we left Ellen let all the “adult” dogs out of their crates so Jacquie would get to meet them. Wow! I had been lucky enough to meet them all about 2 months earlier, but it was still absolutely fantastic to see 7 full grown and extremely excited harriers tear around the house! What fun!

Just before noon we left Doug and Ellen’s for a quick “shop” at the Woodburn Company Stores (fancy name for “outlets”!!!). We headed home from there at around 1:30 or so and again just cruised. We got home around 8:30 after a really(!!) long wait at the border.

It was a fabulous weekend and both Jacquie and I really enjoyed spending some time together as we don’t get to do it much with our busy schedules. We can’t wait until Ellen does the personality and structural evaluations on the puppies as it will be then that we find out which puppy we may get!

-Chris