Teal

This year, my family and I decided to get a new dog. Our old dog, Duke, had been getting lonely and older by the day. We thought that he needed another dog to play with, and we wanted to get a hunting dog. One night, Andrew Priest (who is in our class), told me that their dog was having puppies. My parents immediately got excited and we jumped on the opportunity. We told the Priest family that we wanted one of the puppies and that was that. We waited and waited, and my family and I got very anxious.

After the puppies were born, we would occasionally drop by Andrew's house to visit the puppies. We would examine them and try to narrow our decision on which puppy we wanted. Finally, when the puppies were ready to be taken home, we decided to take the one with the green ribbon around its neck.

It took a while to name her, but we decided on Teal. We named her Teal because she is going to be a hunting dog, and one of the birds she will be retrieving is a type of duck called a blue/green-winged teal. She is a white lab, and she has a dark black nose. Her ears have slowly become darker and it looks like she has a blonde mohawk along her spine. However, she is still very white. Everyday she grows bigger and bigger very quickly. It seems that whenever I leave out of town for only a few days and I come back, she looks two times bigger.

I love to play with her, and so does the rest of my family. We run with her, play with her, and take her swimming in our pool and in the pond at our ranch. She is slowing learning about life as a dog. In a little while, we will send her to a training school to be trained for hunting and everything else she needs to know. I bet it will be fun for her...we'll see.

*HERE IS A LINK TO A VIDEO ABOUT HUNTING DOGS AND THEIR TRAINING*:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJO8qVoMiOM

Green-winged Teal and Blue-winged Teal

The pictures below are examples of some of the kinds of birds my dog will be retrieving. These two birds are ducks.

This is a male Blue-winged Teal.

This is a male Green-winged Teal.

Reviews on "Bleachers"

Bleachers is written by John Grisham and as I have mentioned before, Bleachers is a story about a high school football coach that is dying and his former players coming back to their hometown to relive their glory days as football stars and talk about their famous coach's legacy. Personally, I think this is one of the greatest books I have ever read. It incorporates a little of all the elements of the world like sports, relationships, life lessons, and more. One chapter the former all-American quarterback, Neely Crenshaw may be explaining the events of the most memorable football game of his career, and another chapter, Neely would be dealing with his old relationship with his old girlfriend. In addition, the writing is fantastic. John Grisham is very detailed and specific when writing, and it makes the story very clear and easy to understand. There is a good use of vivid adjectives and verbs as well.

Here are some reviews of Bleachers from other sources:

http://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/0440242002.asp

In this review, the author, Stuart Shiffman writes that "there is much more than football in this story" and he says that it is a story about life and growing up and growing older. In addition, Stuart Shiffman says Bleachers "has given us a haunting look at the years in our lives that we often look back upon with a sense of nostalgia that is difficult to characterize." I like that statement because always I witness parents relive their high school days like they were yesterday and they always wish they could be back in that time. I think these feelings can be seen especially in former football players.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/sep/27/fiction.johngrisham

In this book review, the author, Harry Ritchie, wrote that Bleachers "starts out rather

promisingly but doesn't really develop." I thought this is interesting because I think it is the

opposite. I believe it starts out a little slow but it speeds up as you get further into the book.

Well, I guess it just depends on the reader and their interest for high school football.

Extended Research of "Bleachers": Coaching

I started reading a new book called Bleachers by John Grisham. It is a book about a high school football coach and how he has affected the lives of his players. The players in the book are reliving their glory days as their old coach, coach Rake, is dying of old age. Since the book talks a lot about the coach and his coaching techniques, I decided to do research about effective coaching.

The first website that I read was http://www.topendsports.com/coaching/skills.htm, and it contained a lot of great information. According to the article, it is best not to send your player mixed messages by telling your team things one day, and something different another day. If you can do this, then your players will be able to trust what you say, which will contribute a lot to their learning capability. In addition, an effective coach is always honest with his or her team instead of making up lies about how good they are. Also, it is very important that a coach listens to his or her players. The coach needs to be there for a confused player who needs help to improve. This is a reliable source because it is written by two knowledgeable men that run a football program, and they are like teaching football players and coaches more about the game and how to be successful. In all, the authors are very experience

d in this field of work.

The next site that I looked at was http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/crosscuttings/coaching_main.html. The author says that a good trait of a coach is inspiring. Specifically, and coach needs to be able to inspire his or her players to think and work hard. In addition, effective coaching is when a coach facilitates improvement or even just good work and practice. Next, a coach's goal is to act as a guide and encourage excellence. This source is reliable because the author has been giving advice about many topics including coaching for over 10 years.

Other books by Chris Crutcher

Here are pictures of the covers of other books written by Chris Crutcher:

More about the Author, Chris Crutcher

From the website, http://www.chriscrutcher.com/biography.html, I found a lot of useful information about Chris Crutcher. He was born in 1946, and he grew up in Cascade, Idaho. He graduated from Eastern Washington State College and received a BA in psychology and sociology. Later, he gained teaching certification and taught in Washington and California. Although Crutcher says he was like as a teacher, he says that he was not a good one. Next, his books have a good balance of comedy and tragedy. A great example of this balance in the book The Crazy Horse Electric Game. This is a reliable source for information about Chris Crutcher because it is his own personal website. Therefore, the facts are his own accounts of his life and career.

Another great resource for information about Chris Crutcher is a video on "Youtube" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKo16t-BX2Y). Chris Crutcher writes mostly adolescent fiction. In addition, his writing is influence a lot by his career as a therapist when he was dealing with child abuse and neglect families. After listening to many stories during his therapy sessions with other families, he would be inspired and he could use all of the stories to write a book. Next, Chris Crutcher says that all of his books that he has written has come from something real. Some of his books have been banned as well for different controversial issues or bad language. I think that this is a reliable source because it is an interview with Chris Crutcher, and the words are coming strait from him and not a reporter that could bend the truth.

About Chris Crutcher

Check out this video of Chris Crutcher and his writing!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKo16t-BX2Y