Oh Yes I Have!

Oh no I haven’t!

I had thought I had put a picture of the finished bathroom on here, a friend from up country was asking about “My Blog thing!” she asked “was there a picture of the finished bathroom on there?” – I thought there was, but I must have put it on Flickr instead! So here it is along with the finished Harry proof fence, ready for friends who are coming to stay this weekend with their dogs!

Easter Eggs

Wilf - our number two foster dog has gone to his new home and what a cracking one it is! He gets to do “gundog stuff” in the winter and “Agility” maybe in the summer and has two girl spaniels to keep him company, he gets to go on wood walks and beach ones, his new owners don’t work full time either – what more could a guy want.

It was nice to have had him to stay, but I did enjoy putting the indoor kennel away (for a while!) As soon as the dogs realised he had gone, you could almost hear them let out a huge sigh, apart from Harry who now has to find other things to amuse himself!

Kernow k9 show – it was great seeing everyone, even thou I could hardly recognised them with the amount of waterproof clothes everyone was wearing! The weather was wild for the whole weekend but as soon as they packed up to go on the Monday/Tuesday the sun came out and we still haven’t had any rain since then. Agility wise I was a pile of pants! And really would have liked to have just chatted with all my buddies from Bristol. We had quite of few members from the club - RAC who where at their first show, you should have seen them, Jem and Nikki got a clear round and Ally did some really good stuff, not forgetting KipKipKipper who got a high place in his jumping class.

Ian has the week off and we where expecting to have sorted out a mini digger, but alas the person sorting it didn’t! So Ian has been dog proofing fencing and re-wiring the house!

Harry has been doing little bits of agility too, no contacts, just a few jumps; he doesn’t look like he has forgotten anything! Even thou it was over 6 months since I last did anything with him. His first show is in a few weeks and I received his running orders today, now I am feeling excited.

As for Easter eggs, we didnt have any but a kind friend took pity on us and bought us two yummy chocolate bunnies to munch on!

It's a Long ONE!

Saturdays training went well even thou a few of them might of thought not!
Our beginners:
Diesel the lab with junior handler Shannon had a hard time, I train the contacts and Lisa does the jumping and weaves, so this week we had corn beef on the contacts! Diesel spent a lot of time over with us at the contacts when she was meant to be with Lisa, it made Shannon work really hard to keep her attention, she did really well.
Lisa taught the last classes so I could bring Buzz out to work as his pad had almost healed up. I think, poor Lisa must pull her hair out with him, each week he throws something different he can/cant do, but that is Buzz and he has been like this from the time I retrained him to work for me! Both Red and Buzz where trained by Ian, as they where his dogs! Red, Ian kindly signed her over on Valentines day (better than getting a card!) a month before she was due to start competing, and Buzz he had enough off after, his second season of competing, Ian found competing so stressful that the Wednesday before the show he couldn’t sleep! Remember Agility is fun!!! Ian will occasionally now come and have a play in the pairs with me and he has always helped me whenever I have needed it, especially in making most of the contact equipment, weaves, for my own training paddock. Bless him.

I went to see the pups again (Hawksflight Tervs) they are 7 weeks now, most of them have their ears up and are tearing around, it has been a great experience to see this breed grow and turn into such a nice bunch and YES I am tempted to add to our lot, but unfortuanlty Ian feels they aren’t for him, he says they have too much hair and are too jittery/nervy (he hasn’t spent enough time with Nicky’s to realise they aren’t all the same as the ones he knows! especially Havana-the Daddy) so I have told Nicky and Jackie they have to work on him (I can say all this as he doesn’t read blogs!!!) I think it might be too late for this litter. This thou should give us time to work on Ian and me to work on Harry just in case he does become fit enough to compete…. ..............That was Saturday all over too quick!

Today we went to a beach called Crantock near Newquay, with all the dogs and DS was let off the lead, he was very good and stayed with us but we where experiencing a sand/hail storm for most of the walk and poor Harry looked like he had enough sand on him to make a sandcastle! An hour later we got back to car wet and sandy! the next hour at home was spent clearing the car out of its wet/sandy newspaper and replacing with dry bedding ready for tomorrows walks!

We spent the rest of the day taking down the small shed that looks like Grandpa’s Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang! I think it might have been used as an aviary at some point and the rats had chewed holes in it, so it had to go! But we did give it a good send off! It was burnt along with a whole load of other rubbish! oh no the poor ozone layer, I hear you shout!
We are all getting ready for the wild storms which are so say going to hit us later on tonight, Oh the joys off living down in windy Cornwall!

I have enjoyed watching Crufts on the telly this year especially as I have loads of friends that have been competing in not only the Show side but also Agility and Obedience, Red in her younger days has qualified (in the agility) 2/3 times but due to lameness has only made it there the once – aaahh, it was a great day out! And not so far to go, as it would have been this year!

PUPPIES puppies everywhere!

How exciting, Lisa text'd yesterday afternoon to say Kes (my favourite black and white girlie collie) had had her babies, mother and babies are fine. Great news. No different colours thou, just black and white! check out her blog on the links "down near the dunes"
Nicky Belgians are almost ready to fly the nest - what a cracking litter they are - check them out Hawksflight web site.
and Aly Rapo is about to have some too! (well not Aly, but Kitty!)

I Slept badly last night, kept thinking of things I could be telling you that was exciting! But cant for the life of me remember now! So here is picture of Red trying to fit into Harry bed –
Well I say Harry’s bed; he hasn’t been using it much lately as he’s been sleeping in ours! Yes I did say “in” encouraged by Ian I might add! Talk about a passion killer. But maybe that is the idea!

Foster dog two has another name; we call him DS – Daniel Spaniel (there you go you now know he is a Springer!) he has become very smart and knows when we are talking about him! He sleeps at night in his indoor kennel, the rest of the time he is out with mine, unless it gets all too much for the red dogs and then we have “time out time”, so far, the only really really bad behaviour is that he guards the kennel - apart from, the lack of recall, not knowing his name pushing his way through things people or dogs and walking around on top of the kitchen work surfaces (checking for any food left out!)! He is perfect! He managed to lie down yesterday afternoon, in front of the fire! But that has been the only time he isn’t “doing something”, (I’m told this is normal!) I thought Collies where always on the go, but nothing like this chap.

A Year ago today!

Ian turned up with the Disco and a trailer to pick up the contents of our home in the caravan, luckily Ally and Nick had kindly said we could leave the caravan where it was until we where settled! It took almost 4 hours to pack the trailer and take the 25 min. drive to Queens Pit. But at last our journey for our “New Life in the Country” was on its way and here we are a year on.
We had to sleep on the floor for a few nights until we found the bed! And then the bed was too big for the room, so down to one of the 7 (yes, 7) sheds it went! And we went and bought a new one it was a tough week with not only the move but also poor Cassie had her stitches in and you could see she wasn’t happy, but the sun shone and she found a nice quiet corner she could sleep in the sun. God I do miss her.

Last night I taught at Roseland AC, it was great fun even thou I was a little nervous (I had the agility side) it was so nice to teach inside out of the wind and rain! My group was a right mixture of standards, but the course I set could be adjusted to suit all. I think they all enjoyed themselves, as it was my first time teaching them and most of them had only seen me running my red dogs in the classes with them. Some did go into “can’t handle my dog coz there is a new person in the middle of the ring!” But after a while they all settled down and did some good work. I am so strict with agility contact training, especially when it comes to consistency and contacts, I managed to give them a few pointers to go home and practice! (For those that want to compete)

Foster Dog number two has settled in, causing havoc wherever he goes! I’m told that is normal with the breed! He is similar to Harry in that, wherever he goes he leaves people smiling. I can’t believe it is two weeks.

We had a full weekend (normal) - Ian went mad and cut down a few more trees before the birds start nesting, they where covered in Ivy - more firewood, for our little wood burner. We bought a bag of Pony paddock grass seed, which had lots of rye grass in it, so off we went and planted seed in the new paddock and orange fenced it off, just to help a little bit! But Foster dog doesn’t understand fencing, over/under or through for him! All ours know orange netting goes around the caravan; therefore we shouldn’t go in there!

A whole Year – It just flies by.