Friends

One of the things I love about all my dogs is the way they are friends. The boys, for all their odd flashpoints of aggression (maybe once a year) rub along well and they get on with the girls too. Henry and Pop are good mates and play together. He and Nellie will play. Archie will play with the girls too. But it is the bond between the girls I love best.




I made 'Grandma' Lesley laugh the other day telling her about a little incident involving Nellie. When we first moved here it was June - lovely light evenings so the fact we found ourselves with a wonderful long garden and no street lights anywhere did not matter. I figured though that when the winter came we'd need a strategy to make sure those little j.r.s did not disappear off down the end of what would be by then a pitch black garden in the pouring rain and lashing wind and need a search party to frogmarch them back in so... I put a box of treats in the fuse box cupboard and as they came in at night they got a treat from it (treats we don't use elsewhere). Well the winter loomed and the stategy worked. By the time we got to our first darker evening/night all I had to do was whistle as I pushed the fusebox cupboard door and in they came. Two years on all we have to do is switch off the porch light and click the door OR whistle and there they are. Mind you Nellie, once she was old enough to join in with these late night excursions, soon learned that asking to go out just so she could come back in (for a treat) was a clever little ruse.....Smart little Bean-let that she is. But that isn't the story.

The treats are big and crunchy - fish skin cubes, that sort of thing - and when they are crunching them up bits do fall on the floor of our living room. They all sit expectantly waiting their turn for a treat side by side. Couple of weeks back Pop dropped a piece of hers and Henry, having scoffed his j.r style, stuck his nose under Pop's to see if he could scavenge a morsel....This is what Iain tells me..You see I was in the kitchen and next thing I knew Henry was scuttling towards me with a 'Quick, Q-U-I-C-K, I must get to Mom NOW' expression on his face and Nellie was chivvying along behind him snapping her teeth together with an expression that said 'She's my mate and it was HER treat, matey boy'.....She definitely takes her position as top dog in the pack to heart. As far as she is concerned she is my right hand girl.

She and Pop are friendly rivals for my attention and agility or clicker fun. Pop will take being bashed on the head with Fluffy or Strawberry for ages with a look of utter resignation on her face, hoping it will eventually stop but not intending to hasten this blessed relief. When Nellie was a baby they would play little games of chase and Pop would be ahead but she would run only just as fast as she needed to run to stay ahead of this tiny little newcomer. One of the reasons I love Pop so much is because of her patience and kindness to Nellie as a pup and now.

I never felt the desire to isolate Nellie as a pup from my pack as some advocate with the use of a crate. I wanted her to be a part of our family, to form friendships. I do know that some individuals use this isolation (only taking the pup out to toilet, eat - though even better if they get someone else to do this 'boring' bit of puppy care - or to play) in order to make the pup bond only with them and to want to play only with them and, even more cynically, to see them only as the main source of fun. It works like this: pup only ever gets to do fun things like play with X in a day that is fairly limited in terms of interaction so X and what X does with the pup (training) becomes the centre of pup's world. Sometimes used alongside 'feeding from the hand' but I won't get started on that......(Oh stuff it: I think it is rotten unless you have a very wayward adolescent dog that you either haven't trained enough though pup-hood and need to get back on their radar, or you have inherited one ie from rehome/rescue. Done with a loving motive as rewarding lots of opportunities for positive interaction, rather than witholding for negative correction of course.) My view is that if you cannot be fun enough or make what you want to teach your pup exciting/rewarding enough, while still allowing your dog to form natural healthy friendships with other dogs in your pack or other family members, or even other dogs generally, then you either need a personality makeover or you should try a different pet (say, like a goldfish?) And you can, if you put in enough work and time, teach your pup to be responsive to you over and above the impulse to be with their canine friend. The other day, I recalled Nellie off a hare that Pop had spotted and was just starting to chase. Both of them were 100 yrds ahead. So she recalled off both the hare and Pop in the excitement of that moment (I have witnesses!) and I recalled Pop after. And I would rate myself as a relative novice in the dog training world, with a whole load more to discover and learn.

Crates are brilliant. I once spent three hours in a friend's kitchen convincing him that if he would borrow one of ours to trial he would not have to cope with a pup who was howling, peeing, pooing and whining during the night. And that if he put it under the kitchen table, left the door open and made it comfy and snug with nylybones and kongs then he would have a much happier pup that could cope with being left at night. And it worked from that very first night, so it was worth three hours of arguing with him. So I added in other ideas.... that if they made a rule with their then younger children and their little friends NOT to bother the pup when he went into his crate and to respect his need for quiet down time, and that if they popped him in there if they needed to go out after making sure he had had play time and toileting time and things to chew, and that he needed to have meals in there to make it a place where nice things happened, and to pop him in there for human designated 'nap times' so that he could rest and grow, or to put him in when people were coming round who might pester and tease the little chap (using the excuse 'oh he's very tired and is having a nap now so we won;t disturb him......' ) then he would be on his way to having a pup who was calm, able to cope well with and enjoy children, and who could develop confidence and independence (ie the ability to cope with periods of being left alone while the family had to go about doing things that could not include him eg school, work). He and his family are still grateful now some 5 years later.

So, yes, I love crates. I loved being able to do all these things with Nellie too when she came along (as I had done in a more rudimentary way with Pop and Archie - didn't know about them at all with Henry). I also could put her in to hers (a huge Barjo estate car crate that we kept falling over in this tiny house until she was a year old) when I wanted to leave her for a while and take the others out for a longer walk than she could cope with when she was still growing, or when the others needed to be able to chill without being followed by a pup, or when I needed to know she was safe and out of harm's way when building stuff was going on here, or to feed her meals so she never learned to bolt her food or learned to guard her dish or her RMBs, or to prevent her from doing too much playing and running about to protect her bones and soft tissue, or when, as now, she comes into season. Out comes the crate again if she is in season so that she doesn't have to deal with any of the others sniffing round her as she smells so interesting, she can relax. All I have to say is 'cratey' or 'time for naps' and in she goes to lie down, sigh, and go to sleep. It has never been about punishment, or about correction, or about manipulation, just love.

Soup

Before I begin to wax lyrical about soup can I just mention that the new glamorous American style side by side fridge freezer in oh-so-cool brushed stainless steel DID arrive as we requested on Friday between the hours of 12 and 4. Delivered by two very nice helpful gents who unpacked it, set everything up (as we were told they would) and took away the old f/f that was still on a mission to out-freeze the Arctic without any fuss (as we were told). So I take just a moment to say 'Thankyou' to Marks and Spencers home appliances: http://www.marksandspencer-appliances.com/?d=true

They did exactly what they said they would, when they would. Can very much recommend their service. Especially as we had trawled round John Lewis, Comet, Currys etc and they had all said 'oh well there is a lead time of 4 weeks'. Yet, as Iain discovered, all the items come from the same depot (in Bolton) and they are all there....so we suspect this excuse is a ruse by these companies to take your money, pop it into their bank account and then, when the four weeks are nearly up, they get the item in and tell you how wonderful they are for getting it to you within their lead time......We ordered ours on Wednesday morning from M & S, specified Friday (as it said we could on the website) and lo, it arrived.

Anyway, soup.

Now I have more freezer space I can make and store more soup. Usually I have to eat it up within the first few days of making it which is nice but so much better to have a mixture of different ones to choose from. I love making soup. It is so easy, tastes sooooo much better than anything you can buy in the shop, you know exactly where everything in it has come from and a bowl of soup with some lovely bread and butter has to be one of the nicest lunchtime treats. So, here are the two soups I made this evening, if there are any soup fans out there that haven't tried these before. I chose these tonight as I have a lot of squashes in store that I grew this summer and squash is lovely roasted..and believe it or not, I just picked tonight the last of the cut and come again lettuce I have been growing all summer and I wanted to use it up to make the most of it.

Roasted Squash and Garlic soup

1.5 kg of squash, cubed
some olive oil
1 head of garlic with the top trimmed off
1 litre of veg or chicken stock
1-2 teaspoon of curry paste
4tbs full fat creme fraiche
salt and pepper to taste


Place the squash in a roasting tray and drizzle it with olive oil so it does not stick (I use bake-o-glide too) Wrap the garlic - which you need to have just trimmed the top pointy tips from to expose the garlic under the skin- loosely in foil and add it to the squash tray.
Put them both in a hot oven until the squash is browned on the edges and soft (around 30 mins)

Meanwhile heat up the stock. When the squash is cooked add it to the stock. Squeeze each garlic segment into the mix (avoiding dropping bits of the garlic skin into it)

Add a teaspoon of curry paste (own choice of heat!).

Add the creme fraiche.

Blend. Season to taste. Add some more curry paste to taste. Don't go too crazy cos the curry taste will intensify.... Make sure it is blended in.

Serves 6-7

I have roasted some pumpkin seeds to sprinkle on the top of the soup when I have some tomorrow. If they last that long.... Yum.

PS I have also added grated cheese on top on serving in place of the seeds. Also yum.

Lettuce and Watercress Soup (this is based on a Loiuse Walker cookery feature though I have changed it as I always do....)

This always gets people guessing about what is in it - no-one yet has guessed right. It is a green soup and, once it is blended, before you add the single cream, it is the most lovely green colour you can imagine. Here goes:

1 lettuce
1 bunch watercress (with tough stalks discarded)
1 medium potato
1 onion chopped
small knob butter
1 litre veg stock
salt and pepper
150ml single cream

(I must be greedy cos I double everything to make a really big panful and I always add more lettuce and watercress)

Chop the onion and heat til soft in the butter.
Add the chopped potato
Add the stock. Bring to the boil and simmer until the potato is soft, 15 mins
Add the lettuce (remember to trim off the stalky bit and break up the leaves, and the watercress and they will appear to melt into the liquid. Bring back to the boil and leave to stand for 15 mins before blending.

Once blended add the cream and stir into taste. Don't add it all (I usually add only half the amount suggested) taste as you go as too much cream can mask the taste of the pepper and lettuce. Season to taste too.
You can apparently serve this soup cold, perhaps more cream might suit it better then.... I am not a fan of cold soups - bit of a contradiction in terms to my way of thinking - so I have always served this hot.

This is really nice with a bit of ripe brie and some warm bread. They go well with the pepperyness of the watercress and the milkiness of the lettuce.

If you like making soup, enjoy.

Weekend

Went to Dartmoor show on Saturday. With the wind and rain picking up the evening before and not sounding much better at 6.30 the next morning from the warmth of our snuggly bed it was very tempting not to bother but 'devotion to agility progress' won out and off we went. Perched on a low rise on the edge of the moors the show site was perfectly placed to expose all the bonkers people there to pretty much the worst of the weather the minute any of us stepped out of our vehicles or the equestrain building. One of the roofs threatened to fly off noisily all day.

Needless to say it was a quagmire everywhere.....

How did we get on? Well Pop was brilliant - she and I were working almost entirely as one and she came 2nd in both g7 (G5-7) classes. In the agility she held her position on the dog walk (as I intended) after the excitement of a really good blast everywhere else (she came 2nd by .3 sec)and in the jumping I could not bring her in for a reverse turn as tightly as I would have liked to but she can't turn well on those if the approach angle isn't exactly right (cos of her injury issues) and she only missed First by .15 sec. She had a great time.

I include her agility run here as I realised I haven't included any of her runs at all on this blog - two of her wins to grade 7 runs I don't even have (Lansdown and Agility Club) because Iain wasn't there to video us!

Anyway here she is:





And Nellie-Beans? Well I went all that way for her really - to hold contacts in a competition environment. Having released quickly and even early on contacts (as well as holding!) during the season in order to encourage confidence and therefore speed I have some spade work to do this winter. She is developing much more drive and confidence so now I am re-inforcing FP. And I need to run her like I run her in training. I am smiling as I write that cos this last bit did not come off really - especially in the jumping where it went pear shaped from the start. Still it did in the agility more or less where I have my biggest mental block (I dither about whether her contacts are as I want them) so that is good. She did her A frame to order, her dog walk was brilliant. One of her best. And she got the seesaw but ran off it so I put her back over and got the full stop in her FP before we continued, so that was fine.
Waits were lovely in both, weaves fab, call offs and run rounds in the agility (see Pop's vid) were great too. She did a detour to the tunnel after the seesaw but otherwise she looks good on her agility run.

On her jumping we were lost after jump 2 (!!) cos she saw an awkward entry to a tunnel and thought she had to go off and find it (that'll teach me to practice tricky things!) but I set her up to do exactly that I realised when I got back and watched it on the TV. As Iain (my sternest critic)pointed out, I was in exactly the right place for Pop's run, and in the same place for Nellie's run. Without taking into account Nellie's longer stride......I am finding that quite hard - going from Pop's 'scamper' to Nellie's 'lope'. Anyway, tunnel entry 'E' aside, as far as she was concerned she was still on the right track as I just kept her going on to the next bit, with a tricky sendaway weave entry and so on. Then we had some trouble reverse turning and picking up the tunnel entry and I could not work out why until I realised (after the fourth (!) time of trying) that the wing of that jump had been set up incorrectly and was at 45 degrees and not straight on to the jump pole. No wonder she was going the 'wrong' way. I was stood in the wrong place. Don't know about anyone else but when I am reverse turning I place myself according to the wing (as that dictates where the pole is) and so I realised I was standing exactly where I should have been if I were going to flick her away which of course is what she had done three times (only to see the wrong tunnel entry as a result)...Poor love. I gave up at that bit then though I could not be bothered to move the wing. I figured I might as well get something positive from the course with the send on finish, which she did happily. Needless to say she had a good bark at me for being so stupid and we finished with about 6 Es I think in total :):)

Well done to her sister Tiff and Angela who must have done a much better run (couldn't have been worse!) cos they won it!!
Oh and well done for getting married after 21 years. Probably long enough to have decided he's a good bloke I'd have thought!

The other thing with Nellie was her reaction to the equestrian centre. She would not focus at all in the queue or on the start line while the previous dog was still running. I like to have a really good game of tug while we wait on the start line and I could not get her to play. All season she has been fine outside, more than happy to play and focus on me and to go onto her toy in excitement. But not in that environment. Once she was left on the start line in her Wait she was fine and had eyes only for me. In the runs themselves she quite obviously (with hindsight) needed more and louder verbals as my body language alone was not enough in a couple of instances to turn her (even to the weaves and she loves her weaves!). In some ways her runs yesterday were like her runs in her last big multi-ring proper indoors show - Mid-Downs back in March ie her first proper show!!! Yesterday I felt like we had regressed to that time to a certain extent, though her contacts were fine and of course we did rather more tricky courses yesterday than we did in Grade 3 naturally. I wonder if that is normal. It was very echoey and loud in the place being so enclosed and of course the weather did not help. Thinking afterwards, it is the first time she has ever competed under those conditions as Dartmoor venue was even more enclosed and noisy than Mid Downs.

Writing this has made it crystal clear that I assumed too much - she has done a couple of smaller less enclosed much quieter indoor training in the ring shows which I had thought would be enough. Obviously they are not. Nor did they make me realise how much more help I need to give her at present. I had expected the contacts to cause problems (see above) but they were fine. I didn't anticipate the effects of the noise on other aspects of our agility.
I guess we will improve with practice.....Meanwhile I also need to try to walk a course with her stride in mind, even when it is one Pop will be doing too....Onward and upward one hopes.

Ruby and the Wall

Ruby - the little black chook in the pic above - had to be put to sleep this weekend. She and Dot were poorly for three weeks and both looked to be going into moult. I thought we were going to lose Lizzie the same way this time last year but she has been doing well since. I'd have said we'd lose Dot as she was the poorliest for longest, but in the end it was Dot who recovered and Ruby who didn't. There were other things going on with her as well as the moult obviously - I suspect to do with re-absorbed eggs. Again Dot looked poorly and was laying soft shelled eggs all summer, then recovered (but has thankfully stopped laying) only to have a moult phase, then recover. Anyway, Iain did the deed for me, bless him, and Ruby is buried in the garden in a place where the chooks (including her) like to scratch about, next to a beautiful rambling rose. When we extend the veg patch she will be in the part we make into a place to sit and gaze at all the veg growing.......I can dream. Not about the veg growing, more about the sitting to watch it!

Experience with our chooks has made me even more certain I will never buy point of lay hens again. They are forced on too soon in order to be laying for the market in 'point of lay' pullets and I am sure they don't have time to develop the way they should before they begin laying eggs. The 'gang of four' proper Black Rocks I slow-grew on from 12/13 weeks I hope will prove more robust and healthier hens in the long term. Spare a thought of the battery hens who are so exhausted by egg laying by the time they reach six months that they are past it and are disposed of. Point of lay hens are nowhere near as bad as that - they are laying by 16 weeks cos they are fed layers pellets whcih induce egg laying from around then. They don't die from exhaustion, they just get problems in moult and soft shelled eggs/reabsorbed eggs. My Black Rocks didn't start laying until their hormones kicked in at six months and only then did I start them on layers pellets because they have all the nutrients needed. But they also have ready access (as all my hens do) to other sources of food in the garden. Time will tell but all the research I did before and after I got them younger points in this direction.

The Wall

As for the wall - we are in stage three, the final stage of our kitchen. Yay! The home run is in sight 2.5 years since we ripped out the first large chunks of the kitchen we moved into. Iain knocked off all the cement plaster on this wall in the kitchen on Saturday to expose all the lovely 'tudor' bricks beneath. So clled I'm told because these uneven and smaller bricks were still being made in the mid-18th century the old Tudor way with fires built between stacks of bricks. You can see the stack lines in some of them.The Victorians used big kilns to fire bricks and uniformity began to be more desirable.

Anyway, the dust went EVERYWHERE all over the house despite screens and shut doors - thickly and whitely. So guess what we were doing on Saturday evening....

Sunday, Iain sanded the end panelling as I intend to paint it so more dust all over and after a lovely walk with the dogs in the New Forest (me) we spent all Sunday cleaning too. Deep joy!

On Monday Jason , our lime plasterer, arrived to start rebuilding up the wall with lime mix and despite his best efforts more dust and mess and this too drifted through blanket screens and shut doors like the previous clouds of the stuff...Monday evening..cleaning again.

Tuesday - Jason back again to complete the next stage -the 'scratch' coat- and you guessed right even more mess. I have washed the kitchen floor 3 times and Iain's done it once and it still isn;t clean enough to polish....and I have, once again cleaned though the whole of downstairs where the dust had drifted and settled in a thick layer....And we now have a hairy wall (the lime mix has hair in it) to look at for a week til he returns to apply the 'skim' of lime plaster. And then we can limewash it.

Also next week the under stairs cubby in the kitchen will become a kitchen cupboard to match the rest of the kitchen and we can stop cramming everything that won;t fit anywhere else into the dresser that is usually in front of this wall. So that will be messy too. When it is done the kitchen will be the next room to be decorated. I plan on using a F & B red somewhere in the scheme of things......

To cap it all our 9 year old fridge freezer decided to pack up on Saturday after, what was clearly one move too many for it to cope with and now our fridge bit is at 17 degrees and the freezer minus 40! Is that colder than the Arctic I wonder? So each evening when we weren't cleaning up dust and mess we have been scouring the internet for inspiration. And have, after three evenings of trawling and three visits to late night opening stores that sell such stuff to see items in the flesh as it were, decided to order a groovy side by side US style fridge/freezer so I can freeze all the lovely things I make from veg I grow more easily. Our food will not have to compete so ruthlessly with all the raw mince, offal and RMBs I freeze for the kids! Good old M & S came to the rescue with a household items section on the internet. We hope it will arrive as arranged on Friday before the old f/f completely conks out.

So what with one thing and another it has been a busy old week and I am knackered. Did a bit with Nellie and Pop at the field yesterday, a couple of A frames today, walks and work of course.

And how is Henry?

Well as you can see he is happy. He has a lap and that always makes him happy :)

Last week he had another physio session and she said he is 'really juicey and springy and he has the suppleness of a puppy in his spine' so you can imagine I was very pleased to hear that cos it means that all the things we are doing are taking him in the right direction. He will always have a prolapsed disc above his sacral joint but he is enjoying good walks again 6 months after the original nail bed infection which the vet and the physio believe caused the disc to slip. After the initial diagnosis in June he had the steroids for two weeks and then he was drug free for 6 weeks, lots of rest and very short walks twice a week, before we began the therapies. He has had several acupuncture sessions. He has another of each in two weeks time. He is also having 2x200mg arnica tablets each week. And I have now a set of little stretch exercises to do with him which makes things fun as he is a fidget and as he has done so much clicker stuff he thinks my hands are signalling him to do tricks and moves so we make slow progress with the stretches!

Here he is with his bro and sisters (!) and two best mates on top of Hambledon Hill - a huge Iron Age fort that is one of many in Dorset:


You can see for miles. On a clear day you can see six counties. The little bump of trees on the horizon is the clump on top of Win Green I have written about. So that's two covered in that direction - Dorset and then Wiltshire:

Needless to say Henry will never do any jumping, weaves, A frame or long jump again so no more agility even if he is able to go for two hour walks (and in time even longer ones we hope). I don't meander on our walks so two hours of me walking is a really good walk (as Alison will testify!) After work today we went to walk on some chalk downland and I guess I covered nearly 4 miles in 1.5 hours. They are off leash for that time and Henry is not stiff or uncomfortable this evening. Sometimes we only do an hour and the odd day he just rests, so I mix it up for him. Jumping though involves extension, as does hydrotherapy (so that's out too) but he has been able to do the odd dog walk, seesaw and tunnel and poles on the ground in my field. I sneaked him into a practice ring to do exactly that (not telling where or when!). Tennis ball miraculously appears and he is so happy. I discussed this with the vet, Cheryl (acu) and Amanda (phys) and they all said I was doing the right thing giving him the mental and emotional satisfaction that he gets from being with Mom doing something agility.

And he still gets to do clicker things of course.

On first telling people he was retiring due to his back someone very nice said 'well done for making that decision' to which the response was 'well what other decision was there to make?' The cryptic reply? 'Well you'd be surprised..' Sadly, now almost 7 years into agility, I don't think I would be. Anyone looking at him around the rings will see a lean, fit dog who belies his 11 years. And that's the way I want to keep him.

Can we play?

Massive blitz in garden today as planned - clearing, weeding, composting, grass cutting.....Planted all the garlic cloves. If they all grow we will be eating a lot of garlic next year! Trying the winter salad leaves in the greenhouse. And we cut the grass in the field at the end of the garden as I am able to use the space for training - I have a set of weaves (when I was teaching Nells with the channels I could leave them there all the time so I could just go out, do three or four run throughs and then leave it. Perfect ), a round tunnel and four jumps. I fling out variations on this depending on a)time available and b) the focus I have in mind. When I don't have time to drive to where my main equipment is, this space has made so much difference. So this is one of our agility play zones.....

Everytime I looked back to the garden gate whilst mowing the field these little faces were what I could see. Aw!

Went to Walking the Course session. Interesting as usual. Confirmed my suspicion that Nellie is my slow dog, despite her elastic turns :):) Seriously, reflecting on my performance I am not getting the best out of her by any means. For a start, I am too slow to re-direct her after turns. So used to waiting for Pop so she wouldn't knock a pole (in the bad old days) that I am doing the same with Nellie who can turn in the air on the pole. How daft is that? Also I am not driving her into turns. Again I suspect a bad habit from poor old Pop's and my past. Also that I don't know yet what tools to use for the best outcome in any given situation with her all the time. You know? When you are walking a course and you hear people saying 'Oh. X will land here and want to turn that way so I need to take him this way and do a reverse, flip, rear cross, pivot (delete as appropriate) and then he'll be able to bounce through those and won't see the tunnel......' Well I can do that a lot of the time with Pop and mostly be right. But with Nellie when there are lots of options I usually get it wrong. She can do it but it isn't the fastest for her. Maybe that's a new partnership thing? Like we did a two jump sequence. Jumps opposite one another and slightly offset. We all did 'exit tunnel, reverse turn off jump 1, flick away pivot on jump 2' , then 'exit tunnel, rear cross pivot off jump 1, reverse turn off jump 2. She was quicker on the second option though my first choice had been option 1....Natch! So then we did the last option: 'exit tunnel, reverse turn jump 1, reverse turn jump 2'. I didn't see any point really in this option and confidently said to Mandy, 'Oh yeah this will be the slowest for all of them' and it was, for all of the other dogs, except Nellie. It was a significant chunk of a second quicker for her. I think even Lesley was surprised. I certainly was.......One thing I keep learning about agility is that you never stop learning. Well I don't anyway.

Stuff

Half term next week and I am looking forward to a break. This term always gets a bit relentless and everyone (kids and staff) grows more and more tired. By Christmas we all need a break from each other! Thankfully my classes this year are no where near as challenging as the last two years. I have the whole range of abilities - from support sets in Years 9 and 11 through to Year 13s who are targetting A* and a range of behaviour issues to teach through above and beyond just being teenagers :) I have to be on top of everything as any teacher who wants to do a good job needs to be - everything planned and prepped and resourced appropriately, but this year nothing like the behaviour issues that exhausted and depressed me over these last couple of years. I had one particular class every Friday afternoon as well as last lesson on other days and it was only the determination that I would not let them taint my weekends that got me to shows. That sounds awful but you'd have to have been there. You need lots of energy and optimism in this line of work - you've spent hours of your own time planning and creating lovely resources to enable learning because you care. Without compromising anyone's privacy - some kids are so messed up by, perhaps, experiences in early childhood or disaffected by years of an education system that has reinforced their inability to jump through hoops that even with only ten students and three learning support staff it was pretty pointless trying to work through endless poems for an exam that they knew they would probably fail. Even knowing all of that and knowing it is not my fault, it was hard not to take the 'abuse' personally. But hey, all of that to look forward to another year...

So this half term we will be decorating Iain's parents flat for some of this holiday so it isn't exactly going to be restful...Figured we'd do that in this holiday and then turn our attention to our own decorating - will have been here 2.5 years and we still haven't painted any of the walls apart from the newly renovated bathroom of course - over the Christmas hols.

Today Nellie and I had our once a fortnight one-to-one hour with Lesley as i have one Friday in my two week timetable cycle off. Started that a month ago after two years of, first, puppy group moving on to more growed up company as it evolved. Pop gets to have a go for a short time while we are there. She is doing minimal maintenance more for her psychological welfare rather than anything else. She does not like to be left out! She joins in with one of my classes once a week doing the bare minimum, and Nellie works in the other one. Rest of the time, as usual, Nellie, Pop and I train alone. I reckon that 80% of my training time with Nellie so far has been alone. It has its advantages and disadvantages. What are Nellie and I working on - well like practically everyone else ...contacts...and trying to keep a balance between straightforward stuff for speed and confidence and more tricky stuff because that's what we will need to come out able to do next Spring. Went to an independent show last weekend and was impressed with Nellie's confidence, speed over, technique on and final position on the d/w and a/f. Long way to go though still and I guess it won't all come over the winter - some things have to develop in their own sweet time reliant as they are on personality and confidence, as well as training. The trick is knowing which ones are which and as she is only my second collie with a quite different attitude to Pop I have to rely on other more experienced and knowledgeable eyes to keep things clear. No seesaw at the show sadly. Lovely waits and beginning to flatten a little over jumps. Been trying to work on that too! And keep our turns.....

Naturally this has to be fitted in around work! Work at school (going to it and then doing all the planning, prep and marking that I have to do at home) and work at dog training - pet obedience and agility. And keeping up with the house and garden. And our usual walks. So there's really no chance of doing too much cos there isn't actually that much time available.....Each day Nellie and I work on something for 5 or 10 mins. Sometimes we split the 10 mins into two sessions on one day. I have to have a clear focus on a skill for each session which I decide on as I'm getting up, eating my breakfast/lunch or driving home from work (depending on which part of the day I have to go to work in) and then we play, we do it, we play, we have huggles(all training ends with huggles with Nellie - she loves them) and then we stop. Pretty much this has been our schedule since she became mine - whatever it was we needed to work on - tricks, general obedience or later, agility. Though obviously the time spent 'playing and learning with mom' was very fluid when she was younger - lots of one or two minute slots in the day were very useful for all the basics that we all lke to teach our pups. It seemed to work with that and one or two short core slots for agility stuff as she became old enough meant we moved things on a little each time we worked on them but we always worked at something different over each day so no boring repetition. One of many reasons why I would not want to do running contacts - I could not stand the necessary repetitiveness of it and as I wrote a good while back I am very sure Nellie could not have stood it either. She doesn't have that sort of temperament. Some do, some don't. Pop would have been OK I think. The fact that Nellie is a very happy dog and we have a lovely bond would suggest that continuing with this approach works for us.

As for the garden, we have jsut picked our last runner beans. The freezer is stuffed with them! The squash are in the bottom store. The last of the potatoes are now in the fridge and the courgettes are fading off just this week - we have been eating loads up til then. We have been eating all of these plus lettuce and parsley since June/July. Amazing. I cleaned the tomatoes out of the greenhouse last weekend and scrubbed the glass inside and out, ready for the winter. Am thinking about winter lettuce leaves in there and kick starting some garlic as my neighbour tells me garlic likes that! So the veg patch is now being tidied and all the dead growth goes into the compost heaps and the old compost will be spread on the beds and left til the Spring. Cleaned out the chickens tonight after a long walk this afternoon with the dogs in the New Forest (after the one to one), scrubbed the eglus inside and out ready for the winter (we have a pink and a purple one! See http://www.omlet.co.uk/ ) and moved all the straw from their covered pen into the compost too. They love having new straw and much happy clucking goes on as well as leaping off the logs they have in there for recreation to land in it. If they could make 'weeee' noises they would! To prevent rats getting into the pen for chicken pellets or corn, we slabbed it so to protect their feet the straw goes in and I change it every couple of weeks or so. I like seeing them scratching about in new straw and having clean nests. They are out in the garden most of the day - though the really heavy rain the other day meant that when I came back from work they had all elected to go back in the large airy pen and shelter under its roof. There they all were on their night roosting branches or the large flower pots staring balefully at the rain.......We attach our eglus to the pen (length12ftx width9ft xheight7ft) rather than use the eglu runs - don't think they are big enough for chickens myself. There is something very satisfying about using all their bedding and nesting material (aubiose) for compost, as well as all the kitchen peelings and teabags etc. No waste and even better it contributes to more produce next year. Iain spent some time this evening turning the heaps. Like wine they improve with the right care! I know I go on about the veg patch but it really is such a brilliant thing to do. I loved having one ten years ago but I think I am even more smitten now. I like the self -reliance, the resourcefulness of it and the magic of seeds turning into plants that produce things you can eat!

I am looking forward to a Walking the Course session tomorrow with Nellie and in the evening we are off bowling...well Iain will be bowling and I will be trying not to end up flying down the alley bit with the ball still jammed in my grip......Looking forward to it as will be meeting up with friends and I think they may well turn out to be just as awful as me at it :) :)