All is calm, all is bright....

We are at home for Christmas. Just us and the dogs. My Mum has gone to my brother and his partner, Claire, for the first time this year (she's usually here!) where she is meeting Claire's parents again. Maybe we will have a small family wedding in the not too distant future..? Hope so as the boys love her and Donald, my brother, is much, much happier than he has been for a long time.

I had a long chat with my Dad too, who lives in the Canary Islands. It was some balmy temperature there of course.

We always remember Jessie and Peter, Iain's parents, especially at this time of the year, with sadness. Iain stopped getting excited about Christmas when they died two years ago, just before and then barely two weeks later on Christmas day itself. He is not the sort of person to dwell too much, prefering to keep moving forward, but his mother's unhappiness before she died is hard to accept, even now, for both of us.

Today, no more snow here but plenty left from before and of course lots of ice. All the lanes until we reach the main roads are ice sheets. Peter always loved to phone Iain to tell him when snow was on the Snowdon hills. He would have remembered the kind of really deep snow and Pen-Y-Pas closing they have now, happening many times over the years.



The sun has been shining today.

The chickens have had their Christmas lunch - a whole stalk of sprouts to peck and eat in between making huge nests in their warm, deep straw that they have in the pen. The girls are responding well having stopped metacam, but are still on lead and harness, twice a day 10 mins walks, and Archie has been bouncing about enjoying the fact that he is the only one off lead at present!

Took the pictures at dusk today. It is, despite the inconveniences, lovely to have a white Christmas. I can't remember one in my lifetime in this part of the country anyway.



Just cooking our Christmas meal and it is about ready now......

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas.....

To everyone who reads my blog ..... I still can't get over how many bother to read it..

I hope you have a really Happy Christmas!



That's all very well but we don't have a cat :) :)


We do have icicles though and plenty of snow! Though they are nowhere near northern England, Scotland or Welsh proportions I know, where you could probably impale someone on one..., it is the first time we have had icicles hanging from the thatch and they have been there all week! They start to thaw a little bit for a few short hours in the day but as the light drops the temperature does too and we are down to minus 4or 5 over night and there they still are each morning.



We had a window of opportunity on Sunday to get the van back home driving it in 2nd gear and at about 5 miles an hour and not having to stop for anything at all.....There it has stayed. Then, as forecast we had at least 5 inches of snow falling solidly. The roads around us are still ice sheets and we could not get out even in the Golf until Wednesday later in the day. Main roads are fine.

Can't enjoy any long walks in it since Tuesday though as not only is Pop taking it easy; Nellie has to aswell. With Pop we think now the inflammation has gone down but she needed a few more days of metacam. She will start to have slightly longer walks early next week once the metacam has worn off and I can evaluate how comfortable she is without its effects in her system. I do think we are going to have to keep a close eye on her in future - especially in cold weather. It does seem to have sparked this episode.

And Nellie? Well we think she may have sprained a toe on Tuesday in the kitchen! Not sure how, but Alison kindly picked us and the dogs up from home in her 4WD, drove us to the vets as there was no way our car was going to get there, waited while we saw the vets and then brought us all home. Phew! Pop needed her check up and even Alison wasn't going anywhere on the Monday when we had her original appointment (and the vet hadn't made it in either) so we booked her and Nellie in together on Tuesday......It is all fun here you know.

Anyway, it isn't the fractured toe we feared initially as she was totally fine the next morning on a regular dose of metacam (ie not a loading dose)and she has now had half a regular dose yesterday and today. Along with on lead and harness walks for ten minutes twice a day like Pop......

She isn't amused...but until the metacam is out of her system after the weekend she isn't doing anything other than pootling about with those springy toes of hers and even then it will be short, very short, walks for a few days.... I think she may stop talking to me :)

Meanwhile....what else have I been doing? Well the bit of marking I need to do remains unmarked as do the other little bits of work I didn't quite get the chance to tie up, though I was determined to gets loads done before we finished so the holiday could be just that. It'll get done...The house is clean! I have been around in it long enough to allow myself to notice the dust, cobwebs and general need for a clean up. I don't look if I don't have the time to do anything about it. Denial is good.

So that leaves lazing about with Iain, Pop, Nellie and Arch. Yes! Any plans we had to go to Dartmoor for a long walk on Christmas Day were scuppered when Pop's toe was diagnosed and re-inforced by the snow. So we are just chilling at home, watching films, reading and cooking and enjoying each other's company. Luxury.

With brain space to spare (bliss!) I have also ceased, in my own small way, to be a (relative)techno Luddite. Hoorah! Iain is an 'Early Adopter'; loves techno gadgets especially anything to do with computers or phones and is straight into new things when they come out if he gets the chance. From my point of view as long as they work quickly, and don't waste my time, I am not bothered. I put off having a mobile phone for ages. 'Never had one before so why have one suddenly now' was my attitude. Did eventually succumb because I was cycling home 17 miles from work one evening a week in winter in the dark and bad weather and some sections of the route were on fast busy roads and Iain was on a study course in Southampton miles away. I used it to leave him messages at strategic points on the route to let him know I was safe and he could check between lectures. For a while too we car shared (and one of us
biked some of the way where our routes diverged) and the phones came in handy for that too. From 1991 when we got together and realised we could only afford to run one car, until 2005 (14 years!) when we got the van, we ran one vehicle. The logistics of this were a challenge at times and necessitated a couple of house moves, but we managed it and it has to be acknowleged that mobile phones made it possible. Yes, we could have got second vehicle much sooner but we sort of liked all the cycling (environmentally sound, and boy were we fit - in the cardiovascular sense of the word of course :)) and definitely liked bucking the system in our own small independent way.

Anyway, techno stuff....From my teens, though, I've only ever really been into ways of listening to music if you could call an early personal stereo a techno gadget...and I guess it was in its day especially as we had never had anything like it before. I had one of these cassette players that (as did each subsequent one that replaced the previous one that had become jammed up with tape) went everywhere with me - on trains, walking into the city, cycling - even in four lanes of traffic in Reading travelling home from my student job, or back to my digs from trains returning from London late on dark nights (to ensure I didn't hear all the noises from off the side that would have probably frightened me so much I wouldn't have cycled through all those streets so late at night..and it was a good work out cycling so quick. I stopped for no-one..)and on Sark too where I walked for hours listening to music.

I remember cassettes I 'made' when I was a teenager from listening to the Top 20 Countdown on my radio using the cassette player placed on the table next to it and pushing down the 'record' and 'play' button simultaneously. I was very attached to these tapes, despite the blurred edges of the music and the strangled voice of Tony Blackburn as he was cut off by the 'Stop' button each time, they were the only way at the time I could afford to listen to large amounts of my own choice of music. One in particular I remember and was quite attached to because right in the middle of one of my favourite songs our then dogs barked furiously at the door being knocked and it made me smile everytime I played it until it uncoiled like most cassettes inevitably did when they were stopped and started so many times.

Despite the limitations of tape I was overjoyed when Mum bought me a portable all in one cassette radio (!) that meant I could record internally! Amazing!

So when personal stereos came out I was in seventh heaven. Even with the limits of sound reproduction that they had it was brilliant and especially because now we could have the sound straight into our ears; we could hear everything. It was like being immersed in music!

When CDs came out I longed for a stack system like some of my wealthier university friends had, but I couldn't afford one while I was still a student. However, by the time I started teaching 5 years later the technology had moved on and I then could afford to buy my first separates system. I felt very sophisticated! Meanwhile, still as a student, I did buy a portable box thing that played cassettes and, incredibly, LPs on a pull out tray record player! This and my trusty cassette personal stereo got me through to the end of my PGCE and another year of travelling until I finally got a 'proper job'!

Negative reports about the playback qualities of CD walkmans put me off buying one of those for cycling to work as I did for many years and there were no more casette ones to be had. Eventually they too died out and have been replaced with other technology each in turn pushing the parameters and improving the quality. But I had a good separates system for music playing at home and anything else sounded tinny. I found I had become fussy about playback sound quality...

I guess too that my lifestyle for several years now hasn't lent itself to endlessly carting about even a tiny ipod in order to listen to music on the move. Iain gave me a basic ipod nano he'd been given on a course (you are lucky to be given a lunch on a teaching course) and it was great on Sark last year and when Henry and I went to the EOs in 2008 but I think they are the only times I have used it! I'd forget to charge it anyway.

And I now rarely even sit down to listen to music these days though I love it when I don't feel guilty and actually do just sit down to listen to something. I do like cooking to music but the speakers in the living room are too far away to enjoy their full, rich sound when I am in the kitchen and I am picky about how the music I have deliberately chosen to listen to sounds. Our two previous houses were modern and detached so the volume didn't matter if I kept the windows shut! But we had the chance to buy this lovely old place in its beautiful setting, not detached but that wasn't on our list anyway if we could have everything else we had dreamed of for such a long time. Being so old the cottage does have thick walls so something like opera or classical (within limits) isn't going to cause any problems for our neighbours but with my powerful floor standing speakers it would be easy to 'bass them out' with something less genteel if I was to turn it up loud enough to listen to it the way I'd like to in the kitchen... (How Iain puts up with me I don't know!). I blame those personal stereos! So it is usually me and Classic FM (or Coast if Iain is about!) on our battered Roberts radio (no DAB here yet!) in the kitchen, which of course is great at this time of year as they keep playing numerous variations of all my favourite carols. I have heard three renditions of 'In the Bleak MidWinter' this evening already! I couldn't bring myself to get a table top CD player that would be small enough not to dominate our small kitchen. Each to their own but the sound quality unless you get something meaty (and big) is usually too 'cold' or too fuzzy for me. Did I ever mention I'm a bit obsessive...? I need to get out more probably.

You could be forgiven for wondering where I might be going with this.. but be patient..

When Iain started to rave about iphones a while back I wasn't impressed. I refused to update my 5 year old flip phone that did calls and text messages and replace it with something so patently unneccessary. I didn't need anything else..Despite his best efforts to show me what his iphone could do I stubbornly refused to use it and refused to learn how to. And what really was the point of all those 'apps'?.......Until now.

Iain eventually persuaded me to get a Smartphone a few weeks ago and of course once I got the hang of it and explored its potential I wanted to know about other applications and what was possible..my curiousity had been whetted.

And so now I have an iphone too. I have spent lazy time when we haven't been able to do anything much else learning how to use it. I like it that's for sure though I did think it might annoy me by being too complicated and time consuming :) But it hasn't annoyed me at all, it really is as easy to use as Iain has been protesting for so long..... :) but I didn't get really excited until I realised you can get docking stations for them with powerful yet compact speaker systems with the kind of sound quality I'd have bitten somebody's hand off for years ago...whoohoo. A little bird has told me Father Christmas is bringing one of these gadgets very, very soon...(Iain must have told him x)...so I will be able to listen blissfully to anything as loudly as I like in the kitchen without disturbing anyone. Consequently many happy hours over the last few days have been spent luxuriously and decadently 'wasting time' uploading well over a 100 of our CDs onto itunes and loading them onto my iphone, humming happily away to myself and annoying Iain by singing outloud with the earphones on!! It has stopped me going silly not being able to go on long walks or do any trick training with the girls (didn't want to make them use their toes!)

And, I am sorry if I sound like an old fogey, isn't it incredible that with its storage capacity it is still only just over half full??!!! And that's including over 1500 photos I have stashed on it too! It is like a window has opened in my brain. Most of us at the age I am tried to forget we could remember huge double reeled tape recording machines (just) from our childhood. We thought that we were 'cutting edge' in our twenties having cassette personal stereos, with spongey foam headphones that used to disintegrate with constant use(hmm). I wonder what technology will offer those who are in their twenties now in twenty years time and how they will regard what we have now?

Can't see it being used for games and email and internet... The computer does the two latter (though I did sneak a peek at this blog - just to see if it worked you understand and only on wi-fi at home :)) and games I don't have time to become embroiled in. But the music side of things is exciting to me. There are loads of old albums I used to have on cassette (and still do I think somewhere in the back of a cupboard!) that I replaced over the years with CD but rarely listened to but it is lovely to re-visit. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed them. 'Songs from the Big Chair' springs to mind. And 'Rattlesnakes' by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. The instant I stuck the earphones in my ears and touched the play button I was in my twenties, with my personal stereo's headphones filling my ears with my music, walking with the sun on my face along tiny Sark lanes, or cycling through cities, oblivious and carefree. So evocative. Except the sound quality now, as I had already discovered with the ipod, is beyond comparison.

And of course because it is a phone too I will always have it with me anyway so no extra gadget to forget to charge and lose in a pocket. It will charge on the docking sound station thingy and it charges as I sync music to it too. And I am learning to sync other stuff with my PC - I even have calendar entries and notes. Eek, I am turning into Iain! Can't see me using the earphones unless I want to be seriously anti-social or the dogs and I are somewhere like the coast path. Not sure I'm ever going to be totally 'on it' with all its capabilities but I do have to ask myself: Why did I leave it so long?

As predicted....

...'anything' DID happen at Olympia, and Nellie LOVED it!!

We stayed in a hotel in Brentford the night before and had an anxious start there when a function they were holding meant that parking was non-existant. Call me paranoid but I am really twitchy about where I park the van or the car when my dogs are in them. Iain sorted that..only for us to be stopped by the underground car park attendant when he saw us taking Nellie for a walk later in the evening from the van. 'Have you cleared that with management?' he asked.
'What?' We were confused.
'Does management know you have a dog?'
'Um, no. Do they have to?'
'Well dogs aren't allowed'
Stunned silence.
'They are not allowed in the hotel' he added by way of explanation.
At last the penny dropped.'But she's staying in our van'
His turn to be confused.
'Can she breathe in there? Is she going to be OK?'

Bless him. I had to tell him there had been a point in the conversation above where I was going to have a very serious strop if all had not become clear. Along the lines of 'Excuse me, but I won't be told I cannot have my dog in our own vehicle in a hotel carpark, thankyou very much.......' And we all had a little chuckle at the thought of how we had all been at cross purposes :) Nellie prefers her crate at night at agility shows, although if it is really cold we insist she sleeps in the caravan. She has figured out, bright little beanlet that she is, that agility starts from her crate when we are at a show, or when we train at the field. So her crate is where she likes to go to wait for the fun to start! We just told the chap that she is used to it and would be happier there over night. It was 11degrees in that car park so she would be comfortable and I was happy that they, as the night attendants, would know now that she was in there.

So no strop required :)

Pop and Archie stayed at home with Becki (Alison's daughter) looking after them and the chickens. She is strong enough to hold onto Pop to take her outside to prevent her from careering out into the snow and damaging her toe. She is also mobile enough to load and shut our woodburner so that she could keep the place warm for herself. My Mum is not and besides she was snowed in.....It was lovely not to have to worry about any of them and Becki appreciated earning some money for her house sitting duties. And Archie definitely loved having her here as he spent almost the entire time sat on her lap. Actually Becki ended up staying here til Sunday but I'll get to that.

Saturday morning and the drive through London wasn't too bad. The Olympia building loomed and we parked. There were two nice lady parking attendants to chat to on our way in and out during our time there who thought Nellie was lovely. They were amused to see Iain carrying her to the main entrance and back so we explained about the road salt and her pads...and they were even more amused when we told them Nellie was 'having a nap' in between her two events. Poor things were on duty for ten hours and at 4pm already had very wet feet and several more hours to go.

Walking the course in the morning. It is a wierd place first thing: all those empty seats. Everyone wants to get into the other events later in the day because then the seats a re full and the place is electric. First thing though it is a little sad with just a few stalwarts to cheer us all on.



Me modelling my 'dress'. And I wasn't the shortest person competing either :) These days with sponsorship becoming more and more difficult to find we are lucky to get any shirt, so I wear mine with pride and gratitude!




Morning event. Nellie ran beautifully, she was so responsive and honest, and she nailed all her contacts coming to a clear stop before a quick release. Her A frame was reassuringly solid. Stupidly I dropped my arm on the jump before the weaves so she took the pole and because I was a little thrown by that I made her go in a direction I hadn't planned for on the next obstacle. I found myself in completely the wrong place facing the wrong way (!) and had to do some emergency thinking on my feet to keep her on the right course handling the next bit in such a way that we lost time but didn't get E'd or add any more faults. Having already made her go out too deep before the dog walk earlier I was losing time... Still I knew she was fast enough that if I didn't lose my head completely we stood a good chance of making it into the Pairs with 5 faults and so I just tried to keep going, knowing that we that to play for and, thankfully, we made it.

It was a huge relief that she ran so well because on Tuesday morning I found she must have ripped a flap of pad surface off leaving a tender bit where it had been joined to the new pad skin. It was sore. What with her paw, Pop's toe and the last week of term it has been a bit of a week, but it could have been worse. Still, I didn't know if we would be able to make it...... Anyway, no walks, no last minute training. Just good swimming sessions on Tuesday and Thursday for all of them to keep them flexible,relaxed and happy and tootles round the field on the grass at the bottom in between. And lots of salt water bathing and witchhazel...So when she was quite happy on the surface in the morning and afterwards I was so pleased. It had worked. It looked much much better and sound by Friday night, but you can never be sure as that surface is so gritty. Despite her obvious ease, I really didn't want to risk the road salt though. We don't get any round here so she has never had it on her paws at the best of times.

Then the weather started to worsen. Thick heavy snow fell for quite some time. It looked lovely but everyone began to worry about getting home. The car park became a playground though!





Taking Nellie into the stands meant she could watch the horses. She watched very closely and with great interest and then after a little time looked at me as if to say 'Golly Mom, you mean horses do it too????' Needless to say she licked a few ears in the stands (of people sitting in front) and made yet more friends :)





Then we had the Pairs event. Shaun Young with Gracie and Nellie and me were ranked together from the morning event so we were paired up. Shaun to run first as he had placed one place higher. He went clear with the kind of really neat run they specialise in (I have always loved watching Gracie run) so the pressure was on and we were off. Stopped dog walk and fine to tunnel, then I ran like a demon to get to the seesaw across the length of the tunnel and then some, and overshot it pushing Nellie slightly wide and having to yell 'NELL' to get her back before it became a refusal. Thankgod she is so responsive. Another yell 'SEESAW' and we were back in the game. I had to go deeper into the seesaw because she had had to come at it from a strange angle and very close to it and I was afraid that if I pulled off the way I should and would have done if she had just been blasting at it from the tunnel (as originally planned!)she would come off the side, she wouldn't have had the momentum. Consequently, I had to then go deep into the next jump and so she jumped that too long and far across and we were both then further off the next jump 'right round' sequence'(I can't believe I could have so much happening in my brain in so short a time :) ) Anyway, I lost a bit of time there too....By this stage I could barely breathe having used it all up to yell twice and Arthur Rodgers (the judge) wasn't joking when he'd said earlier that it was a running course....Flippin' heck. I'm fairly fit and can run but my little legs had to really shift. Released A frame just before she reached final position to try to make up for the lost moments to and after the seesaw, and I just kept running. Tricky manoevre for the last five obstacles having to scoop and rear cross a wall and then do the same to another jump, both out of tunnels. But she worked so well and we came in with two clears. And WON it!!!! Whoohoooo! How thrilling was that. So we had our picture taken with various people (all a blur and I won't know who they were til I see the official picture whenever that is...)and were given a beautiful crystal glass 'Olympic torch' trophy each. I was just as thrilled to get in the Pairs as others were to get into the evening event, and then to win the Pairs was INCREDIBLE.




Here I am barely managing to hold on to Nellie who always wriggles when I try to carry her..I think she realises I am not strong enough or big enough to hold her as comfortably as she likes (Dad can!) or as firmly and safely. Anyway the photographer was higly amused when I said 'stop wriggling Nell!!' and she suddenly did. Long enough to get a picture of her keeping still and all of us looking in the same direction! I have never trained my collies to jump into my arms at the end of a run; if I did I'd be taken out like a nine pin. And I never wanted to train the boys to do it either in case I missed....



Afterwards I took her to the KC stand as those of us with dogs who like being handled by children had been requested to do so she had a very happy time doing just that for a while. Later, as we were leaving, the horse session ended and all the people who had seen her in the Pairs started to emerge so a whole other hour passed by with families wanting to meet and fuss her. She spent most of that time on her back with various children stroking her tummy. Oh and showing off some tricks so there were lots of 'Ahhs' and 'Oohs' to make her feel very special. All my lot love this sort of thing! They all did what I think is really part of the common sense approach to dog training ie 'controlled meetings with lots of different people of all ages, being handled when tiny, being asked to sit for fuss once they have learned to sit, learning NOT to demand to be the centre of attention and to wait quietly while Mom is talking to someone.. etc' (that is the stuff we have all done for years if we have any dog sense) when I got them at whatever stage I have got them at different points over the last ten years. Even Pop and Henry, despite being older when I got them, benefitted from it very much.

Being a teacher, even though I teach teenagers, does make it easier for me to be assertive with children I don't know if I need to be, and that has helped all my dogs' confidence levels with even tiny tots. We did many short sessions of being carried around town and other busy places from when Nellie was 8 weeks old to take everything in and meet lots of varied people but one time when I was in town with her when she was 3-4 months old (by this time she was fine on a lead!) watching the traffic and listening to noises and learning to settle while Mom looked in shop windows or talked to people (who of course stopped to talk to me about this gorgeous pup I had with me!) one lady I was talking to looked up suddenly saying 'you've got company'. There were 5-6 little girls of 8-10 years old running along the pavement towards us screeching 'ooh puppy'. I yelled 'Stop' and they did...(the lady was impressed :) )and then asked them to come up one at a time to talk to Nellie, ask her to sit and give her a treat. This they did, Nellie loved it and so did they and we stood about in a circle talking about approaching strange dogs, what dogs can do if they are frightened and on a lead etc and why they shouldn't over handle a puppy etcetc. I hoped it helped them, possibly helped another future pup/dog owner they came across and it definitely helped Nellie.

Nellie had a nice time having her hair on the top of her head being made into a 'Mohikan style' by a tiny little lad at a show last summer which was good for him as he had not long before been nipped at by another collie when he was just stood there. The dog wasn't a nasty dog, it just didn't feel confident about knowing what to do with a child that close. Some dogs I suppose are just more socially adept, some have needed lots of input to get to that stage and some dogs are just too nervy or timid by nature to really enjoy close contact with strangers or young children who may be just a little too loud or jerky, especially in a strange place despite all their owner's efforts. Sometimes a bad experience can wipe out any work the owner has done to help the dog cope with children. It has to be a team effort and although I feel very strongly that we as dog owners have to do our own PR if we want to preserve the rights we have to go places with our dogs by enabling our dogs to be socially adept, we can't control everything.

The only time Nellie has badly reacted to a child is when Leo, our other nephew (Alec's brother) who is on the autistic spectrum, stared at Nellie full on in our living room last Christmas while jumping on and off the end of the sofa and blocking the exit from the seating area in the room. The strong, sustained and unbroken eye contact combined with the movement frightened her and that was compounded by the fact she could not get out of the way. She actually lunged at him. Leo was completely indifferent (which helped a lot) and although I wasn't we all stayed calm and I let her escape. She just went off to lie down in the kitchen and rejoined us when she felt happy but she didn't come back into the area cut off by the sofas. All four of them tried very hard to keep from being trodden on and were so good. Pop did get stepped on but looked at Leo as if to say, 'that's OK small human but please can you really try hard not to do it again!' Henry on previous visits would always be very careful if Leo picked something up to throw in the garden. I would never leave them unsupervised ever but I knew that Henry 'got' children. And yet when he came to us he had lived with two sets of older couples and no children. Perhaps that helped ie he had not been teased or tormented by any when young or unprotected? He responded well to gradual and controlled exposure - Alec came along pretty much at the same time so he was invaluable as a toddler -but perhaps Henry was better off meeting children later? Pop didn't need much help at all - a friend brought her then baby round not long after I got Pop and Pop just leaned against her knee when the baby was there as if to say 'That's baby human'. Who knows what she experienced before she was dumped - I think I got lucky with her and with Henry in many more ways than one.

Leo lives with Dizzy who is the most laid back, child/bomb proof older labrador bitch you could ever hope to come across. Dizzy grew up with Alec so when Leo arrived a couple of years later she was well prepared and immune! And Sue, their mother, did an awful lot of encouraging them to 'smooth' Dizzy... He can tread on her, sit on her and even, when he was younger, lay on top of her and although he would never try to do the two latter (and the first would only happen by accident) with Nellie or any of mine he still cannot understand that border collies are a quite different character of dog. Why should he be able to? The incident last Christmas was entirely my fault as I failed to see all the elements that compounded each other coming together as they did. I should have got Nellie out of the sofa space so she wasn't trapped beforehand or re-organised the furniture so there was an escape route so she wouldn't be outfaced and Leo would not be at risk. Leo (in common with many autistic children) does not react well to the word 'No' and so no-one in contact with him can use the word. Luckily she has had so many good experiences with lively children that she recovered her equilibrium and Leo still feels comfortable around her too; since then they have been fine together outside where she will lean on him for the brief moments he is standing still :)

Archie loves performing and loves children though he has never been to Olympia - did take him into Crufts once though where he enjoyed meeting lots of people but then he was the most peopl-y pup of his litter. Everyone wanted him because he wanted to meet them and play :)(The first time we went to watch back in 2003 not long after we started agility we were so green and had no idea non competing dogs couldn't go in and when we got to the side door having been told by the main door people that dogs went in that way, the side door attendant took pity on us and let us in with them. Wouldn't happen now.) Pop is really patient and gentle with everyone wherever she goes and did her bit for dog-human relationships after her Novice Olympia Final more than happily. Henry always loved going to the Stand to meet and greet and show off a bit. One year we only just managed to avert a crisis of huge proportions when he spied the pompoms on a child's jacket. Iain muttered 'pompoms' just in time for me to to get my arm between said pompoms and his teeth.......Once we explained about his toy fetish Mum removed the jacket and so he had loads of fuss from one happy little girl!

Here is Nellie in her Pairs. Can I apologise to Shaun and Gracie as Iain was so busy watching him to see when he needed to take Nellie's toy and so nervous for me before I ran that he didn't video them. But it was a lovely run. I know because I was watching....to see how he was doing and to try to get our changeover as smooth as I could. Tricky with so much distance between the Finish and the Start!

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Nellie is so huggly, sweet and lean-y that we were stopped by so many people all over the place including by the smartly dressed doorman who got down to cuddle her letting people open the doors for themselves (!), but he always opened them for us as we went in and out each time! He wanted to know all about what she had been doing and how she had got on as we emerged.

We also got chatting to the explosives search dog man and his Springer (who was as an entire male very aware that Nellie is a complete girlie..:) ). Very interesting chat that was. He had to routinely do sweeps of the curtained area under the seating stands.

It is lovely talking to so many different people doing different jobs who are all part of the structure of Olympia or simply there to enjoy the horses and the dogs and the Christmas atmosphere. For me it is part of why Olympia is such a special place to be at Christmas.

We drove home all the way on slushy highly gritted motorways and the A31, only to become grounded in the penultimate village to home and had to leave the van outside a strangers' house (though we knocked on the door to explain and they loaned us a torch and so we are all now on first name terms!) and then walked the last mile and a half home carrying everything along the dark icy lanes (Nellie loved this as it involved a proper walk and she hadn't had one of those since Monday :))It all added to the adventure of the day and I still have the biggest smile on my face.

Becki had to sleep another night on the memory foam mattress on the spare bed. So she was happy. Alec particularly likes it too.

And Nellie had the best of times. Having followed all of that up with some long walks in the snow she's a bit tired after such an exciting weekend!

Pop makes a good soft pillow:



Thankyou to everyone who congratulated us and who wished us well on the day, before and since. They say you only find out how genuinely kind people are when you are in trouble, but I think it can be equally true when something good happens for you...It is nice to know there are so many of those out there.

Olympia already....

Well, as everyone who has been there knows, ANYTHING can happen at Olympia and it usually does, but we all still want to run our best and not screw things up for our dogs :)

I think I am looking forward to it...I AM looking forward to it.... Yes I really am.

And I know NellieB will love it. But for now she doesn't give a monkey's armpit.

On the Popsicle one, a harness quest and yoghurty chickens...

Well, the Popsicle one aka Pop has been even more than usually at the very front of my mind and my heart 24/7 for a few days. Since the really cold snowy and ice weather kicked in just before the start of last week, we had noticed that, after resting and sleeping soundly following exercise, she seemed a bit stiff in her shoulders. She wasn't lame, just seemed uncomfortable. This only lasted a couple of moments and then she'd be fine. She was perfectly happy out on walks. She even did a couple of minutes of play-play-bit of agility- play-play-play on the Tuesday before the snow came. She did some really good walks as usual before and during the snow - there are pictures in previous blog entries to show how happy and comfy she seemed generally....

But I wasn't happy. Couldn't see any sign of anything obvious on her leg or paw. I made an appointment with Amanda Sutton, their physio nr Winchester, last week for this Tuesday. She had seen Pop for one of her and Nellie's regular three monthly check ups back in early October. I wanted Nellie to have a pre-Olympia check up too.(She's really fine I am glad to say :) ) Anyway, taking Pop and the other two for an off lead run around at a place on the way, driving the remainder three-quarters of an hour to get there, and then having Nellie seen first, meant that similar conditions were set up for Pop as she had had after walks on previous days. She'd rested after exercise...and we got a really good presentation of the symptoms, without the adrenaline kick that allowed her to mask it. Amanda pointed out a slight swelling around one of Pop's toes (right fore) but there were no pain responses in that area. Going all over Pop, eventually she found a really deep trigger point between her shoulder blades. This could explain the stiffness in her shoulder I thought I'd been noticing. But we didn't know what was causing it...

The next day, Pop was worse. She now couldn't mask the pain, particularly when she had to lean forward - to eat or to drink, or to lie down. But we had reckoned on this. A) She could be sore because if it is anything like I feel when I have been carefully manipulated by the chiropractor I see every 6-8 weeks, it is like I have done three rounds in a boxing ring.. or B)If she was masking pain from another source using her shoulder/neck muscles then releasing the tension there might just give us a clue as to where the source of the pain was. And it was definitely on her right.

Meanwhile I booked her in at our new vets (the ones I changed to after Henry died) and had her looked at by them too, on Wednesday, and asked them to take her in asap to have her x rayed all over. This was all done today.

I have been in a state ever since I made all the appointments worrying myself into a knot. I have ricochet from: maybe Nellie trying to herd her has bruised her shoulder as she and Nellie sometimes make contact, on through 'is her shoulder and neck riddled with arthritis', and on into even more horror of 'what if she has something sinister like Henry did and we haven't known about it and I am going to lose her?' You can imagine.

It appears though (thankfully) that 'all' she has are two relatively small bits of arthritis in her right fore paw. One joint on one toe and one joint on one of the other toes. One of these joints has probably been knocked (maybe she did it when we were in Scotland climbing up those mountains at the end of October?)and has slowly become inflamed and as it has become more painful she has done what so many collies do; compensated to cover the pain with other muscles which themselves then suffer. If you know what to look for she does have this slight swelling on her toe but I can tell you it isn't obvious to an untrained eye. So it is 10 days of metacam and a continuation of the quiet days she has had this week until that point too. Then the vet will take another look and I will take her back to Amanda that week to check her shoulder is still freed up.

So, considering I was in a state about the possibility of a nasty cancer waiting to take her from me, you can understand my relief and the fact that I was on the verge of tears...

There is even better news. I asked the vets to X ray her all over. She's a 7.5 (almost 8) year old border collie with dodgy stray origins, not terribly good health history (strains and imbalances) who has had an awful lot of intense conventional and homeopathic health professional input to keep her able to comfortably enjoy the very active life she leads with us. But the X rays - lovely clear digital ones - show that the little bits of arthritis she has in those two tiny toe joints are the only arthritis she has anywhere.....She is as clean as a whistle in her back, her neck, her shoulders and her legs. Her elbows are particularly lovely apparently :) I can't tell you how happy that makes me feel.

Here she is in the Final 10 line up at Olympia in the Novice in 2005 at the end of her first season of competition, and she was already Senior at Thames.




I am so glad I found out about (through Pete van Dongen's article in 'The Voice Magazine') and subsequently started her on Cosequin when she was 1.5 years old and paid through the nose for it til a very kind person told me I could get it, a bit more cheaply at least, from the U.S. She seemed to want to do everything at speed and without any attention to health and safety concerns - contacts especially. It seemed like a 'joint saving scheme' to me. Henry started on them not long after (though, of course, by then he was already over 6 years old) and then so did Archie. Nellie has been on them since 1 year old. This new vet was impressed I knew anything about them and have given them to the dogs for so long, not having met me or any of my lot before. And that is despite the fact I don't buy the capsules from them or any other vet....As long as they do no harm I am happy to use them, but if they are having a positive impact then that can only be good, and while I can afford them they will carry on having them. Though buying several bottles of 250 capsules at one go really does bring the price down.

We need to play it by ear at the moment but it doesn't look like Pop has to give up her agility either. Quite the opposite I was told today, which also makes me happy because it will make her happy too. She has done only tiny and sporadic bits of training for three years now and I rarely go to anything competition wise (apart from an odd training in the ring opportunity) from the end of September through to Mid-Downs in March. And I am really glad about that too as it must be good ultimately for all of them not to be pounded over contacts and through weaves all year round weekend after weekend, plus training in the week. She is not entered for every run she could do even when we go through the summer. OK so all that might mean we are not always as smooth or as stylish as I would like us to be as a partnership, but is that really more important? She is a good, fast agility dog with fearless contacts but do I really have to be extracting every last drop of agility juice from her, knackering her out in the process, just to try to prove myself as a handler? She is not a tool. If we look rubbish together sometimes as a result of my priorities,then I can live with that. She's not rubbish. I would rather be kind to my dog. Don't get me wrong, I still take every run I do with her very seriously but not for the same reasons some people do, but because every run she and I have is precious.

She absolutely loves her agility and that is one of the main reasons why I have pursued all the things I have done everytime she has a problem, rather than give up on her. However, if the vet, or Amanda, indicate full on agility is too much for her we'll have to enjoy Anysize instead, and Veterans when she is old enough - just to keep her happy playing with Mom. Meanwhile, it seems it is a good stategy I have followed for these last three years. As I decided with Archie, then Henry, although agility is so much fun for me and for them and I take it very seriously putting a huge amount of energy and thought into it and trying to improve my understanding and skills as much as I can, it is not the be-all-and-end-all of my relationships with my dogs. Our walks and mountain and moorland adventures are what we are really about. And if they had to miss out on those because they were so crippled with arthritis or some other debilitating condition that had been exacerbated by relentlessly continuing with agility regardless of those health problems then that would be devastating, and to my mind, cruel. So, yes, Christine, I agree with you on that one (and probably I think quite few other things too!) Mind you, I wouldn't walk them up a mountain etc either if they could not comfortably and enjoyably do it. They don't choose any of it - we do. To me, it is more what a dog does naturally that should be the priority.

She won't be doing the WAOs as I had planned, I shouldn't think. It really depends on how her toe improves.

NellieB's harness has been the reason for a bit of a quest recently. Two very nice people offered to arrange to fix or fix themselves two of the six standard size 4 dog-games harnesses she has destroyed. But in the interim, and on the basis of the fact that despite their kind efforts said harnesses may well be re-chewed..., I went looking for a new style of harness. One without steel inserts obviously. I even ordered and bought a lovely Hurtta one. I really like the way it looks and the reflecty bits and it is very easy to put on, but in use I don't like the way it goes straight across the top of her shoulders. Probably on a different shaped dog it would be fine but Nellie has a narrow chest so it isn't as right as I would like it to be for her. So, the quest continued. On Tuesday, I had a good look at a perfect -fit dog-games harness that Amanda had been randomly sent and which she didn't quite 'get' until I dissected it for her :) :). Had considered one before but it all looked a bit complicated trying to find the right size bits. Too many permutations, too much for my brain. However, seeing one in the flesh helped a lot and, fuelled by the thought that it would fit better IF I DID get the bits right, I went for it. It arrived yesterday and looks like it might just achieve the impossible - avoid being chewed, fit her comfortably and please me!!! It will be put to the test of an excitable agility environment tomorrow. Watch this space.

(Sat 11th update: it is BRILLIANT. She is really happy in it, it doesn't annoy her at all and she didn't even bother trying to get her teeth on it, plus it looks great. OK not as stylish as the Hurtta one, but I like the fact I can have pink and it has lots of padding on it)

And those yoghurty chickens...bless them. We, the dogs and the chooks are partial to Yeo Valley natural pro-biotic full fat yoghurt. Never anything skimmed, semi or fat reduced in our house. Having spent a large part of my childhood and teens drinking and eating full fat, unhomogenised and unpasteurised milk that my mother used to bring back from the dairy where she'd milked the cows, I am averse to dairy produce that has been subjected to those ridiculous processes that strip all the goodness and taste out only to try (and fail) to put it back with man made substitutes....Yuck. Maybe one day I will regret this. Maybe.

The chooks benefit from some friendly bacteria now and again and they really enjoy dribbling the lovely stuff down their beaks, over their combs, down their chests, on their backs.....









They really do need bibs :)

Gathering winter fu-u-el....see previous entry for carol link :)

There is something primitively satisfying about a well stocked wood store. I can fully understand why young village women eyed up their future prospective husbands ability to provide wood and other basic home keeping needs back in previous centuries.



We take wood storing very seriously round here you know :):) And today another load arrived (they have these super 4WD beasts that seem to cope with anything!)to fill up the space we have just cleared of wood we got last winter that we have now used up. It has been 2 years stored outside and then we pile it up for an additional year in our wood store. This ensures we burn really seasoned wood. Laying down wood, is like laying down good compost. Or fine wine. Not that we have any of that sadly. This lot of logs which, after Iain's efforts, now reaches the shelf almost, will be used next winter. And so on.

The store was built back around 1850 with a brick floor and an original Victorian post box built into the wall. One time we had a different chimney sweep come and, after peering in, he said 'Now that's a wood store' appreciatively while also admiring the hole we had deliberately designed into the door. He was most taken aback when we told him it wasn't really for airing the logs (though it does) but for the swallows who use our store as their summer nursery facility :)

Today we went for a walk to get foodstuff that we needed; the nearest spot was 7 miles away. We took a cross country route so the dogs enjoyed that. We were there and back in four hours despite the snow and icey bits, not bad. These beech hedges looked good enough to take pics of and I like the way the whitened side of each looks sepia against the rich copper and ice white of the beech leaves. This makes the girls look almost ethereal in the foggy air nearby:

Singing carols...

....which is what I have been doing while walking the dogs in the beautiful woods around here. I know, quite mad. Perhaps even more a sign of eccentricity than swimming in the sea in mid-October in just a bikini! Both experiences are quite liberating; yes singing loudly to a bunch of trees definitely is and it really does now feel quite Christmassy all of a sudden..... I really enjoy singing carols and always drag Iain to a carol concert in the local church. My favourite carol is 'In the Bleak MidWinter' which I suppose is particularly appropriate right now....

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan
Earth stood hard as iron
Water like a stone
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

What beautifully simple yet strong similes they are. Lyrics always do it for me.

We seem to have caught up just a tiny bit with the rest of the country here in Dorset, where for the most part up until today we have just had hard frosts and the odd light sprinkling of snow.

A lovely picture of Archie who loves the snow. He ends up looking like a small ice bear!



The girls:



And a glimpse of our cottage and one of our neighbours from the field at the bottom of our gardens. This is where I had my channel weaves pegged for a year while I taught Nellie to weave.



Couldn't take a picture of the chooks in the snow as they decided to remain in their large roofed pen in the lovely deep straw and on the branches they have in there. I like them to have options to indulge in as many natural behaviours in there as they do when out in the garden. They have a very large (big enough for Bert so it isn't uncommon to see two hens dustbathing together!) permanently dry wood ash dustbathing facility, fresh water and food as well as their eglu for egg laying and the straw for foraging for corn or snuggling into. If they want to come into the garden they can but I think the icy snow can make claws quite uncomfortable. It is so nice and sheltered and natural in there a little robin has moved in for the duration of the cold weather. Where he would usually be waiting to fly in for the food and water first thing in the morning this time of year he now refuses to come out at dusk when we shut the pen door. Nor does he seem to want to venture out each morning either! It must seem like a hotel! The chickens are very used to him.

Meanwhile at the top of the garden the remaining wild birds we take care of are going through CJ Wildbirdfood cylindrical fat bars with insects (the only one they like!) and sunflower hearts bought from Hayters Feed Store (nr Wimborne) like there is no tomorrow. We keep putting hot water into the birdbath. Our feeding and watering station is very popular! All of us in these cottages feed the birds all year round so we have lots of regulars. Not seen any redwings yet. But did see, on my walk today (see below)three large charms of goldfinch in the straggly seed heads of the previous season's pheasant cover.

I had my whole day off in the two week timetable cycle today - and of course school was closed! Never mind! The good thing about that is that I didn't have to feel bad about the fact I couldn't get in. As we are anywhere between at least 1.5, nearly 2 or 3 miles from a gritted road in the different routes out of here I would not have been going anywhere. The lanes here are now just packed snow and ice with the tractors and farm vehicles going up and down them. It isn't a nice feeling sliding sideways down a slope in a van as I have done trying to get to work back in February in better conditions than it was today.



Anyways, we had a lovely walk today from home. We are very lucky that we can do this. I love to take the dogs to different places to walk too but it is fantastic to be able to walk down the garden, out the gate and be instantly in fields and trees and the odd small lane. I never get over the thrill of that and it makes it so easy to watch the seasonal changes in all their detail.







This one of Pop below makes me think of Robert Frost's poem (if Lynne reads this she knows I love this poem and I know she does too...)

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

This poem always gives me goosebumps. 'But I have promises to keep/And miles to go before I sleep.....' 'Promises' hints at the promises and bargains we make with ourselves in our lives as well as in our relationships with those we love past and present,those still with us and those now no longer with us. There's a sense of foreboding, the woods seem to tempt him or draw him in: 'The woods are lovely, dark and deep'. They are beautiful but then are they like death? Then the literal ideas of having to travel onwards in his day to day life....and then he repeats the 'And miles to go before I sleep'. That's when the goosebumps start because it magnifies all that has come before.....There is so much depth, like the woods themselves.

Lyrics again, sorry.

Meanwhile the dogs and I were stopping by woods late afternoon today...Pop is stood at a juncture in this part of the wonderful large woodland near our home where there is an old cottage (now really just a pile of stones)and an old well. Once long ago the people who lived in the cottage and worked the coppices planted a few snowdrops and they spread and spread. By the end of January (less than eight weeks away) this spot, as a result, will be white with snowdrops rather than snow. The first time I came across them I just had to call Iain at work to tell him how beautiful they are. I had to tell someone! No photograph does them justice so I don't bother. Shortly after that these woods are bursting with bluebells and they are everywhere. I have never seen a wooded area like it for them. Once we are in Winter, Spring is just below the surface....



Last weekend (before the snow) we took some time out from trying to get a lot of work done (because we were due to be at these WAOs this coming weekend - that have now been, understandably, postponed) to take the dogs down to the coast path. To White Nothe above Ringstead. It was bitter but beautiful....and very quiet.

Just to keep ourselves fit we decided we would go down the White Nothe smugglers route and, after stopping to have a hot drink sat on a boulder on the stoney beach below, we would clamber back up again. The absence of mountains in Dorset makes such toiling necessary for Iain's mental health :) :) It doesn't do me any harm either. And the dogs don't care as long as they are running about. Nellie hadn't been over the smuggler route before. For some reason we have come at Ringstead the other way so far with her. It is quite exposed in places and there are tempting cliff edges near the bottom that seduced Pop once... I had to watch in tense horrified silence while she picked her way back up a chalky cliff she had thought she could just clamber down....I didn't breath until she was back up.Panicking would not have helped. Neither Henry or Arch had ever bothered so I hadn't thought she would. Subsequent visits saw her on a lead at that point. Nellie is a bit more sensible. Perhaps subconsciously I had not gone that way with her for that reason? She has plenty of exposed terrain and coast path experience now.



As it says on the tin... steep hazardous route. It is fine really in the day time if you are reasonably fit, but not sure it would have been so much fun for the smugglers in the limited light they would have felt able to use on dark nights. Mind you it is so isolated from lanes and tracks it was most likely a profitable route and worth the risks:



This one speaks for itself. Quite pleased it came out so well on my new phone. Finally , after almost 5 years, I replaced my old one and can take 3MB pictures on it. Not the best but certainly an improvement on the old one.



The view from that coast path sign -you can see the tip of the Durdle Door archway:



Heading home for crumpets!