Meant to be having a break.....

No agility for a couple of weekends and I was meant to be having a break from doing too many things but somehow it doesn't materialise. When does it ever?

The weather held for our annual planned agility BBQ this weekend - and it was a lot of fun, culminating in a joyous game of football in the field at the bottom of the garden - girls against boys with an age range of 11 (Alec - who came to stay as he knows almost all of the agility group) through to 75(Edna - whose birthday it was two weeks ago)! Boys won - 10 goals to 9. Even I managed to score one off one of Neil's passes. Though I think everyone generously gave me the chance to sort my feet out!! Haven't laughed so much in quite a while. The funniest bit for me was when Edna quickly moved the goal post (a jump wing) while she and Jane and Mandy were in goal (!!) when one of the men was thundering towards them intending to score a goal....You had to be there to see just how brilliant her comic timing is! I am hoping Edna might send me some pics of the evening so I can put them on here........

And Alec's weekend otherwise? As well as an exciting trip to buy a new mower; another Briggs and Stratton Hayter job (our old one- same type- gave up the ghost after 17 years arduous service, on some really tough gardens not to mention agility fields, which we thought a pretty good track record)and even more thrills going to Ace Reclamation nr Hurn to buy reclaimed bricks and pammets with which to create a new seating area near the veg patch to 'echo' the one up beside the cottage which has been there a very long time, we also made Alec come for another long walk with us - to our local 'The Langton Arms' at Tarrant Monkton where we had lunch. It is our nearest pub; drive to in 10 mins or walk to in just over half an hour. Cycle? 15 mins. On our way we stopped at the lightening tree. Just to make it more exciting you know.....At least he enjoyed the BBQ and as his new obsession is football (don't all young buys develop obsessions whether its dinosaurs, model trains, football etcetc) there was a lot of impromptu ball kicking around in the field throughout the weekend as well as the agility footie.





Then the weekend prior to that I organised a Thursday pet training 'top class' group walk and so we had 15 dogs including my two and a rather cute oldie called Alfie belonging to Toni and Al all off lead and enjoying each other's company for a couple of hours followed by a trip to the aforementioned pub for lunch in the garden with all the dogs! This pub allows them inside too though I think even they'd baulk at that many in the tiny bar....Once again the weather held for us...



Just thought I'd throw this one in - cute...



Took Nellie and Archie for their routine check-ups (three months) with Amanda their physio last week and so they have been having quiet time this last week. Archie didn't actually need to but with work so busy and feeling rather horrid (now I know why as I have started a cold on Sunday) and having Misty here again for three days last week I couldn't fit it all in so he had four days of quiet as Nellie needed. All Amanda could find was a tight hamstring whcih is pretty good going I guess. Nevertheless Nellie was not amused to be having on lead and harness half an hour walking only for three days followed by two ten minute strolls off lead on the fourth day. Though she perked up on Saturday when all her agility friends arrived and had a little play when the football appeared. Proper walks began again on Sunday. We did a bit of agility today with four jumps in the field at the bottom of the garden today..

Another picture to throw in - the chooks in bed.



As you can see they sleep on perches under a covered pen roof. This is not only healthy for them but safe too in a way that sleeping in shrubs wouldn't be at night for example. I have tried to mimic 'jungle'/trees habitat here as much as possible. The youngsters are now fully integrated and like to perch with the others. I'm pleased to say there has been no bloodshed or feather pecking. You hear horrible stories of people introducing one chicken to a flock or putting youngsters in with older hens and wondering why they are killed...People don;t find out about what makes chicken's tick before getting them (bit like some people with dogs I guess) and assume they are feathery human beings who will share nicely and do formal 'getting to know you' rituals....Actually they are vicious little **** though some are more chilled than others. Depends on where they are in the 'pecking order' and who 'rules the roost'........

Bert is too heavy to join them on their perches so he sleeps on some straw next to their 'activity zone (dust bathing/perching/rootling about in between for tasty bits of whatever) flower pots'.

Have given some eggs to colleagues recently and today they were saying that the yolks almost look unreal as they are so yellow. My chooks lay such yellow yolked eggs because they eat lots of grass (our lawn!) and bugs all day with access to the highest quality pellets I can get (even River Cottage uses them)and a little peck or two of corn in the evening (also 100% organic). It is sad that the vast majority of people have no experience of what eggs should look like because even those organic, free range ones the supermarkets sell are almost two weeks old and most free ranging birds while they have access to outside do not range over the nutricious grass ours do all day.



Lizzie (in the foreground above) is now back to full health following her secondary skin infection during our scaley leg experience.... It is good to see her looking so well, happy and comfy in herself.

Meanwhile I'm currently treating Bert with vaseline every two nights in a last ditch attempt to prevent the girls from pecking his legs. This has been an off/on problem for a good while and I have tried 'featherite' on several occasions but it works for a while and then doesn't. As a brahma he is meant to have feathery legs and toes, though he never has. I know that one of the reasons he needed a home was because the other cockerel was picking on him and he had no leg or toe feathers then. The girls will pull out his feathers sometimes and of course once he bleeds it is hard for him to stop them. They do amazingly lose interest until the next time (sometimes he pulls them out!) and sometimes he tells them to **** off in chicken speak but the more persistent ones won't be told. To be honest he is too gentle with them. Brahmas are a mild breed and he is quite timid really.

So featherite has worked and not worked and, having witnessed his bleeding leg again a few weeks ago, I decided we would go at it even more rigorously. He is having vaseline smeared all over his legs and feet every two or three days (pref two) and I am hoping that over the number of weeks we are doing it the girls' habit will be broken.......We have to sneak down to the pen at night, catch him while he dozes, do the deed and sneak off.

In the garden things have moved on. Everything is growing for a start! But we also had a couple of arches made by 'our' blacksmith (Abbott Street Forge, on the Kingston Lacey estate). The wisteria is beautiful but we have had to keep hacking it back while we decided what to do in this part of the garden, plus it needed a new arch as the other had done twenty years and more service we reckon and hadn't really up to lasting that long in the first place. The new one will have poles coming out from it to the middle one over the gate so that the wisteria can trail along to it and over it....



.....later in the summer another arch will be put in the gap between the veg patch and the hedge so that the Nelly Moser (it had to be one of those didn't it? Think about it!) clematis I planted in the veg patch..... in a huge pot so the chickens can't reach the leaves through the pickets....has something to aim for as it establishes itself. If the wisteria gets really keen it too can have more poles made between the middle arch and this third one when it goes in so the clematis and it can 'do battle' there. The idea is to have a cascading 'wall' of wisteria in front of the veg patch across the garden. All scent and colour. Have planted lupins in the veg patch and one or two other bee friendly perennials. Rather partial to bees. They have been using the bee nest we put up a couple of years ago which is encouraging.



And now for something completely different!

Here is Nellie in the weaves - in slow motion. Roy Matthews came up to me after Nellie had run in a Novice Olympia qualifier at Thames back in 2009 (we came 3rd..) having just done his first slow motion recording using a gadget on his video camera. Nellie was his first dog. He introduced himself and told me what he had done, hoped I didn't mind and so on. Mind? I was thrilled to see her. Anyway, unbeknown to me again he did the same almost two years later recently at Tunbridge and here's the result. According to him she is faster in the weaves now. She looks so flowy and athletic in them. Everytime I see her in the weaves and especially when I see her this way I am glad I took a year to teach them and that I used the channels for almost all of the time (until she chose to pick up my Vs one day late on in the process).

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And something different again - Archie doing a rewind. Learned this trick back in 2003 - one of the first clicker tricks I was introduced to and have always loved teaching it though it takes a little while. I taught it to Pop first and then Henry and Archie. I always say Archie looks like a demented loo brush doing this one....

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By the time I taught Nellie rewind I was a lot further on in understanding re-inforcement and clicker timing so she learned it relatviely quickly. I also had worked out a slightly better way of training it so it made sense more quickly to her. I didn't introduce the word until way later. It is one of the few tricks I have introduced the word for.
She slips a little here but rights herself quickly.

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I wanted to teach it the other way and never got around to it with Henry, Pop or even Archie. I still haven't properly introduced the word 'circle' for this one despite it being finished. I had some hand issues going this way for some reason which took me a while to work out. This is smoother and tighter when we are out and about on walks than it is here in the kitchen. Maybe it is the floor again? But she still looks great and agile and smooth.

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I learned with this one not to work at it the same time as finishing off the rewind. The dog needs a very well co-ordinated awareness of various parts of the body for this one in order to perform it so tightly to the legs all the way round and I realised fairly quickly that asking her to learn the beginnings of clockwise while polishing anti-clockwise was a bit too much!!