Mammoth catch up...

Lizzie chook

I had to have Lizzie chook put to sleep at the beginning of September. The infection we thought had been successfully treated earlier in the summer had, it turned out, never really gone away at all, although by her improved appetite, levels of activity and general manner you would never have known. It was egg peritonitis. It was kinder to let the little girlie go, which the vet and I did very gently and quietly with an injection that she knew nothing about.

Here she is second from left:



At almost five she had had a long life relatively speaking and I know she has had a very happy time being a chicken here with us. I have buried her in the new flower bed and planted beautiful dwarf tulips, hyacinths, and crocus around the old bit of Purbeck stone that I put over the grave.

Garden things

We are still harvesting runner beans, mixed leaf salad, basil, Charlotte potatoes, squash (yes they did decide to bear fruit!), courgette, oodles of tomatoes (especially now since we have had the spell of really warm weather), raspberries (hope for more next year) and the parsley is happy again (hopefully it will thrive throught the winter once more).



All sorts of tidying up is needed in the veg patch but it has had to wait til the shows stopped. I did manage to shoehorn a moment or two in to plant some curley kale for the winter. We both really like vegetables and especially like the dark green leaves. It is particularly nice cooked in a hot pan with a bit of butter and lemon juice and a few sunflower seeds thrown in.

The colours are beautiful again this year in the trees though the leaves are coming off a little quicker with this hot spell. The horsechestnut trees are almost bare round here now. My acer is going through its transitional colour stage. This stage is paricularly beautiful I think:



Besides the bulbs I have planted over Lizzie's grave I have gone mad with some dwarf red tulips in terracotta bowls as well as in the flower bed. A theme of reds, yellow and whites is predominant from February onwards. Starting with Winter aconite (yellow) and ending with Aliums (in white) before the summer shrubs and flowers I planted back in August take over with a colour scheme of (like Nancy :) ) pink, hot reds, purples and whites/pale yellow.

What an Improvement!

When we moved in we found this rather awful, ugly and pretty much redundant construction on the front of the Victorian porch.



Hmm. It was removed promptly. The result for the four interim years has been an enormous draught under the south facing garden door which has been especially noticeable in the Winter....Draughts are good for cob cottages. Central heating is bad as they weren't designed for it. We got rid of the central heating very soon after we moved in and we both like draughts (just as well as we are not allowed double glazing no matter how well disguised it is) BUT the one under this door would sometimes blow out our wood burner when the wind is in a particular direction.

(There's Henry's little face looking out!)

As usual with us when we have two or three 'minds' about something we leave it in the back of our thoughts until we have a eureka moment about it and around two years ago I had one about the porch door situation. Why not have a stable door? Well we went all around this idea with Pete - our carpenter/joiner/ clever person who can solve all kinds of problems. Couldn't be absolutely sure it was the right thing to do, so another winter of large airy draughts ensued. Good job we don't feel the cold much either of us. And if the temperature does drop to very low we stick on a few more layers! And we hop into bed very quickly!

Last year while restoring the windows and porch timbers we hit upon the idea of double doors....but then couldn't decide on design and timber. Oak or softwood? Meanwhile a softwood door frame was put in and I painted it all up. Finally this Summer we knew what we wanted to do. We wanted to be able to leave the inner door open so we could enjoy winter and early Spring sunshine flooding through the multiple panes of double doors on the porch. By this time we had had time to put the money aside for it and so these doors were duly made bespoke as none of the spaces are 'regular' round here, and Pete did a pre-fit:



Pete hates painting. On all our houses we have sorted out over the years (this cottage is the 5th) all the preparation, painting, wire wool-ing, staining or whatever the wood needs is my territory. Iain doesn't have the patience for it and I don't mind that it is a bit painstaking (just as well as me doing it saves us a huge sum of money). I am hyper critical (nothing new there then!) about it when I do it so I know I would be unbearable if someone else did! So I spent a large chunk of August and September, in between doing all the other stuff, treating knots, piling on preservatives, and then going through all the stages of water based acrylic Farrow and Ball stain block, undercoat primer, top coat doing lots of sanding in between layers...Many hours of doing all this ...to get this end result (once Pete had come back to putty in the glass)



It is amazing how much more light floods into the living room when these doors are closed and the inner door is open. It is like having another window. And we are hoping that eventually they will pay for themselves because we won't be buying as much wood!

All the hinges and door funiture match the porch light we put up last year which makes it all look 'right'.

We had an oak thresh-hold put in too that I have spent a lot of time and energy treating with pure tung oil to help it weather in well. Learned a lot more about using oak in exterior locations doing this - ie tung oil is the thing to use. Although I had treated the oak beam, that Iain had stripped all the paint off last year, above the door with boiled linseed oil successfully it didn't seem to be working on the thresh-hold. And more learning too about avoiding ferrous metal (as the 0000 wire wool I used caused black spots to develop on the oak and I spent more time sanding it all back to start again....) Numerous coats of tung oil/white spirit and then just tung oil, and endless layers of tin foil to protect the oak from the elements while the oil 'cured' and I am finally happy with the result. Finally.


Loads of walks

Once Nellie's paw healed we were able to enjoy all our walks again!

Here we are in the New Forest with Scout who came to stay for the day early in September. He ran about with Nellie and Arch for a couple of hours and was quite pooped, bless him.





Just a cute pic of Archie lying beside my knee in the caravan at Chippenham show last weekend!



Here we are at Chapman's Pool yesterday - in gorgeous sunshine - where I shot off down to after I had been at work all morning. Nellie, Archie and I spent all afternoon swimming and then taking the long way back under the headland along the stoney beaches, up to the coastguard lookout at St Aldheim's Head, a few minutes in the chapel to reflect and gaze up at the 12th century vaulted ceiling before the couple of miles along the track to Renscombe as the sea mist followed us inland.







I asked a chap down there to use my phone to take a few pics of us in the water so you'd believe a) we did swim and b) no wet suits were involved. The water is really warm, honestly.

Nevertheless I think this may be our last sea swim for this year, unless we get some more settled fairly warmish days. As I wrote last year, never say never but I think we have been lucky to swim from April through into a bit of October. Last year it was May to half way through October.



On Saturday and Sunday evenings at Chippneham show we took all the dogs for a good walk in the nearby countryside and what a beautiful bit of the English countryside it is! We found ourselves on a knoll with breathtaking panoramic views.

Here is Mandy, Neil and their brood with a chap from Bangladesh who is studying at a university in London that we got chatting to about the dogs. He wanted to remember us all and the beautiful evening (Sunday) with a picture and I said I'd have one for the blog! He invited us all to Bangladesh any time we wanted. Sweet!




A Case for Standardisation
Apart from Nellie's team run (she went clear) on the Sunday at Rugby I might as well not have bothered going. She came out of the weave at pole 10 in Champ jumping, Champ agility and in the Crufts Singles. In the latter she almost shut down as she was so anxious about my distress. I was having kittens wondering what was happening.

I didn't get it at all. Later in the day the jumping 6/7 had 12 weaves and this time she had it sorted. I measured the pole distances with my feet and could see what the peoblem had been - the poles were JDA and were very tight. In the first three courses I had either hung back, gone ahead or pulled off and as a result she could not maintain her stride pattern AND keep her eye on the 'next thing' which was of course being cued by my position on each course. In the final course of the day the layout allowed me to stay with her and so she could feel confident about putting all her concentration into getting it right in the weaves. One relieved Mom.

I spent a long, long time teaching her the weaves and I knew I had done it properly. I also knew there was nothing wrong with her physically. She had just been doing longer distance weaves in the shows we had been to prior to Rugby and found it difficult to adjust, especially as she powers forward and extends in the weaves. She's a big, rangy girl!

At Gillingham First Contact weaves were used with the new recommended spacing. Nellie loves them. But little Dipsy (a chihuaha/jack russell cross - so tiny little dog!) that I train kept coming out at pole 10. She is such a good little weaving dog, so neat and forward we couldn't understand why she was doing this. 6 weaves fine, 12 no-go. And then we knew. For a little dog it is difficult to extend the stride to take up the difference in pole distance....

Luckily I bought some Vs that weekend and I put them out with my old Channels (that I will replace when I have another dog), my old RVA Vs and old RVA uprights (or growd up weaves as I call them :)) My goodness what a difference. No wonder some big dogs find it hard to adjust to minimum distance ( my old Premier channels) and many really small dogs find it hard to adjust to the new distance ones...



And of course the distance is cumulative. You can see that in the picture!

Dip, like so many Small dogs, will learn the new stride given the right approach. Dip is already doing them only very slightly Vd. I found out for Gina (her handler) what shows are using (at the ones she is going to) so she can train for each one. From January it should be easier because they will (so Bill Glover reassures me) be the same everywhere.

Meanwhile I went up to Trent Park and almost drove away again - JDA were the suppliers. Hadn't thought to ask them who was supplying their equipment! But Nellie remembered, kept her cool and won another grade 7 agility. Clever girl.

Agility Update

We went off to Dashin Dogs for two days competing where Nellie and I were rusty after almost 5 weeks not working together, but things improved at Wyre. Here we got 10 (2x5R) in Champ jumping and 6th in Champ agility and found ourselves in the Final running early. We put in the first clear and I was feeling quite happy about that until I was (politely) told off because her contacts had been too solid...I suppose I was still in 'she's only just come back into competing' mode rather than 'go for it and worry about it afterwards' mode. Stupid really as she came 4th and all top four dogs were on 36 seconds.....Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Next up Prestbury Park where we stuffed up the Champ jumping but came 4th in the
Champ agility. Nice surprise! We also got a 3rd in 7 jumping.

Sadly I lost Nellie for a few seconds at the Olympia semi - on a left box turn that was also an 'out' - it was a funny line. We were clear and came in at 35 seconds, I think only about three dogs out of qualifying. I know she could have easily been in the top places had I not mishandled that turn. That's agility. Onwards.

To Gillingham. Where we won the Grade 7 agility class prior to the Champ. I think everyone including me held our contacts (if that is what we do) so I was a bit stunned and very pleased. Sadly in the Champ jumping I had a funny turn! I completely forgot where I was on the course, started to feel like I was having some kind of faint (dizzy pressing feeling on my neck)and then just as suddenly it passed and I carried on but not before I had got poor Nellie E'd. Then later in the day she and I came 2nd in grade 7 jumping. Archie meanwhile came 10th in Anysize - against the large dogs!!!

On to Trent Park - which I have already mentioned.

South Devon. Some lovely trophies. For Nellie. And for Archie - who this time did the impossible and came THIRD against all the Small, Medium and Large dogs. My word!
Nellie came 2nd in C6/7 agility, 2nd in a very tight, handly g5-7 (more like a grade 7) Jumping, and 2nd in the EO qualifier. Golly!

And Iain is back in video (well, with his phone) mode :)

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And then Chippenham. Where she won a Grade 7 jumping on Saturday. Then won the Champ jumping on Sunday, came 9th in the Champ agility and so we went in to the Final running 18th. A slight detour just before the weaves and some very clean (not too, too solid - but I see in the clip that there was still room to push more on that run) contacts meant we came in 4th. But it was so good to run a Final and really go for it. There is nothing quite like the adrenaline rush of running instinctively, on an edge.

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It seems that Nellie and I have found our groove a bit. And because I am more confident so is she. Her strength and speed makes me feel more confident. So it is an upward spiral.

For much of this year I wanted to give up agility and really only continued with it for her. Not because she doesn't enjoy her life beyond agility - she does, but I knew it added something more. I think we have done around 12 or so shows this year. Very few! I was pretty miserable really and when she cut her pad I hit another low. Because I didn't think she'd heal properly at the start of it. It was then I realised I had been given a big kick. Now I knew I really did want to do this thing WITH her and that I needed to pick myself up and enjoy what I have, not dwell on what has been lost. So when we came back in to it all (thankfully) I felt my head had cleared. I am still making stupid mistakes (doesn't everyone?) but we are far more consistent. I am more confident, she is more confident. So to me that is a success for this year. We have hit one of our goals very firmly!! We have also qualified for the EO tryouts. If we get through next April, Sweden here we come :)

Meanwhile there is plenty to work on and some long periods of rest from agility to be had. Most important for her