HAPpy new YEAR!!!

Over to Herb!



Young Herb struts his stuff on the wisteria arch which has become the crowing perch of choice it seems :-) You can hear two other cockerels - one slightly further away across the field and the other - another young bantam - at a nearer neighbour. Near the end a sleepy owl hoots - perhaps woken by the crowing. Not long afterwards Herb fluttered up to the highest bar on this arch just near the top height of the hedge....with only a flappy leap to the top of the hedge necessary to propel him into new territories!! Hopefully he won't be quite that adventurous......We never had those problems with Bert, bless him, he never tried to flap anywhere.

Meanwhile Herb still has Maggie-chook to conquer - she is not going to relinquish her 'top hen' status too readily.....

So it is 2012. Lots of things to learn from last year. Some good, some bad.

No matter how healthy and gleamy and strong and bright eyed and full of vitality and LIFE your dog looks - they can still have a huge cancerous tumour growing inside them and there'll be nothing you can do about it. And chances are if you do spot something suspicious early whatever it is isn't going to be deadly. The deadly ones are much too insidious for that. When I took Nellie in for her yearly jabs/check in the sutumn, David the vet, who helped with Pop, commented how Nellie looked absolutely in perfect health. "Well we both know", I said " that isn't a guarantee of anything don't we." He knows how devastated I was to lose Pop, and he thought she was a beautiful girl too. He told me I just need some positive experiences after losing two apparently bright-eyed, vital, energetic, glossy coated full of life much loved dogs to insidious malignant cancers within 6 months of each other. Well, yes, I had to agree with him. It would be nice. But I can't stop looking and looking all the time, permanently anxious about Arche and Nellie. Even after a year.

It wasn't until someone I hardly knew took the trouble to listen to me talking about Pop and Henry and told me I needed to be careful because it sounded to them like I had depression that I realised it was back. I had it ten years ago for about two years. I went to work everyday, I was like an automaton - I did my job. I immersed myself in its demands. I was told to get something from the doctor to help but refused as I did not want to become dependent on anything. I hung on to the good bits of my life and there were many. So the big black pit could not completely drown me and it was Henry who kept me going and Archie who finally pushed me to the point where I could pull myself free. And Pop's arrival made sure I continued always looking forward, not back. Where would I have been without them needing me? I guess it was inevitable that losing Henry and Pop would kick start the whole thing again I suppose. Bound up as they were with such a difficult time in my life, the loss of them triggered all kinds of griefs that can be rationalised but never really resolved, in addition to the grief of losing them themselves when I loved them so. It took until that conversation in late May stood by an agility ring for me to realise that was what was happening to me again (this is quite common with depression apparently I have since discovered - many people don't realise this is what is happening to them until some way into it or even when they are coming through the other end of it. It is not until they find some 'light' that they realise how 'dark' things had been)It has taken this long to feel I want to look forward again, as opposed to making myself do so.

It can be easy to dismiss depression and those who experience it when you have never had it. Easier to do so when young too. I don't think I gave it a moment's thought when I was in my twenties - even though the twenties are a very vulnerable age for many. But, really, most people by the time they hit their thirties and forties should have developed a bit of humility and understand that it is really easy to become very fragile at times. Life has a habit of knocking us around the more we live it.

That strangers or people you really don't know that well can often be much kinder than people you regard as trusted friends. I found that out ten years ago and this year again I have been reminded that sometimes it is better to tell people 'no more' than cope with their indifference to your feelings when really all you need is some understanding, while all they want is something from you that you are not in a fit state to give. I guess that is the measure of a friendship really: that a friend can be there for you and not demand anything back because they know you are not really coping even though you are putting on a very good show of seeming to be. Only a really good friend can do that. Sadly a lot of people just want something - in this particular case I had given a great deal of my time and care to help them for almost the entire length of the friendship, so it was especially hurtful to find that when I needed support there was no proper understanding of just how unhappy I was and no allowances made.

So that's the bad stuff.

The good?

I have learned a lot about chickens' health and issues. This bunch here are happy to roost up at night in their new coop now and it is a far better arrangement than I thought it would be thus far. Still some tweaking to do but moving forward. I want to look after all my animals properly, to do right by them, to bring out the best in them (yes, even my chickens :-)). So it is satisfying to me to find a new way to be doing that and to be learning more to do it even better as I go along.

Archie is healing more and more. I know the staples will be fine to come out next week judging by the way his scar is scabbing. He is such a good little chap putting up with the bonnet and the crating with much patience. For such a cuddle monster it is a big ordeal to be cut off like he has to be for much of the time but we try to make it up to him when he has short 'time out' with us in the evenings. I hope that in his 11th year he will continue to enjoy his walks and the little bits of agility he does as much as he has done in 2011. I have missed watching the tips of his little ears flapping up and down on walks in recent weeks.

Nellie and I began to develop a much more consistent agility partnership in the latter part of last year for which I am really grateful and I look forward to next year to develop it even more. As she has gained in confidence and my confidence increased she has gained more speed. I trained all last year completely on my own (apart from a half hour session with Lesley back in March) and on balance I am happier that way, with just an occasional one-to-one, though now and again rather than just once though maybe! I do like the social side of group classes very much and the chance to learn from others who are working at the same level but, apart from Nellie's small pup class I went to for a few months when we were starting out, which was a lot of fun and just what we needed at the time, I haven't really found one since that has fitted Nellie and my needs over the last couple of years as a more experienced partnership. We have had some fun trying to find one the year before last but you are really only going to get meaningful constructive feedback and a valuing of individual strengths and weaknesses in a one hour long group class with no more than three dog/handlers, or one-to-one. Any more and it can easily become a 'just doing agility' session with a few shouted 'well dones'. I could 'do agility' at the field I rent if I was so inclined. Mostly I have discovered this year that I needed space to allow myself to try things out more and reflect on different aspects of my and Nellie's agility more.

Nellie is an absolute joy to live with and do things with. We are spending the winter doing little bits of this and that trying to pin some things down a bit more - fill in some of the 'holes' that I know now are there having learned more in the last 4 years than I knew when I got her. And, of course, putting back in what gets taken out during a season of competition.

Finally bought a Susan Salo dvd I had been meaning to get for months! Having borrowed a different one for a good while and worked through some of those very useful exercises earlier in the year I wanted to explore further.
I am enjoying the process of learning about them, and Nellie is really enjoying each 'problem solving' situation I put in front of her. She is so fluid, effortless and powerful in the way she moves. Some of that is her innate talent, some is the training/tricks we have done since she was tiny and some is simply her lifestyle. Whatever it is I love watching her move! She watches the dvds with great interest and commitment :-) Here she turns to me as if to say 'Did you get that bit mom?'

Lots of apparently disconnected things hit me as I worked through the other exercises last year that I really didn't anticipate and already with these new ones I find myself connecting up other ideas that spring off the basic tasks. It certainly keeps my brain fizzing away. My little agility groups will have fun with these new ones. We'll enjoy playing around with the distances for each dog which takes a bit of time to set up - but then the alternative is to set up just one size of each grid and that's no good. It'll give us a focus for the next couple of months and feed in to other things we do.

And as always I have Iain to thank for his support and determined encouragement to simply enjoy my dogs and try to work Nellie to the best of my abilities.

So, lots to leave behind in 2011 and lots to take forward into 2012.

Happy New year!