Nellie-Bean's blog

Mission "veg patch" continues :-)

2012-01-29T11:49:00.000-08:00

The transformation of the vegetable patch took a leap forward once the covered chook pen went. After dismantling it, Iain removed all the paving slabs that we had layed down on the earth inside it in our (failed) attempt to stop the rats tunnelling in. Then he dug a huge hole, filled it with hardcore and then began to create this cemented paved area which he left for a couple of weeks covered up to harden off. Now he is building brick compost bays on top of the paving to make it totally rat proof - they might like the warmth of a compost heap but they are NOT welcome in this one...They aren't welcome

in the current one but that hasn't stopped them from getting in. Now the only route into them is through the lids which as Iain concedes were not the best design, but we have learned.

The new compost lids will be made from the old sections of the chicken pen -hinged to open easily. The benefits are two-fold: we are recycling items we would otherwise have to get rid of (although some of the wire panels will also be useful to dry onions and garlic in the summer and for protecting newly planted seeds from birds) and

the wire will allow rain to add moisture to the composting waste through the summer months. The old PVC roof cover will double as a compost bay cover through the winter. Using mostly reclaimed bricks to build the bays will, we hope, make them blend in with the, believe it or not, Listed Victorian outhouse (complete with old 'thunderbox' hole!)behind it.

You can see how much room the pen took up! As well as the three bays and a clear way in front of them for wheelbarrow access we should also be able to create another

long raised bed and a smaller square one that I plan to use for carrots (ie no compost - just lots of sand mixed in). We hope to re-build all the existing raised beds using oak 'sleeper' style lengths to make them more sturdy. The current gravel boards aren't too happy with the strain placed on them when we dig up the potatoes.

Oak will look nicer too but it is more expensive so we plan to do it a couple of beds at a time. I hope to have a square herb bed too and as most herbs like well drained soil I want to be able to rotate a little with the carrots. I suppose it will become a proper kitchen garden by the time we have finished. Raised beds, compost bays and greenhouse all in one efficient area. And the chickens close by to catch thrown worms and donate their poo to the compost effort. Very Monty Don/ Hugh F-W :) Though, erm, without their rather larger budgets sadly.

The garlic is now coming through, the frosts have given it a kick start. I have some tulip bulbs from last year that I decided to put in low terracotta bowls for this year down there and they are pushing their leaves through. I keep telling them to get back under - winter isn't over yet and they're not due up til April....

So where is the new chook coop? Well Iain used some of our stock of old bricks (everyone round here hoards old bricks, pamments, flints and anything else that could be used to fill in, build or create something) to make a brick and pamment plinth for this coop. How clever! So now the chooks have a space beneath the coop itself, as well as the field shelter (and the bay bush) to go under out of the wind or rain when either are coming from the south. We intend to put a 6ft x6ft coppice panel along the fence line here and plans are afoot to create a small shelter between the coop and the field shelter with a see-through plastic roof of some sort to let light through, and then it'll be even better for them on that side of the garden.

When the wind or rain comes from the north the chooks have an old brick plinth built some years before we arrived under a yew tree. This spot doubles as a useful dustbathing crater location as it stays relatively dry under this yew tree, which borders the lawn part of the garden, in all but the most horrid of weather, and as a south facing sun trap for preening as well as morning or afternoon naps!

The coop is much easier to keep clean for them and this is I believe one of the many reasons why they have adapted well to it. I can poo pick, replenish aubiose and diatom, rub diatom all over the perches and wipe over the light misting that can develop on the inside of the roof, when the weather is cold (chickens, and their poo, generate quite a lot of heat did you know!) and the air is still, in around ten minutes - tops - before I leave for work. And thanks to the pamments at the back that Iain laid I don't have to stand in the mud to do it. OK so I sometimes find I have bits of aubiose stuck to my clothes or sleeves daubed in diatom when I get to work but if anyone has noticed (unlikely - everyone's far to harrassed) they have been too polite to say anything.

There is, however, possibly more risk of warmth loving red mite moving in in droves now than in their old pen (not saying they weren't in that pen, just that they never became a problem for the chooks), it is still far less likely than if they were in a wooden coop. So far, with the deterrents of plenty of ventilation, vaseline smeared on and into every cranny as well as liberal amounts of diatom sprinkled in the aubiose and under the plastic sheets I have inside the roosting area and the nest boxes to make it easy to lift the bedding out, the dreaded red mite have not taken up residence. Yet........I'm crossing everything because they are evil little b********s.

Spring is definitely on its way. Robins are making territorial displays and Herb has conquered Maggie- chook!! Saw the deed last weekend :-) This really is good news as it proves not only that he has enough attitude to compensate for his slightly smaller size but that he doesn't need to be bigger than them either, which of course a cockerel usually is. Partly that is how they intimidate the girls into submitting to their fertilising attentions plus of course their hormones. Herb has all the hormones but has to be a bit more gentlemanly and attentive (and determined :-) ) to achieve his ends! Maggie's top hen and a medium size chicken (Black Rock which is a Rhode Island Red x Barred Plymouth Rock - mine are the proper pure strain from the original Scottish hatchery - beware of imitations!), while Herb's a Barnvelder x New Hampshire Red bantam ! The NHR bit gives him that bit more bulk and height which made it possible to take him in with a flock of hybrids. Phoebe, Fliss and Belle are Black Rocks too while Fanny-Anne is a White Sussex, Edna a Cuckoo maran x, and Tilly is a Bluebell which is a Rhode Island Red x Maran. All of them are just a little bigger than he is. Phoebe and Tilly more so. But he's standing his ground and, now at about 10 months old, gaining confidence! So the expression 'it's not the size of the bird but the fight in the bird' is, in this case, true.

And it is definately Edna laying some of the eggs we are now finding - at least one most days now. I found her just leaving a lovely warm one in the nest the other day. Herb was hovering anxiously until she reappeared. Maggie was next. As I clean the coop every morning she keenly investigates the arrangements and 'chats' to me about what I'm doing. Being treaded by Herb pretty much sealed her resumption of egg laying duties. He knows when they are ready!

Everyone needs a bit of rubber in their lives..

2012-01-21T11:33:00.000-08:00

....perhaps not the kinky sort, just the agility sort :-). But then I can only speak for myself and I'm am old-fashioned girl, sorry...

Bit the bullet, ordered a rubber and aluminium A frame from 'Jump for Joy' and - joy of joys - it arrived today. Just in time for one of my little groups to try it - they thought it was great!!

The dibond underneath the rubber should increase the A frame's longevity living, as it will, outside all year round. I think that is what tipped it for me, really. I have no-where to store or use my equipment out of the weather. Whatever I buy takes its chances! Anyway, that, combined with the price, made it a no-brainer for me.

In the current climate it pays to work with both painted and rubber methinks - whatever is decided for the future nothing is going to happen quickly. It is a huge financial investment for individuals like me and small clubs to make. We shall see I guess.

So, for the time being at least, I will be happy to alternate between the painted surface on my dog walk and seesaw and the rubber on my A frame. Once we are up and running again on full contacts after the winter, Nellie and I can practise the 'horrid' contact entries with the A frame. Nellie's an excellent problem solver; so long as I handle appropriately she'll work it out pretty quick.

It certainly looks very smart...and I am really pleased with it. Thanks John and Theresa!

An EGG!!!!!

2012-01-18T13:03:00.000-08:00

Finally, we have one of our own eggs. That we can eat. Yay!

Not having had even just one of our own that we could eat since the middle of November when I was thowing away as many as 4 eggs a day because of the Ivermectin (for that early spotted scaley-leg some of them had) and then throwing the ones after that in case Belle, with her bumblefoot, had laid it while she was being treated with Cephacare, which requires a withdrawal of eggs from consumption for the duration of the treatment AND seven days afterwards, you can perhaps forgive the ripples of excitement emanating from yours truly :-) Being kept inside the covered pen for that treadle feeder and to keep Belle's vetwrap dry (although we know now that it wasn't necessary - see later) stressed them out enough to stop egg laying anyway.

Not only all that - the weather dictated at least a minor,if not a complete, moult in all those old enough (that leaves only Herb and he doesn't lay eggs anyway, naturally!) and on top of that 'the MOVE' from covered pen to proper coop will no doubt have played a part in a) inducing more serious moults in the ones that are inclined that way, and b) making them a bit too stressed to lay any eggs even if they hadn't gone into moult.

I'd say that lot would guarantee a unanimous downing of tools in any flock of chickens.

Chickens don't like change on the whole - they will adapt well enough if the conditions are right for them but really, until the 'new' becomes the 'norm' they'd really rather have things like they used to be. Please. Once accepted they are fine with it and quickly forget the old norm.

Some people think that it is cruel to re-home ex-battery hens for this reason. While the life they are (were!) forced to lead is inhumane and disgraceful many ex-batts die very quickly after being re-homed because of the stress of having to adapt to so many different things far too quickly. However, if done with much patience and by taking in at least half a dozen so they are company for each other, and keeping them separate from other hens for a while, it can be done.

I might sound like I really want the eggs , and don't get me wrong they are lovely, tasty, proper eggs, but really I quite like the girls to have a break from egg laying for several weeks. They are not machines - even though they are hybrids.

I can report that my lot are happy in their new coop in so far as they go into it, they settle in it and they are quiet in it all night. As they roost up I hear happy sounds which are really just a range of noises that chickens will make when they are contented (they have a range of 46 noises apparently and you will only hear the full range if they have a cockerel with them - hens really are almost always happier if they have a man about even if they pretend otherwise!). At this stage, having observed them closely for many weeks trying to evaluate their overall health, all I needed to prove to me that this coop was the better way to move forward with them was an egg - laid in the nest box off the side and that is exactly (or should that be eggsactly - sorry) where I found it. Complete with a bit of aubiose (the material I use for the floor of the coop and the nest boxes) stuck on it. A nice light brown speckley egg. Aww!

Not absolutely sure who laid it but it wasn't Herb obviously! Edna is the only one who looks like her comb is more red than the others - their combs redden when they are coming into lay (ie when they are matured enough or after a moult). I did ask her but she just looked a little embarrassed and carried on eating sunflower hearts with the others :-)

Anyway, it is good to see them looking so well with their new fluffy bits. Whilst they have all to some degree moulted none of them, not even Fanny-Ann, has shown any sign of being withdrawn or low as a result of it. Which, given the degree to which they have lost feathers and had to re-grow them - and that takes a lot of energy from a hen - is again perhaps a sign that the changes are good ones for them. I have been sprinkling poultry spice in their mix of pellets and corn to give them a pep but to be honest they have still been doing all the things they like to do in the garden with the same energy and gusto - but just doing them whilst bald and tatty looking...

'Operation Belle' continues with a now weekly vetwrap change on her claw. Iain holds her while I do the inspection, cotton wool + vaseline and wrap bit. We make a good team, though I suspect Belle might have something else to say on the subject. She doesn't mind having the vet wrap on, it certainly doesn't impede her in any of the usual activites she likes to engage in - not even vigorous deep crater dustbathing, and because they are on grass not mud in the garden, and then nice and dry at night, the vet wrap remains intact. I think we have been doing this vetwrapping for about 6 weeks now, which is quite usual even when it is an uncomplicated bumblefoot as she had. It takes a while for the 'roof' of the small cavity that forms around the original wound to come back down to the same level as it was before. It's getting there. I think by the time we have finished the roll of wrap - she'll be footloose and vetwrap free.

Who put a new battery in her then?

2012-01-15T15:53:00.000-08:00

...was the question a couple on Studland beach asked me after having watched Nellie charge to and from the water's edge and dunes continuously for quite a distance along the beach... The dunes offer a good view being a little higher than the edge of the sea so Archie and I were meandering up and down in those but Nellie's efforts to convince me that being by the water was way better did not go un-noticed by me - or this couple. When I eventually made my way back to the sea edge to tell her she had won (:-)) they were smiling at her and marvelling at her energy and general gorgeousness and of course she lapped it up.

Later on I was taking these pictures and another couple stopped to chat about them as they had been watching me whizzing around with my phone trying to get the light right etc.

We ended up talking about all sorts of different things from dogs to teaching. They asked me if I was an artist. Based on the pictures I was taking they thought I had a good eye for composition. I must admit I have taken better, but it was kind of them to say so. They said they don't bother going abroad anymore, they just come down here to Dorset to stay in their holiday place down here. They were taken with Nellie too and talked of wanting a border collie themselves again.

It was beautiful down there - a keen breeze, warm sunshine and definitely staying lighter. Two weeks ago it was dark when I left the beach at the same time. This time, it was still light. Got talking to another chap further along the beach who works as a Project Manager on Canary Wharf but longs to live down here. He comes down here every spare minute for the wreck diving which he enthused about. Much as I love being in the sea swimming and I really enjoy historical things, diving on wrecks gives me the goosebumps. All I have to do is remember that people died in the wreck and that's it for me. I know they are long gone but no, can't face it.

Nellie, Archie and I managed to have the odd game of football with a tennis ball. Archie loves trying to duck and dive around the ball to anticipate and block. Henry and Pop used to love to do this too. There'd be the three of them in play bow mode circling, with Nellie at the back trying to keep them all 'herded' to me. Now and again Henry would be overcome by the sight of the tennis ball and grab it before I could choose where to kick it. We'd all cry 'Foul'(well I would and the others would bark their agreement:-)) and then he'd drop it and move back a tiny fraction to allow me to kick it off along the smooth hard sand, with all three in hot pursuit - and Nellie doing an outrun around them! Archie hasn't been to Studland since last year when he strained his shoulder running after the tennis ball and doing a sideways somersault. By the time I was completely happy he was well enough to charge about after a ball again the summer 'dogs on lead' rule was in force on the beach.

The last time I went down I took Nellie on her own, as Arch still had his staples and went to work that day with dad. So it was good to see him enjoying this game again and barking happily at the top of his voice!

It's been a year since Pop died. The man from London wanted to tell me about the dogs he had loved and lost so we chatted about them and about mine for a little while as we looked out at Old Harry Rocks and the sea (in the background of these two final pictures). When he said 'I bet they loved it here didn't they?' it brought into focus a vision of the two of them charging off in to the water after the ball, heads and tails dripping with sea water, loving the moment and the life they had. It is a good memory.

What better way to spend a winter Sunday afternoon....

2012-01-11T10:54:00.000-08:00

...than go for a really good walk for a few hours with friends and a bunch of dogs in a beautiful place and then sprawl in a pub afterwards next to a warm fire?

We have had snowdrops just along on the footpath since the start of January and I see other clumps along lanes beginning to show but I'm not going to mention the crocus as they are just being silly. We have two crazy ones flowering in our lawn for goodness sake.

PS Have you noticed that the afternoons are ever so slowly beginning to draw out again? At 4.30 today out with the dogs it was - I'll write it quietly - still properly daylight :-)

'Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Oh-Oh Freedom!'

2012-01-04T12:20:00.000-08:00

I'm sure you can work out the tune......

Bonnet gone!!

The crate will be put away and, as of tomorrow, he is allowed to have normal walks. The staples came out very easily and the wound looks great.

Where shall we go tomorrow I wonder?!

On an entirely different note - isn't it fantastic that they actually, finally, got two of the - now - men who killed Stephen Lawrence? Somebody in the Dobson clan, his father I think, apparently shouted 'Shame on you' to the court as he left. Sorry, but the shame is most definitely in your court and with those who have been sentenced and with those who are still walking free, like these two have been for 19 years. I remember the shock and horror of that crime very clearly and hoped very much that these two would now, after all this time, get the outcome they clearly deserved. Stephen Lawrence's parents have been through their own personal hell for almost two decades, and Stephen's friend has had to live his life in the shadow of his own misery at being able only to run away as his best friend died in the street. At least these two can pay a personal price for what they did - for no other reason than racial hatred. They almost certainly won't ever get to bring the others who were in that gang to justice, one of whom will be the person who actually wielded the knife. But perhaps they will pay in other ways? We can hope.

oh my giddy aunt

2012-01-03T11:18:00.000-08:00

Once I had turned one seesaw back to its upright position, managed to man(woman?)handle the A frame from its 'belly-up' state to the right way up and change the angle it faced into the wind to try to prevent it rolling off again, moved everything that had been under the A frame before the wind took it back to where it needed to be under the frame in its new place,.... and retrieved the flat tunnel from the barbed wire fence that surrounds my equipment area, Nellie and I could do a few bits and pieces.

The Old English word that 'giddy' comes from is 'gydig'. And that word meant 'frenzied' apparently. That's a pretty good description of the weather overnight and well into this morning around here! Judging by the sounds from outside as I write it looks like we may be in for much the same tonight.

'Wet' doesn't really cover the condition of the ground at the moment. 'Drenched' might be better. Or 'Boggy'? My field is suffering quite badly for the first time with so much rain over so many weeks.

Nellie has never been this muddy from being there as she was today!

And, ahem, neither have I! Yuk! This was all pristine beforehand. And it wasn't actually raining when we were there, just standing water over and under the grass.

Mind you this is not as wet as I was on New Year's Eve, when I tried to cross a large peaty boggy puddle part of the path Nellie and I were on across the heath whilst trying to text someone at the same time....That'll teach me to step onto a branch without first checking it is stable as it meant I landed in said boggy peat puddle on my back with cold water coming into my clothes from all directions. It was the phone or me and I made a split second decision in favour of the phone. Nellie did come back to peer at me as I shrieked and swore. Bathing in cold sea water on a warm day in April or October is one thing but in a deep puddle in December is quite another so I think the bad language was excusable. Not especially impressed, Nellie gave me a look that seemed to say 'Oh it is you!' and went off to investigate something far more interesting. I still had a squelchy hour walk back to the van. Joy.

I was especially pleased to see the chickens when we got home today. As I went off to work this morning I did wonder if they would still be in the garden when I returned. Huddled behind the hedge to escape the worst of the wind they looked a pretty forlorn bunch.

It's poor Fanny-Ann-chook I feel most sorry for. She won the 'who will lose the most feathers in the shortest time span' trophy claws down. Tilly-chook bowed out of the competition gracefully to do her moulting with less fanfare and flourish, leaving Fan looking like 'Bride of Frankenstein' - virtually bald. A couple of weeks in she is more 'Miss Havisham' like now with new strong feathers coming through, some of which have begin to fluff out ( Her white colouring helps to create this particular impression I feel :-)) She is still half the size she should be though. Compared to the newly feathered up Maggie-chook who you can see nearby in the other picture and who is relishing her new grown fluffy bits, Fanny-Ann is looking quite moth-eaten and pathetic, poor girl.

It is natural for them to moult when the amount of daylight reduces in the autumn, but this always seems the wrong time of year to be flinging off one's clothes in broad daylight to me. So much more sensible to do it in Summer, or even Spring.....

If you haven't yet read it, can I draw your attention to the ChickenStreet blog on my blogs to read list? As of now our Welfare laws have made a first step to improving the lives of caged chickens that produce most of the eggs sold in this country. Our egg producers have complied with the new regulations which will make a difference to the quality of life that such chickens experience in this country. The costs of these changes will have an impact on prices you pay BUT please do not be tempted to buy cheaper imports. As you will read, several countries have not implemented these changes and will continue to use caging that does not comply with EU regs, simply because they haven't bothered yet........By supporting British producers you are making it possible for even more far reaching changes to be made - eventually. And making it possible for them to stay in business despite the investment. Some of the eggs they produce will end up as ingredients in other food stuff - in powder, batters, sauces.....You can support British farmers and higher welfare by choosing products like these that use British eggs. Ideally of course, all chickens would be 'free-range' so if you can, support the farmers who sell Free range, or even Organic. Although 'eggs laid by chickens that have access to the outdoors' are another option, just be aware they are probably NOT free-ranging at all - especially if the 'access' is through small pop holes in the side of a barn. Chances are most of those chickens will never see daylight. Chickens have a limited field of vision and will be very timid about going somewhere they cannot see into or on towards. Unless they accidently push their heads through the covering of a pop hole they won't go out. And even then they may not. Such chicken behaviour is well documented. I saw it for myself after I kept my chickens in the old big pen(for Belle's claw and for that feeder) for ten days. Despite the fact they had spent either almost three years (Black Rocks) or one year (newbies) here free-ranging prior to those ten days, I had to encourage them out with sprinkled corn. Once they twigged, they were off, commando-raid style in all directions into the garden, corn forgotten.

HAPpy new YEAR!!!

2012-01-01T12:09:00.000-08:00

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!

Christmas day

2011-12-26T13:44:00.000-08:00

Christmas seemed to arrive in a rush this year! Scurried about at dusk on Christmas Eve looking for a holly tree with berries to bring some branches into the house only to realise the blackbirds had stripped them all off. Luckily a kindly neighbour had stored some branches in the grass earlier in the winter, covered them with an old net curtain and so helped me out! Put up decorations and did the tree late on Christmas eve. Just hadn't really got the energy for it before. But I am very fond of our different decorations - the decorations from my maternal Grandparents wedding cake go on the top of the tree, some lovely old fragile glass baubles from my childhood and others items bought during our marriage so it was good to see them all again. Sent cards this year on Thursday - this is unheard of for me!! The only thing I had done is buy pressies - I hate rushing buying them because then it is so easy to end up getting stuff that just screams 'bought quickly, didn't think about it enough' and I can't see the point of it. That bit starts in the summer so I can wait to be inspired.

With my mum installed in our place Archie stayed with her and her dog Scout joined us for a walk for a couple of hours all over Hod and Hambledon hills. All 6 dogs had a lovely time. Nellie tried hard to herd Chester for a while.....

With my mum on starter, Iain and me on the main course and Mandy on pudding everyone mucked in in our little kitchen. It was a relaxing day.

And I won Monopoly - for the first time ever. Years ago when I was a child I used to spend a lot of time staying with a cousin who was a much longed for and loved only child. We got along fine most of the time, I was company for her even though I was a couple of years younger. Used to having things her way much of the time she wasn't fond of losing games so when we played Monopoly she would stack the odds very much in her favour by, well, cheating! I was only ever allowed to buy the blue streets and the orange. She liked the browns so they were off limits as were all the others. Needless to say I lost every game and soon became less than keen to play it, unless forced to. In those instances I think I may have pretended not to know her 'rules' and bought something I shouldn't have, just to make her throw a strop and fold the board up......A strop and silent treatment (which she couldn't sustain for long) were infinitely preferable to playing Monopoly. I use this anecdote to illustrate a dog's need to 'win' the tug/toy on a regular basis. Who wants to play a game they can never win? If you have taught your dog that playing with you with the toy is fun then no-one 'loses' anyway.

I would just add that my cousin is a very grown up person now! Though she does have a shoe fetish....

Happy Christmas wishes......

2011-12-22T05:12:00.000-08:00

Nellie-Bean and Archie audition as shepherds for the local nativity play!

This picture is a bit of a cobbled together job. Archie had had his fight with a barbed wire fence only two days before and because this year I hadn't got the same enthusiasm for a Christmas pic before hand, nor the energy or time to think of anything exciting and new, it had to be something simple and easy. If you look carefully you can see I am cunningly disguised as a fleece blanket complete with sheep whilst holding both dogs in the porch (Archie especially carefully). Two flowery tea towels and some tinsel complete the 'look'. Couldn't quite bring myself to sprinkle straw all over the entrance to the living room though ;-) Still Nells and Marp look fab and that's the main thing.

Archie had his stitches out yesterday but four hours later, despite him having been completely rested in the crate still with his bonnet which was the vet's instruction for 48 hours to protect the wound, I saw a small amount of gaping in one part and rushed him back to the vet. The middle of the wound had begun to break down a bit and so that section has now been stapled. The top and bottom third are looking good. This bit of skin is right on where he flexes his leg - even going for a pee, getting up and moving in his crate flexes it. I think I was naive to think it would be straightforward after the stitches. Stupid. So two more weeks of crating, bonnet and 10 mins on lead and harness only 'walks'. To be frank, he is not even having that now. If he is on his feet for five minutes to toilet and sniff that's it - twice a day. Though obviously the crate is big enough for him to move very freely in - it was used in our old estate car and filled the boot. How on earth do the dogs recover from this sort of thing when the owners don't have or even know about crates, when the dogs are crashing round the house with their bonnets on, jumping off steps and so on. I have been soooo careful with him and yet.....Good news is that most of the wound is healing really well and looks very healthy and even the bit that has had a set back is very, very healthy skin and it is all so clean. So we are on the right track. Christmas and New Year plans have been changed to balance out his and Nellie's needs. Iain will be dismantling the old chook pen and I will be painting the book shelves we had made in the dining room almost 18 months ago....We have 10 days of holiday together (from the point when Iain walks through the door any minute) and so we can be sure that Archie is not left alone while Nellie can have good walks and we can take it in turns to enjoy those with her. Clouds and silver linings.

Can I wish all of you who read this blog a very Merry Christmas and happiness and good health in 2012? There you go, I did it anyway!

Thank you for reading, thank you for sharing that you read it and thank you for caring. This year, even more than usual, many different people have started a conversation with: 'Hi Helen, you don't know me but I love your blog.....' One lady went on to tell me how she and a bunch of other people who don't blog themselves, but like to read various ones, were all giving me virtual hugs, 'holding' my hand and sending so many loving thoughts to Pop and me after her tumour was diagnosed. What a lovely thing to do.

I realised recently (still learning about blog stuff!) that I could get the stats on blog hits so I now know lots of people read it, and that it is read in many different countries. It never occurred to me when I started writing it though that anybody unknown to me would read it. In fact I think if I had known I'd never have dared to write anything. Much too scary! I was just writing it for a few friends and family who knew me and knew Nellie - or so I thought.

But I have been quite amazed at how many of you are 'silent' blog addicts:-).You might not comment (it is easy to do as anonymous by the way!)but read and follow with great interest!

Someone said 'Hello Archie' at a show recently, a lady I have never met before, and followed it up with, 'he looks so small compared to how he looks on the blog' and so the penny dropped in my brain ;-). I have been reprimanded on numerous occasions when I haven't felt like writing anything for a while and people have even been worried about me when I have been a bit quiet.

I thought people would only be interested in things to do with agility or dog training on the whole so didn't write about much else very often at the start but so many people over the last four or so years have sidled up and said 'I really liked reading that one about your chickens or house or walks or holiday or garden or pictures or (even) opinions you expressed about..' etc that those 'other life' things have nudged their way forward more often.

I have, as someone pointed out to me, opened up a window on my world and, at times, into my heart, and met some very kind people as a consequence.

Thank you all of you. Have a peaceful festive season with your dogs and other family :-)

One finds that all one really needs to be especially comfortable on a sofa is a cushion for one's head

2011-12-20T07:34:00.000-08:00

Her ladyship as I found her this morning.....

She is rather partial to a pillow. Strawberry is used for this purpose in her van crate. But a sofa offers other delights. We all share this sofa I might add.

She worked hard yesterday though. For the first time I needed her strong character in a stooge dog role. Pop was my stooge for a good while. So kind and trusting and easy going - quick sniff then off with mom. No side at all. Pop was brilliant at putting other dogs at their ease and ignoring defensiveness issues but she would not have liked the situation I needed Nellie for today as she would have found it too intimidating. Henry used to come in to Thursday classes to show a solid wait - I'd ask him for a down wait and I'd demonstrate how I taught him to do that even with me doing stuff with the dogs and owners all around him. He was also brilliant for demonstrating a long distance 'watch me' -I'd ask him to wait, go down the hall and then ask him to 'watch me' from there. They were always amazed by the way he locked eyes with me. Such a clever little chap. He helped quite a few people understand that jack russells are really quite trainable (and keen to learn) despite all the nonsense out there about how impossible it is. Archie has come into his own too as a stooge in my Thursday classes - ignoring other dogs when he needs to and socialising nicely when that's needed too, especially with the young dogs. He has quite a fan club! Nellie doesn't take any c**p though so where Arch will just ignore or give a low, polite grumble before turning away when an over lively older dog tries to jump on his head Nellie, who has quite a strong personality, will stand her ground (she's happy for pups and especially small dogs to do this on the whole though!) I don't need that particular strength in her in my Thursday groups at the moment (thankfully) but for this appointment I needed that ability to stand her ground and be confident and well balanced enough to bounce back from any repercussions. In short I needed a sociable and polite dog that is also assertive but not aggressive with bad mannered dogs. Nellie it is then.

I was cornered by a lady with a beautiful collie boy about the same age as Nellie over two years ago. She arrived at the farm when I was teaching an agility class and demanded I help her or she would have to give her dog away. What is it with people? He was 'too strong' for her and would not come back from other dogs or focus on her. Well, she didn't want to come to the hall (because he was 'too strong on a lead') but she was clearly desperate so I offered for her to come to my field and while I taught a couple of people and their dogs she worked through some focus stuff and recalls (using a line)with either me or Gina alongside her. Although he was improving and focusing nicely and his recalls were coming along there was, to my mind, still quite a lot of work to do when she suddenly didn't call again....I was so afraid she had given the dog away and didn't want to tell me that I couldn't face calling her. I would have been too upset.

Fast forward two years and suddenly six weeks ago I get a call out of the blue. It turns out that two years ago she had obviously decided she had got what she wanted, even though I felt differently, and so had struck out on her own. Now though he had attacked another dog that would not leave (its owner could not recall it) when he was playing ball with her. No damage done but still very scary and definitely unacceptable behaviour. We talked it through - I was having highlights at the time - no peace for the wicked. From what she told me on the phone it was resolvable. I told her what to do next time all those factors arose together and she was happy.

Last week I get another call. A friend with her own collie took him out with hers and when the friend went to have a chat with another dog she knew, in he went. Again no damage done physically to the dog I am told but I know how I would be feeling if it was my dog at the receiving end. His owner was beside herself and so she booked me to go and see her one-to-one. Which I did yesterday, having told her last week that she must get a basket muzzle immediately and use it.

This lady is in her 70s (she's fit and wiry) I might add and although she has had dogs all her life it was obvious to me before all of this, way back, that she was unhealthily emotionally entangled with the dog. It is always good to see people and their dogs at home and anyone who has ever done this kind of thing will probably be able to predict exactly what was going on in this set up. Anyway, after popping the muzzle on (she hadn't felt able to take him out with it on as she 'didn't think he'd like it' even though I'd told her he wouldn't..) off we went with Nellie trotting along off lead doing her 'I'm out for a walk with my mom, and I am more than happy to be joined by another dog I have never met before' look on her face and confident body language. Off lead he managed to get the muzzle off twice - it needed tweaking - but in neither instance did he bother with Nellie. I just adjusted it and he fought it once or twice, but he was so pleased to be out (he hadn't been out since the last call - the owner was too emotional and scared and didn't want to put the muzzle on and the friend wouldn't trust him) and that he soon forgot about it and, when on the lead, the owner was able to walk him along with it on much more easily than she had with his 'anti-pull harness' she had been using.

After a little while with them out and about and even running about together doing play 'skips' along side each other I tried a bit of treat giving. I have always encouraged my dogs to see other dogs coming in close to me when they are around me themselves as a positive thing by giving 'guest dogs' a treat first and then very quickly following it up with a treat for mine. It has encouraged them to like another dog having a treat from me first because it means they will have one too. So Nellie did her well mannered 'guests first' thing with this collie several times and he was fine too. And then I asked the owner to do the same in reverse, Nellie first and then her own dog. Well this was too much for him, as I suspected it would be - and he went in at Nellie.

He didn't realise he couldn't use his teeth though....(which was what I wanted him to find out) and she simply stood right up on her toes, hackles up and told him what she thought of his 'manners' in strong dog terms: teeth bared, firm growl, strong eyes. As I say I knew she wouldn't use her teeth and I knew he couldn't and so I knew he could do what he was likely to do but that he would not be hurt by her at all. I did not want him to be afraid of other dogs (he isn't) but he needed to be brought up short politely but oh so firmly in a language he understands.

The speech bubble over his head read 'WTF!!!!****!!!'

He was rather more respectful afterwards and gave off some calming signals when she gave him 'the look' a little while later.

The owner isn't to be trying this around other dogs just yet - other people almost certainly will not like their dogs being set up, and some of the dogs might not be polite and yet very firm in the way Nellie was with him. Or they might be really scared. But he should have worked out that being a possessive bully and trying to use his teeth on other dogs in the way he has been doing won't now pay off. And the owner has seen that he can't actually hurt another dog with the muzzle on so she should relax a bit out with him near other dogs, which might in turn make him less reactive when other dogs are nearby..........

We're some way off him having the assertive owner he needs. She has been letting him rule the roost at home for quite some time. It is only because he is innately actually a nice natured dog that he isn't a complete monster. You'll know the advice I have given her - all pretty much dog sense. And designed to get the balance back into their relationship so that she is in charge and he is not. I got a call later telling me that he was 'annoyed with her and was sulking' because she was insisting on attention on her terms, not his. You can imagine my response.....

She says she feels more confident to go out with him now; we spent quite a bit of time working through the muzzle and how to use and adjust it and discussing the psychology of it for the dog. The more relaxed she is the more walks he can have - better for him physically and mentally. He also needs to lose a lot of weight. He's put on a lot in two years and she was horrified when I showed her what Nellie has - and she's entire. That should help to improve his life quality too.

I am sure this will need following up several times but if she has the will to improve things - and she definitely does not want to go on like she has done which is a good sign - then she can turn it around. I hope so anyway.

Nellie and I followed it up with a good walk in the rain on the heath meeting other dogs - including a lost Gordon Setter called Finn who we stuck on Nellie's lead and carted back to the car park where I'd last seen the owners calling for him. I've got a cold now anyway, despite all my efforts to not get ill all term, I get it once again in the holidays, so what the hell if I get wet again....

Archie went to work with dad all day and had lots of attention in the office. His stitches come out tomorrow.

New HQ

2011-12-19T13:01:00.000-08:00

Coming home after delivering a Christmas present I found Iain in the garden retrieving squawking chickens from the wisteria. Herb was giving him a particularly hard time :-)

Last night we let them roost up in the pen as is their habit when the light fades before sneaking down at 5.30 to move them all into their new HQ. Mutterings and chunterings ensued but by the time the timer assisted door came down at 5.45 all were installed on the perches and were hunkering down for the night.

It is better apparently to shut or remove old coops or night arrangements so as not to confuse the hens, which we duly did. As well as putting a fence across the path down the side to keep them up in the top part of the garden and therefore more likely to find their new beds! So with all this set up for the next day's proceedings we left them to it.

The timer is set to open the door at 7.45am, which it duly did. I was expecting to see chooks dotted about the lawn when I pulled back the curtain this morning. But at 8.40 when I peered in the chooks were all still asleep and showing no inclination to get up! Puzzling this over I realised that in the outdoor pen they have been used to they have never experienced such intense dark as this coop creates inside. Even the moon and star light would affect them in the pen, and the sun coming up would wake them slowly. In this coop there are vents high up, but as we have placed the coop next to a hedge for shelter from the worst of the weather - wind and rain in winter and too much sun in summer (we can hope) some of the daylight is filtered out by the branches, so the vents don't let in so much light on that side.

It's quite odd to give a cockerel a wake up call, but that nevertheless is exactly what I did this morning!!!

So why was Iain scaling the wisteria this evening? Well, three of the black rocks had worked out where their perches for the night were, but the others has simply decided it was all far too much to think about and had reverted to branches and the wisteria seemed like a good bet I guess.

Herb has no excuse. Until I got him a few weeks ago he was pottering sleepily into a coop every evening in his previous home. He'll catch on. There'll still be one or two stragglers at the end of the week I am sure but it won't take them long. They do like to toddle off to sleep as soon as the light fades - it is hard-wired into their brains and the more sleeps they have in the coop the more they will recognise it as where they toddle off to for them.

It isn't the most perfectly designed coop in the world - we have discovered a glitch or two but nothing insurmountable and certainly nothing that could adversely affect the chooks' well being. (One thing I realised is needed is some means of holding the nest box lid open...With a wood coop you'd put a hook on the lid and a chain on the wall behind but this is plastic so Iain found me a bit of dog walk trestle leg. He turned my old dog walk into a lowered one ages ago and kept the bits of wood. Perfect!) Whatever the short-comings, it is still 100% better than anything in wood. The best thing from my point of view (and it is definitely on any chicken's Top Ten Best Things List) is the fact that it should be really quick and easy to keep clean and dry inside. This will make it very Red Mite unfriendly. Iain has made up some sheets for me to fit in each nest box and in the main coop so all I have to do is lift those out, empty them into the compost, rinse them off, leave them to dry and put in the previous ones - already dried - chuck in some aubiose and hey presto, done. Any cracks that red mite might have found nice and cosy in a wood coop are exposed to the air in this. So that will put them off too.

It is comfortable for them but very well ventilated too. I'm working on keeping the ambient temperature on the inside with them in it as near to the temperature on the outside - as that is what they hav been used to in their pen. And although the design is perhaps, well, a little off beat, I rather like it's functional 'look'.

I'll know the chooks really have it all worked out and are settled in when they begin laying eggs in the nest boxes. I won't know this for a little while because, although we could now actually eat the eggs (hoorah), all of them except Edna - and Herb - have decided that this is a good time to have a communal moult! Ergo, no eggs. Normally they do it in a kind of rotation so we always have one or two eggs here and there, but not this time. I suspect Edna will join in the feather fest very soon. Fanny Ann and Tilly seem to be competing for the 'who can lose the most feathers in the shortest timespan' trophy. It seems they will be fast moulters which, I found out, means they are my best layers. I think when Edna joins in she will be the same. Phoebe and Maggie are drawing it out over several weeks - which makes them my worst layers (and if I were being mercenary about it they are the ones to cull apparently) and Fliss and Belle are somewhere in between.

Chickens! There's always something.

A different view - Part 2

2011-12-18T09:06:00.000-08:00

Chooks do have a mind of their own and mine have decided that the treadle feeder is not for them.

I want to see hens foraging and eating grass. Belatedly, I have realised that doing those things makes them far less likely to want to learn to use the treadle. I have given it a good shot, kept them in for 10 days for the second attempt (which coincided with Belle's claw needing to be kept as dry as possible) and worked through the first and into the second stages of treadle training twice, and each time got to the same point before grinding to a halt: they are so frightened of the feeder lid moving, even just a little distance, that they would rather not eat at all. And that is where I have to bail out: I cannot, will not, starve them.

It's probably naive but I really thought my chooks would want to eat their pellets, as well as grass and bugs and worms, from this new feeder in just the same way as they have eaten pellets from the old feeder. But it seems not to be the case. I did understand the treadle feeder 'action' as I had watched lots of videos (!!) of it being used with hens but I did not factor in, until it was rammed home to me by mine, that the chooks in those videos are living in relatively barren environments - indoor or outdoor areas with no foraging opportunities. No grass to eat, no earth to dig in, no hedges where dozens of bugs and flies lurk, and no worms. Those hens are totally reliant on pellets for their nourishment and haven't learned the delights of self- sufficiency, so of course they will be more likely to approach and step on the treadle and take their chances with the moving lid to reach the food. Mine however have learned to get much of their daily food needs by foraging and there is no way they are going to be so desperate to eat pellets that they will take the same 'risk' with the moving lid.

I 'get' the concept of ensuring they do not have access to any other food source so that they overcome their wariness towards the feeder but at what point does this stop? 'Til they are so hungry they have lost the will to live? I had no objection to putting all snacks into it, that seemed fair enough to me. But taking them out of their foraging environment as well made me very unhappy. I know I had to do something for Belle, but she can have outside access now, and I can't justify confining them just for the feeder to work. When I felt my chooks empty crops last night that was it. They have enough weight on them to withstand a few days probably but I still can't bring myself to force that on them.

It was only my wish to deal with the rats and the fact that I needed to keep Belle under cover for several days that made me try again. Simplistically I know the chooks should be hungry enough to eat any food if that is the only source - which it has been but I guess my hens have a different mind set. They have become the kind of chickens I have encouraged them to be - busy, curious, independent minded birds who enjoy being out in almost all weathers and are keen to investigate the world. The kind of hens I see in villages around here and elsewhere pottering contentedly around farmyards and lane edges. It may seem odd to some, but it makes me happy seeing happy hens!

As it is my hens do not want to take that step back from the life they know and quite plainly enjoy. Foraging for their own food creates brain activity. OK so they don't have big brains at all, you really can't accuse a chicken of being an intellectual but what they do have is alive and tingling when it is given the chance to be used. The whole experience of trying to incorporate this feeder into my chook's lifestyle has made me even more adamant that I don't like any method of training that exploits a basic need.

You will probably guess (if you read my blog a lot) where I am going with this but I really can't help making comparisons between the treadle training and feeding from the hand dog training methods. Nor is it too far from the mindset of those who keep their dogs crated all the time unless they want the dog to interact with them. Dogs have a need for affection and closeness - denying them those exploits a basic need...... Anyway, my chooks didn't eat for a couple of days twice unless they performed an action (stepping on the treadle), they did not do the action so they did not get food. Some people use this principle to train their puppies or youngsters: only feeding the dog when they perform agility or related (eg tricks) behaviours they are 'training'. I'm talking about all the dog's food being withheld - it all comes from the hand as rewards for training.

Some who use and/or promote this method say it is 'all about trust'. Talk about putting a positive spin on something! Trust is hard-wired into properly well thought out positive reinforcement training methods where the dog's learning is carefully managed and structured to encourage understanding, and potential 'failure' is micromanaged to ensure the dog remains confident about wanting to learn something or to try something. So long as you have the skills and patience to do that and make learning with you fun and the pup gets most of her food needs as meals and some food as rewards, what's not to like? The trust will create and intensify a really strong bond between handler and dog. I have no problem with that.

What I have a problem understanding are the motives of people who do know all about properly structured positive re-inforcement methods to train these behaviours yet who feed entirely from the hand. Why do it? I guess it means stuff is taught quickly and I guess the pup learns to focus really fast. It needs to! I know I would. But it isn't nice, it abuses trust, and really there is no excuse. It is even worse when they pass on this 'training method' to people who don't know how to structure and manage or shape a learning experience so in effect combining abuse of trust with ignorance. This is cruel.

It really upsets me to read about, for example, a dog having to 'earn' its food by 'targeting' or 'going to a toy or to tug' or whatever it is the handler wants the dog to just do but hasn't actually taught effectively, if at all, either because they genuinely don't understand how to or they just want a quick fix. There's no trust, it is exploitation and manipulation. A dog should be able to trust that it will be fed, end of. It should not be made to go without meals to make it frantic to 'perform' a behaviour that will supposedly improve its agility performance.

I do know it is perfectly possible for someone to make it look like they and their dog have the best bond ever, and the dog has eyes only for them - all by feeding entirely from the hand. Shame on you if you do this, and more shame if you use this 'bond' to make money out of others' ignorance of how you actually achieve it. Actually, I am not sure which is worse - making money out of others without telling them exactly what you do, or telling them to do it too because it gets quick results knowing they will be abusing their dogs even more than you are.....

Personally I don't want a bond that relies on exploitation of a basic need thanks very much. I want one based on kindness, fun and love. Nellie and Archie may not leap in the air all round me and watch me like a hawk at all times at agility shows, demanding my attention and eye contact, but that suits me. We get along fine without that.

I think some people have forgotten why they originally chose to have dogs and have fallen too much in love with the idea of agility 'success'. Perhaps some people simply need to get a life? And maybe others need to ask more questions? When I got Pop I also bought Carol Price's 'Understanding the Rescue Border Collie'. What she wrote applies to any dog: that whatever our own aspirations might be in dog activities, we should always be sure we don't pursue them at the expense of our dog's wellbeing or we will lose the trust that our dogs have in us and that is far more precious than any accolade. Wise words. It is easy to become a bit frustrated sometimes, we all do, but that is a whole world away from abuse of trust at a most basic level.

Not that this is the only way to abuse a dog's trust, let's face it, there are plenty of others. We all see people getting away with things week in week out without being challenged. It doesn't take much to guess what goes on that we can't see. Someone has to set about their dog before the powers that be will step in, so there isn't much chance that other supposedly 'lesser' cruelties will ever be meaningfully challenged is there?

The more money people can make out of agility the more likely abuses on different levels will occur. I hope it never becomes a professional sport.

I haven't forgotten why I have dogs, or chickens, for that matter and so the treadle feeder will take a back seat. I'll be led by my chickens' needs, not by my own plans, however good intentioned, to eradicate the rats! I'll have to try a method to curb the rats that my chickens will find more sympathetic to their needs.

Plan B it is: We have a field shelter on order (snazzy one to go with the coop), the old feeder will go under it, and we will bring the feeder in at night, to stop the worst of the food stealing. Here's hoping the girls and Herb like their new sleeping quarters!

A different view - Part 1

2011-12-16T11:10:00.000-08:00

It took me a couple of days to stop hyperventilating about Nellie's pad though she has still had a quiet week while it heals and toughens again.

For Archie though things remain very restricted compared to his usual lifestyle but since Tuesday his horizons have broadened just a little bit. Instead of a couple of minutes in the top bit of garden for his morning/lunch and evening 'walk' that he had to have until early in the week, I have carried him over the muddy bit to the track going along the fields beyond our home so that he could have 10 mins pootling around just on his lead and harness on the grassy stretch there. The field at the bottom of the gardens has been another morning adventure.

Then they come to work in the van with me, which they do anyway through the late autumn and winter. I take a change of clothes so I can change in the van and then either shoot off for a walk in the afternoon before it gets dark or, more often, go to my rented field for a few minutes with Nellie to work on something, before then going for a walk etcetc. I thought that Archie would appreciate looking at the school car park from his van crate, and Nellie hates me leaving the house without her. She isn't separation phobic, she just doesn't want to miss any action!! So why not let them carry on coming with me this week?

But instead of our usual routine after I finish work, we went to the heath where it is relatively dry and grassy underfoot to keep Archie's stitches clean and so Nellie's pad wasn't under any pressure either. Just for 10 mins pootling about again.

Yesterday and today we stopped off at Badbury Rings - an ancient hillfort adjacent to the lovely Kingston Lacey avenue of beech trees - on our way home, where not only are there terrific views (different ones from the heath) but it too is dry and grassy underfoot.

Today Archie and I walked about slowly with him on his harness and lead, without bonnet, for almost half an hour stopping a lot for him to 'collect' scents, while Nellie loped energetically about in all directions enjoying the feeling of flexing her muscles in the bright winter sunshine.

The weather has been bright and clear for all our little walks this week - even though it had rained before or after. How lucky!

Like Nellie, Arch doesn't worry about the bonnet. When they have had to wear one they are put in our large crate, because they need to rest anyway. Because they are used to resting in a crate, it is a calm place to be (it has never been a 'punishment', nor a place to 'separate them from me to make them want my attention more and therefore make them more willing to train'. How can people who do this claim their dogs are their best friend??? It's b*******s) and so they just settle to sleep. Same with a big floor cushion. So if in, or on, either they just settle and relax. Because a crate, or cushion, creates this mood in them they don't bash around and get themselves in a state fretting about the bonnet. When they are out of the crate the bonnet can come off usually and they are supervised. Although Archie, who will still go for his stitches any chance he gets unless he's on a walk, keeps his on now, sprawled out on one of the large tuffies on the floor next to my stool, and I am sat on the end of his lead to prevent him suddenly leaping up (say if the door is knocked on) and charging downstairs. Leaping off or on or down or up things is off limits 'til those stitches come out.....

Giving him different views rather than just one - from the crate - for the duration and different sniffs and different grass under his paws helps to keep him happy and relaxed.

I am hopeful this will ensure his stitches will be OK for removal next Wednesday as planned and he can enjoy all the things we want him to be able to over Christmas and the New Year.

Three brave little wounded soldiers

2011-12-11T10:18:00.000-08:00

So, it is my whole day off on Friday and the sun is shining! How serendipitous is that and how unlikely at this time of the year? It was a perfect opportunity to walk the Kimmeridge stretch of the coast path.

There is going to be a Nedlo website apparently and we've all been asked to submit a photo. Well I can't choose! I already have several hundred to choose from and as I am always taking pictures of my dogs it just becomes more difficult as each day passes. There's no harm in trying to capture an even more perfect one is there? And in a beautiful setting too.

Anyway.

Having reviewed this one on the computer screen, it won't make my short list but I still like it.

Archie firmly planted himself between my phone camera and Nellie, clearly telling me he wanted to be part of the photoshoot too :-)

Took this picture after we had walked along that part of the coast from the bay. We were having a great walk. Another woman out and about stopped to ask me about the beach after the storm the night before and out of the corner of my eye I saw Archie trying to walk along the rather loose stoned dry stone wall just behind us. I turned for a moment to answer another question she asked and when I flicked my eyes back he had disappeared. He isn't in the habit of walking along dry stone walls, preferring to jump over them via srone stiles as a rule, and I joked to the woman that I'd better go check he wasn't up to anything naughty. My call to him had no response and as I peered over the wall I saw that there was a low barbed wire fence adjacent to it and that he was stuck the other side of that. Climbing over the wall was a little tricky as the stones were really quite unstable (I think he must have lost his footing on it himself) then squeezing between it and the fence and leaning over to pull him up proved difficult too but there were no other ways through. On close inspection he had pulled all the skin off the inside of his hind left leg - just like he'd been skinned. Thank God he hadn't severed anything but he was in shock and it looked nasty enough, nor could I risk him walking on it in case he did further damage so I had to carry him. We still had at least half an hour before we'd get back to the van and as soon as I got there I phoned the vet to warn them and drove like crazy to get him there as fast as possible. After debriding, and flushing out they tell me the wound is very clean and he was stitched under a general. We picked him up at 9.30 that night. Our vet we have used since Henry died have their own in house 24 hour emergency service and we were especially glad we had changed when Pop became ill almost a year ago.

The little chap must now reside for 12 days in our brilliant Barjo estate car crate that I am eternally grateful we never sold when we bought the van six years ago.

Arch is having on lead and harness 'walks' five minutes max around the top section of the garden for toileting, and lots of cuddles. Oh and a hot water bottle to make up for the lack of aga that he likes to sleep up against. As he is my little shadow around the house he is currently being allowed to lie here by my chair on the bedroom floor - with his harness, lead and 'bonnet'.

I had already decided that today would be a stay at home day. Nellie and I had a good walk on the heath yesterday after I had run my agility classes and I don't think it does her any harm to have the odd total rest day here and there, as much as she loves her walks. She was just going to have a short 10 min walk from the house for a little stretch etc earlier today and I saw with horror that she suddenly picked up her hind left leg. She had been fine in the house, it was just when we were outside. You can imagine what kind of a state I was getting into. I couldn't see anything obviously wrong with her paw or pads and with a sinking heart I was seeing 'groin strain' (how??) or worse and working myself into a bit of a nervous wreck. Back at home I cleaned her whole paw and Iain held a torch and, lo and behold, there was an exposed bit of pad looking raw and tender. Phew. So she too is under house arrest - she will be sleeping in her soft 'World's' travel crate ( I bought it for her when she was younger - it was on offer - on the basis she might need it one day for travelling abroad..so far she has only used it for Sark!) And she has her paw all bandaged and vet-wrapped for a couple of days, will be wearing her bonnet when unsupervised around the house or in the crate and will only be having 5 min walks on lead and harness for a few days 'til it heals (with a bag over it to keep it dry).

And my third little wounded soldier?

It's Belle.

Belle had a small lump on the side of a claw which I investigated and found to be an indentation underneath her foot that had filled with soil...Cleaned out, it wasn't infected but it was sore. She has never given any sign of lameness - the only indication anything was amiss was this little lump. I cleaned it for a couple of days with boiled cool water and tea tree oil but although it wasn't worse it didn't improve, and kept filling up each time with soil, so I took her off to the vet. Only to discover that she must have had a wound - perhaps a thorn? - which had caused this indentation and she had a very mild 'bumblefoot'. Where do they get chicken ailment names???? Now 'bumblefoot' is one of the main reasons why I put straw on the slabs in their pen - they can develop problems when forced to live on a hard floor 24/7. I know mine don't usually live on it 27/7 - only at night - but it is better to err on the side of caution or at least I try to... They can also develop them when their perches are the wrong width but as mine have different sized branches to perch on they get to choose where is most comfortable. And now I have learned they can get little wounds in their feet living free range too - just different kinds of wounds. ARRGH!

So for the last week I have been treating Belle with half a cephacare anti-biotic tablet crushed in water and syringed into her beak twice a day (she doesn't like the taste of this), metacam for anti-inflammatory benefits also by beak once a day (this makes her smack her 'lips' appreciatively - it is the honey in it apparently!), and Iain has been holding her while I pop a little ball of vaseline covered cotton wool in the indentation, then wrap her claw with vet-wrap (pretty camouflage pattern!) everyday to keep the wound clean.

I also have to keep her in the pen all the time or, with such unpredictable weather and wet grass, the dressing would fall off, the cotton wool fall out and the other treatments would be needed for far longer. So...

I decided to keep them all in the pen. Why? This goes against everything I keep chickens myself for - to give them a happy, natural, free ranging life. But in these circumtances I just have to do it and not listen to that little voice inside me telling me this over and over again. The pen, I might add, is spacious and does allow for all their basic needs and then some but it doesn't fulfill all my 'needs' in terms of how I want to keep them. Too many chickens - even domestic flocks - don't have even the standard of living mine have in their pen. But I don't want to isolate Belle by keeping her in away from the others because that isn't kind to a chicken. By doing this I can also - I hope - ensure she is in synch with the others in their training for the treadle feeder. Or she would starve later and that isn't going to happen.

Penning them for a few days, so not allowing any access to other food like grass and bugs, might just mean we crack the treadle feeder training - the first 'prong' of our rat offensive -which currently isn't going to plan. That is, the plan as laid out by the manufacturer. I think it is based on the premise that chickens are not having access to any, and I mean any, other kind of food source and initially I made the mistake of thinking they could still have access to our garden. Which might explain why I got the response I got after the first week. See below. If we cannot crack this feeder, we can still move the chooks out of the pen (once Belle's foot has healed of course) but it will mean we won't be dealing so effectively with the rat problem. Any exposed feeder will be an open invite that the rats will happily take advantage of....

After a week on the 'fully open' stage with no movement of the treadle step , as the instructions indicated I should, I moved the bolts, *to allow the feeder to half close and then open only when the step is stood on*. The first chook that did this was so shocked that she flew into the air, hastening her moult by a few feathers, screeched loudly as if being chased by a tooth gnashing monster and they all unanimously voted it was The Scariest Thing Ever and refused to go anywhere near it. I hardened my heart: they didn't eat for almost two days. Not even the juicy sunflower hearts I put on the top, nor the corn they usually squabble over, tempted them. So we needed to adapt the standard 'plan'. Iain came up with the brilliant suggestion of attaching a small piece of rubber matting (as per the bottom of the Barjo crate) to the treadle step to make the surface more chicken friendly and give it a good grip. It would also 'feel' different. And we put the lid on to the fully open position again with no movement of the treadle required. I also filled the feeder up to the top level to make it easy for them to reach the food. Four days later they can all stand on the rubbered treadle again. So now I am reducing the food level in the feed section over the next three or so days so they have to reach further into the feeder to get food, and stand very firmly on the rubber to do this. As the food level falls they should (I hope) become more confident on the step. Once we get to that stage I will drop the bolt to *as they step on the step it will push down half the distance and the lid will move a little bit* and leave the food level low all the time. Fingers crossed.

Because they are all in the pen all the time I am scraping chicken poo off the slabs every two days, sprinkling small amounts of straw to keep their feet off the slabs, vaselining their legs once a week to prevent a re-infestation of Scaley-leg mite so that we don't take it over into the new coop when we move them across and keeping Belle and one of her 'genetic sisters' in an eglu overnight so I can catch her easily for her morning cephacare. So the eglu needs cleaning more frequently too.....

Somewhere in amongst all this chicken training, chicken treatment and doggy supervision I have to go to work and get a lot of work done before the end of term on Friday. Wish me luck.

Hips, haws and sloes

2011-12-06T15:30:00.000-08:00

Nellie takes her raw diet very seriously. Having taught herself, as Henry did too, to pick her own blackberries whenever I was out foraging, this year (for some strange reason not before) she has expanded her tastes on to hawthorn berries, sloes and rosehips.....

Good to know she can take her well developed proprioception skills 'on the road' ;-)

Things chicken

2011-12-02T11:43:00.000-08:00

I now understand why people have been so pleased and even excited when I have given them a box of our girls' eggs. Not having bought eggs for a few years now, as even in the winter they lay the odd egg and this keeps us ticking over, I had forgotten just how horrid standard sold eggs are.

We made the mistake of buying organic, free range 'blue' eggs in Waitrose and I tried (that is the right word) to fry one. The yolk was bright yellow but it was flat and the white was liquid. It dried up in moments and tasted awful. I bought half a dozen free range (I could see the chickens on grass pastures with my own eyes) eggs but these too had watery whites, flat yolks and the taste was inferior. Our eggs (as anyone else who keeps their own chooks will tell you) have upstanding rounded yolks and thick, sturdy whites. Nutritionally they are worlds apart too. But then we are eating eggs that are no more a than a day or two old laid by very contented hens that forage everyday on grass. Sometimes I am eating an egg laid only moments before. No shop can compete with that. So while I think it is brilliant that shops like Waitrose will only sell and use free range eggs, I have been too spoiled to want to buy anybody else's eggs.

So we are just going without now until we can have our own again.

Why can't we eat our own? After last Winter's experience with Scaley-Leg mite when I hadn't a clue what it was, I have been watching the chickens really closely and it seemed to me a couple of weeks back that Maggie was showing early signs of having this again. Off to the vet and yes, she did.

Last time we used Vaseline and Tea-tree oil and it worked well (the vet was impressed) but I wasn't happy that we had complications with secondary leg infection with Lizzie and Bert. I treated this with anti-biotics from the vet but I felt an even more robust line was needed this time. So Ivermectin it is.

This means complete egg withdrawal from the time of first treatment to at least 7 days after the second treatment, which must take place 10-14 days after the first treatment......It also means, as we have dogs, that they are not allowed anywhere near the chicken areas at all. Especially Nellie, being a Border Collie. No idea if she has the gene that is affected of course and I don't intend to find out the nasty way. So we are both being really vigilant about our footwear when we go down the garden to ensure we don't bring any chicken poo to the top half of the garden or the house. Ivermectin ingestion can kill dogs. Dogs have died as a result of eating horse poo after a horse has been wormed with the stuff. OK I know they'd need to eat or lick a large amount of chicken poo with Ivermectin in, but I'd rather not take any chances.

We are also smearing their legs with Vaseline every three days to loosen any raised leg scales and smother any mites, and bathing their legs in warm water and teatree oil. This causes much disgruntlement. Even poor Fanny-Anne, Edna and Herb get the treatment even though they looked 'clean'. Whilst they all have a bit of a grumble, Tilly is a terrible drama-queen; she makes a awful screech when Iain lifts her off the perch as if she is about to be killed. The sound, amplified as it is by the still quiet night air, has an air of mandrake roots about it!! We are surprised that none of our neighbours have enquired! I think they are all too polite - or too afraid to ask...

All the chooks must be treated at the same time to ensure all the stages of the mite's development are hit. Regardless of whether they actually have it or not.

It is a disgusting infestation and can be carried from other flocks via wild birds. My chicken vet assured me that Maggie is exceptionally healthy (and weighed in at a highly muscley 2+kg!)with no other infestations, and lovely strong, glossy new feathers growing through in her 'moult', that I am clearly doing all the right things to care for them, but that sometimes we get caught out by these sorts of things and that I mustn't beat myself up about it. But of course, I do beat myself up about it. They didn't ask to be our chickens.

I don't want to keep animals -or birds - unless I can give them as natural a life as possible in terms of being able to exhibit natural behaviours for as much of their everyday life as possible. Although I have two eglus, I would not for instance keep two or three chickens in an eglu run, even if I could move it everyday. Our eglus are attached to a 12ftx9ftx7ft covered run that the chooks sleep in on branches for perches off the ground. Positioned behind a hedge and with sheets to protect the sides, it 'feels' to them as if they are sleeping in a tree...In the day time, they roam around the garden, eating grass, digging craters and chasing bugs...so things are pretty rosy for the birds on the whole. However....

...we have been pondering how to further improve the chickens' living arrangements for quite some time now- and trying to combine this with a bit of re-organising of the veg patch/bottom part of the garden.

Rats have forced us to evaluate the whole situation sooner, rather than later.

I have nothing personally against rats. This is a rural place. Lots of people have ducks, chooks, geese, turkeys and other livestock abound. They say most of us are never far from a rat. But I do not want them in our chicken pen, thank you very much.

In the time we have lived here we have slabbed almost the entire floor area and there is only one bit (18insx18ins) we cannot cover. Last Spring the rats realised they could dig a tunnel from under the greenhouse to get into the pen at night. I succumbed to Pasta Bait, left at the entry of the hole with surgical gloves at night, and taken down by the rats into their run to eat - and kill them. Difenicoum makes them bleed to death internally. They didn't re-emerge. And so we are hopeful they didn't enter the food chain (raptors will eat dead rat..though there is so much game here I suspect they don't need to be that desperate). A whole colony dealt with, I was feeling quite pleased...

Iain filled that hole in but new rats became more bold and subsequently dug a new route under the edge of the run - in the one tiny place Iain hadn't managed to dig wire gauge fencing down into..

More Pasta-bait. Luckily, both places are inside the veg patch and are beyond the reach of the dogs and the chooks. Anyway, the rats obligingly keeled over.

Then they got really clever. Recently I realised they had dug in again - this time from outside our garden. We don't know exactly where, but they must be tunnelling under a thick hedge - or even two - to do this.

So no more pasta bait as I will not put it in sections of drain pipe (as is recommended) because then the rats are likely to be travelling over-ground with it and God knows where they might drop it.

As we have been treating the chooks for the Scaley-Leg mite we can hear the little buggers partying, just waiting for us to finish before they come up and stuff themselves with all our lovely organic, expensive chook pellets. Certainly the rats I have seen - and they can be pretty bold - look marvellously healthy.

Not only that, but the slabs on the floor of the run mean I need straw on the floor to protect the chooks feet. Straw (or any thick layer of flooring material) can encourage Scaley-Leg to develop and recur. Things have reached a point where change is required.

So we are taking a two-pronged offensive.

Prong One is:

I have bought (at eye wincing cost) a 'Grandpa's Feeder' which the chooks are, even as I write, learning how to use with the aid of a couple of bolts to stop the treadle foot moving. All their feed is in there (including snackettes such as sunflower hearts and corn) and I believe it will take a couple of weeks to 'train' them to feed from it, eventually by standing on the treadle foot to lift the lid and access the food. These feeders are rain proof and, by all accounts, the best way to avoid rats eating the food. By my calculations, it should pay for itself in less than a year by way of saved food costs. Take away the food and the rats will find somewhere else to live. We hope.

Prong Two:

The run is going. And the chooks will have a new house/coop further up the garden. Made from 100% recycled plastic and with a really clever sensor operated door, this isn't cheap either but we hope it will give the chooks a better quality of life and make it easier for me to care for them well. The sensor is going to take some playing around with I think. But we can put a timer on it too, so that for instance, the timer can let them out in the morning, and the sensor will shut them in at night or various different permutations.

No run = no slabs = no straw. And hopefully, no rats. And, I hope too, no re-occurance of scaley-leg. But still the chooks are able to roam freely. We are hopeful of positive results...

Why a sensor? In order to avoid leaving our chooks in the run for longer than overnight, we can ask others to let out and shut in our chooks the weekends we are away; we ask our neighbours sometimes - but this is out of the question every weekend we are away for agility. It isn't fair to impose. My mother is happy to be here much of the time in the summer, but sometimes it isn't convenient. On such a regular basis we need more flexibility. Of course continuing with the pen seemed like the perfect option before the problem of rats and Scaley -leg reared their ugly heads because the chooks could be left safe from foxes and heavy weather in a large airy pen on the odd weekend we didn't want to impose on anyone to look after them. But it isn't now. After a lot of research this plan seems to offer the best outcomes - for the chooks and for us.

The coop has legs so they will have shelter in the daytime under that as well as under the yew tree or the bay bush.

As I say, one of the main reasons I first chose to buy and use a pen over 7 years ago was to keep our original 3 chooks in it all the time. I calculated that the 12ftx9ft area plus shrubs in pots, branches and other pots for them to climb on, dust bathe in and perch on would create a sufficently natural habitat for them - especially with the roof half covered. [Of course the principle (on which I based my persuasion of Iain to keep chooks in the first place!) of keeping them permanently penned lasted only a few days as I decided to let them out shortly after - just for a couple of hours of course...... - just to see how they enjoyed the garden.....and I so enjoyed seeing them quite obviously enjoying the garden that from then on they were out almost all the time......]

But now the pen is going. I don't want to shut 8 chickens in there all the time indefinitely anyway, even if there weren't the rats, straw, slab problems. But we do need something for them to sleep in overnight to protect them.... With this new coop the sensor/timer door will enable the chooks to continue to enjoy the freedom of the garden the odd time, say overnight, even when we have to leave them overnight or if my mother cannot get here til the following morning when we are off for the weekend, or if we or she wants to go out/come back late....and they won't have to be walking about on straw/slabs in the pen on any of those occasions anymore.

Another benefit of sleeping on perches as our chooks have done in the pen is that red mite are discouraged because there are no warm, damp crevices to hide in and then come out at night to suck the blood from the chooks (red mite are evil things). They won't be 'sleeping in the trees on branches', but on perches in a coop which is a bit of a pain. It feels a bit like a backward step. So to reduce the impact of that, we have gone (as with the eglus as next boxes) with plastic for our coop.

Why plastic? Well, it is hotly contested by 'traditionalists' but most evidence shows that wooden coops are renowned for encouraging red mite. They are virtually impossible to keep clean and dry inside and red mite love all the crevices and nooks that wooden chook houses are full of, never mind the felt roofing. It is red mite heaven. So far none of my chooks have ever had this - or lice (because they have several places to dry dust bathe all year round). Plastic is superior because the construction of coops made of it offer far fewer opportunities for red mite to thrive. Plastic is superior for other reasons too.

It is far, far harder for foxes or rats to chew through. It is way easier to clean, keep clean and, even more importantly, dry inside (red mite) It is a more versatile material to create chicken friendly structures out of. And it is cooler in summer and warmer in winter.

So the pen's day are numbered, it is time to move on and try something different - we just have to wait until the chooks adapt to the feeder, and we have the timer/sensor worked out on the new coop.

On Sunday, Iain has the dubious pleasure of constructing our chooks' new coop. I think I may go out for a little while.........If you look at the pictures of the instructions you'll easily see why......

Look what the wind blew in!

2011-11-30T16:05:00.000-08:00

Firstly can I say I can't add comments to any of these blogs: Cadbury and Friends, Charticus and Clan, Eden Agility, Hudson Doglets, Wynne's Journey and Hannah's Agility Dog's Fitness. Not sure what's going on.......None of them will accept my google account and yet it is the same google account that has been allowing me to blog and write comments for the last 4.5 years!!!

Any theories?

We had glorious blue skies today so the dogs and I went down to the coast this afternoon. Misty is here for a couple of days and this was her first experience of 'the edge'.......

Needless to say she went on a lead on the exposed sections.

Windy today!

Sitting on the huge blocks of stone that make up the sea wall near the boathouses I suddenly realised that the 'birds' I could see bobbing about further into the bay were actually seals. Two of them! Wonderful. I haven't seen seals there since Christmas day 2009. There wasn't anyone else about today and for a while one of the seals and Nellie observed each other as Nellie stood on the edge of the water! I took ridiculous amounts of pictures - mostly of the sea again - but got one or two that will pass as evidence! Not of them watching each other - the zoom couldn't cope with that.

Archie and Misty had a mad five minutes chasing each other about on the sandy bit. You can see their crazy paw print circles in the sand. It was pristine before their game!

Nellie, like Pop used to be, is always first to the water and the last to leave it. She is becoming more like Pop in little ways, it is a bit spooky.

The most recent carving on the Purbeck stone, that I showed being built into the dry stone wall in an earlier blog entry:

Now some more marking.....

A bit of a treat

2011-11-29T16:20:00.000-08:00

This is the worst term for teachers and students. It's long, hectic, exhausting. By this stage of it practically everyone is either ill or is about to be ill, or is vaguely recovering from having been ill, and feeling rather fragile, stressed and bad-tempered. And if anyone is feeling smug (on occasion that'll have been me then..) it strikes over the holiday instead. Great! For the first three or four years in teaching I developed nasty bouts of bronchitis, and was warned if I didn't take to my bed it'd become pneumonia. It was a real shock to my system having never had anything worse than a cold or mild flu since childhood. We are all booby trapped daily by disgusting germs on every pen, desk surface, piece of paper, exercise book, door handle, loo handle and sneeze droplet. Yuk. At least the small bit of agility training I do is outside and most of my pet classes customers don't come along to the hall when they are ill. I cunningly make them do so much running about and quick thinking they don't risk it unless they are in the peak of health ;-)

For 4 years out of the last 6 I have spent the entire term Trying Not To Get Really Ill. Or more to the point, Trying Not To Be Really Ill Before Or During Olympia. Getting out with the dogs for a couple of hours every day is good for them as well as me based on the premise that a blast in the elements will frighten most germs away! Needless to say I have had differing degrees of success in this endeavour. But we blew Olympia this year Nellie and I, so I have indulged myself with a couple of winter shows to add to the relentless pace of this time of year. Why not?

Dartmoor weather was lovely. Neil was judging so we all turned up the night before to help set up, shot out for a pub meal and then spent the next day supporting each other's efforts in and out of the ring. Iain got to scribe most of the day which he enjoys and we even got to sit in the sun outside the van over lunch.

Nellie worked beautifully - in both courses. We worked together well in the agility but I took my eye off her for a nano-moment to check where I was in relation to a jump, and consequently got her a refusal. She won the jumping though.

Archie had an Anysize and came 4th against the cohort of 50+ Large, Medium and Small dogs :-)

This weekend: a double treat. Being part time, (thank God) this year I get the whole of one Friday in the two week timetable completely free. We will still not arrive at shows next year early as Iain doesn't have the day off... This time of year I usually combine doing some work with a jaunt in the New Forest, or the coast if the weather looks really promising. But he too took last Friday off and we made a day of going for a lovely walk all over Hod and Hambledon Hill iron age forts for a couple of hours (sorry forgot to take pics but have included an old one of all my bunnies!)and then driving up through Dorset to just into Somerset to investigate new chicken housing arrangements.(More on that in another entry. Bet you can't wait!! :-) )

And this last Saturday - to North Downs. I can't ever recall going there before although Iain assures me I have, just once. He knows it well as he was born in Guildford and we took a few minutes before we drove home to go and see the house his parents bought when he was 'on the way' and in which he lived until he was 17. He hadn't been back to it since then.

Again Nellie worked beautifully in all of her four runs, and I believe I did a good job of directing her through each one apart from making one small mistake in three of them. But she came 2nd in one of the jumpings. Ironically this is the one where I probably made more errors - including misplaced footing jump 7 to 8, and not turning my shoulder cleanly enough on the pivot on the 5th jump from the end so she went out wide off the wing.

The other best thing, apart from having fun with my dogs and being around friendly agility faces, was the fact that from the moment we left home to drive to each show, until I reached home the evening after, work didn't enter my mind for even a moment.

'It's not the size of the bird but the fight in the bird'.

2011-11-16T14:40:00.000-08:00

Meet Herb.

Herb had begun fighting with his dad, Harold, and so he has come to live in what our neighbour calls 'chicken heaven'. Like Bert he is a real gent. Unlike Bert he is a bantam (Barnvelder x New Hampshire Red)and so is somewhat smaller with smaller lungs to match....He's also small enough to pop into one of the Omlet Eglus, that we use as nest boxes, come Spring when the mornings begin to lighten earlier. This is a very rural place and there are cockerels dotted about this spread out hamlet. None of them crow endlessly - just a few shouts now and again.

Herb seems to be taking it all in his stride. His favourite girl is Edna -chook. They can usually be found snuggled together on the communal branch in the covered overnight pen...Luckily the New Hampshire Red half of his genes gives him a little more bulk than he would otherwise have as a pure Barnvelder but ,yes, he is still smaller than our 7 full size hybrid hens. Although they knew he was male at seven months old and didn't attack him (as they would if he had been younger) he has had his work cut out these past ten days. If our hens wore Tee shirts they would have them embazoned 'The Future is Female' and would be burning their bras :) - I think they had already decided some time back that they could skirt around Bert and get up to no good. Fliss, Maggie, Phoebe and Belle are from a batch of Black Rocks and are as thick as thieves. They never squabble, ever. Fanny-Ann, Tilly and Edna niggle away at each other and are in turn chased about by the 'fowl (sorry!) four'.

Herb is taking less nonsense from them but hasn't yet 'treaded' anyone (that I've seen anyway). So far he's only managed a bit of small talk and some posturing with his wing dropped. Come the Spring, who knows...Bless him. Tempting though it is to go and get him some bantam girlies it would not be fair on them. Bantam girls would be much smaller than Herb and therefore be persecuted by the hens.

I've already become quite attached to his spunky little character and dapper appearance and even Iain thinks he's OK as Herb has shown no inclination to hang off his ankles. Even when Iain put the mower round the lawn. Result!

Some grey days (today) and some beautiful bright ones typical of November have been enjoyed by yours truly. I keep taking pictures of trees...These line one of the routes leading into and out of the scattering of hamlets that we are lucky enough to live in.

Looking towards the closest neighbouring hamlet to ours, this is one of my favourite routes home. It never fails to sooth. The first time we drove home this way I had to pinch myself; the 'big house' lies off to the left with a glimpse of the family chapel and the lovely chimney stacks on the scattered houses. It is like a set for a period drama.

Yesterday the sunshine lured me down to the coast path as soon as I left work. Dogs already in the van and a change of clothes meant we could enjoy it before the light fell.

Heading out along the track to St Aldhelm's Chapel

Nellie and Arch in the doorway of the Chapel. They are allowed in and always join me when I pop in. Once Henry, Pop, Arch and Nellie did their usual recce only for me to realise the voices I heard inside weren't walkers but members of a wedding party having their rehearsal. Happily they didn't mind the extra guests :-)

Just before we go down the steep bit below St Aldhelm's Head

On the rocks!

And bonfire night is upon us once more...

2011-11-05T15:54:00.000-07:00

Alec is in there somewhere...:-)

We left Nellie and Arch at home and took Alec to a bonfire extravaganza at Sixpenny Handley run by the Scout troop.

Nellie and Arch are still having a quiet time - tomorrow they get a short 20-30 min walk, starting off on a short lead, and I'll be increasing the distance as the week goes on. Neither needed anything much at their session with Amanda earlier last week, and neither actually needed to have an enforced slow down for quite this long, but it seems like a good opportunity to just take things, even their walks, a little more slowly. Just to give the little tensions and tweaks Amanda found even more time to settle before they are allowed to hare about on their walks - and for Nellie to do some agility.

And all three of us looking silly...

I do like trying to take pictures of fireworks. Bearing in mind there's a time delay on the phone camera I was quite pleased with these..

Arch has never given a moment's thought to fireworks, and Nellie is fine with them nearby though she shows she is aware of them by looking to us to see what we think; one of our neighbours was putting up a few on Friday evening for their small son in the field at the end of our gardens and she didn't bother. Having listened to the shoots going on - game and clay pigeon - from 8 weeks old round here random shoot bangs don't faze her at all. We cycled right alongside a shoot on the tracks here once! I'm not sure how she'd react to the fizzing noises some fireworks make if one went off in a neighbouring garden though. Pop hated those sorts of noises even more than she hated the bangs. So far, thankfully, nothing has undermined Nellie's confidence and I hope it stays that way. Please!

Before we finally took Alec home, on a whim, we diverted to the Saxon hill-top town of Shaftesbury to walk down (and up) Gold Hill in the dark. You see signs for Shaftesbury (and probably pass through it) on your way to Gillingham show in September. It is about 5 mins drive from the show site. Haven't walked on Gold Hill for ages and never in the dark! It is the very famous cobbled hill in the town. If you are old enough to remember the Hovis advertisement on TV - the boy walks up (or down - can't remember) Gold Hill! With Dvorak's Symphony No9 'from the New World' playing in the background. Of course that is not why it is famous but it did boost tourism in north Dorset. I'm not a natural town dweller but I'd happily live on that street; the views from the gardens are breathtaking. We stood looking out over the Blackmore Vale from the 1,200 year old ruined Abbey walk as other fireworks went up over the town. Two displays then this evening!

Awesome! (one of Al's favourite words..)

Quiet time

2011-11-02T14:15:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures from Chapmans on Sunday.

Six collies and one lone terrier. But he might have been smarter than the collies. With a circle of all the dogs round me having a treat each (can't stop myself!) we were all amused to see 'several Archies'. While the collies waited politely in their chosen spot for their treat Archie took his and then rather deftly moved further on round the circle bobbing up with an expression that seemed to say 'Here I am, my turn'. It worked because how could I resist?

Ruth's Tai had to borrow Nellie's spare harness (in pink) as she was just over a week into a season and he might have had to go on a longline. She looked like she might be interested but once we were on the walk she was too busy showing off one of her 'favourite Dorset walks' to her new group of buddies. And he was far too polite to persist...

Going up into the woods earlier in the week the light in the trees was lovely. The air feels so invigorating at this time of year and the smells of the leaves and earth are wonderful. Love scrunching through piles of leaves.... Used the phone camera to try to capture the light and colour (not the smells!)

And then some horses came past....

It is at times like this I miss horse-riding. Just hacking out and enjoying the feel of being on a horse, out and about in the countryside. Sadly, following the fall I had back in 2003 which damaged my hip ligament I can't risk it. I fell on rock hard August ground without any body protection and I don't have any natural padding...Several people at the time and since have told me in no uncertain terms how lucky I was. I manage the hip by keeping myself fit and strong and regular chiropractic care. I don't miss horse-riding enough to risk another fall which could jeopardize all the things I love to do with my dogs.

Mind you if Iain's slippers continue to lurk at the bottom if the stairs where he leaves them they'll be the next culprits. Who needs horses with those huge things waiting in the dark?!

It'll be a quiet rest of week and weekend for Archie and Nellie, at least, following one of their 3 month check up visits to their physio Amanda. Nellie had a slightly tight hamstring and Archie a bit of a bruise where he flipped over chasing a rabbit last week (I do keep telling him he 10.5 years old!) They both had loads of massage - Arch goes all gooey, really chills and then rolls onto his back and does his 'happy giggle' noise. Amanda said that Nellie has the healthiest nose she has ever seen on a dog - just the most perfect amount of moisture and dilation. She likened Nellie to an Arab horse with her chiselled face. Nellie likes her Aunty Amanda :-)

I too have had some TLC with my trusty McTimoney man.

So a quiet few days I hope for all of us - well I have to go to work of course.

Paths are for wooses don't you know?

2011-10-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

Apparently. According to Iain. (And he was right about Friday's weather so he may have a point about paths too)

Me? I am happy either way, unless my foot and my leg disappear into a water filled hole that I can't see because it is hidden beneath the thick cover of knee high grasses that dominate Dartmoor's landscape once the paths are left behind. Or my boot sinks into bog that for reasons we have never fathomed is in both the sloping valleys and on the high ridges..... But on a beautiful clear blue sun-shiney Autumn day I can forgive the moor its idiosyncracies and even laugh (yes I laughed!) when I do these stupid things.....

Athletic Nellie breezes it (despite doing a 5.5 hour walk on this terrain on Friday there was no reduction in speed or enthusiasm for the little bit of agility she did in my class she joins in with on Saturday morning), Arch goes at it with terrier determination and Misty gamboled along blissfully unaware of anything too arduous for her because at those points where we considered we were asking a bit much of a less fit 2 year old Shih-tzu she was whisked under Iain's arm and carried.

Above Okehampton the moors are accessible by a narrow bumpy track and we parked the van there before heading off into the pathless yonder. Well there are paths initially as it's accessible but once beyond Yes Tor they disappear.......For about four hours we saw no-one, apart from each other.

On West Mill Tor:

Misty has does her aerobics below West Mill:

Watching sheep from Lints Tor:

I trained Nellie around sheep when she was younger and like to keep her up to speed with them around.

Exploring Yes Tor:

Posing on High Willhayes:

The zoom on the iphone gave this view of sheep and beyond to Great Links Tor the texture of a painting. Not a great photo but an interesting effect. And I always like photos of sheep :-)

Looking out from Great Kneeset Tor towards Firs Tor and the ridge and in the distance, the sea:

Met up with my Mother who is still house-sitting down in Devon to take her out for a meal in a lovely pub in the evening (The Red Lion - Chulmleigh, below Barnstable on the A377 www.theredlionchulmleigh.co.uk) before heading home with our two, plus 'Little Snoring' (Misty) in one of our crates. Just one of the nicknames we have for her when she stays - 'Squidgey' and 'Big Dog' being the other favourites...

Pubs seem to have figured largely in our adventures recently. Last Sunday we took a very well marked path from Win Green Hill on the chalky borders of Dorset and Wiltshire (that I have mentioned many times on here) down to Tollard Royal to spend a while sitting in their lovely pub garden (The King John - Tollard Royal -www.kingjohninn.co.uk). And back again, this time on the less friendly sign-marked public footpaths that cut through the Estate formerly owned by Madonna and Guy Ritchie. Like a lot of very rich people who buy country estates that have public footpaths going through them they successfully diverted public attention from one right of way that went past the house, and directed people onto another that existed, without much effective muscle from the county council to intervene. It gives me great pleasure to exercise my rights to walk on the second of the two rights of way, (hearsay suggested that using the first of the two resulted in rather nasty confrontations - how true that is is anyone's guess - neverthless there are no signs for it now) despite the 'dogs on lead' signs that appear here and there which are designed to intimidate (and keep away)peopel walking with their dogs who don't know that the only legal expectation on public rights of way required is that dogs are under control . OK for some that is 'on lead' but some of us can do 'under control' unleashed. Well I can with mine (except for deer with Arch so if there is any chance ie in woodland that there might be some deer he goes on a longline). Consequently I ignore such signs. Having a healthy disregard for stupid, officious 'rules' and being fully aware of my responsibilities as well as my rights in the countryside makes me an unfortunate choice for a gamekeeper to 'take a verbal pop at'. And Iain is pretty good at providing a bit of male 'beef' when present and required! Anyway, today no one tried it on and so we had an happy and uneventful walk with Mandy and three of her dogs who joined us along with Misty. And we got to sit in great deckchairs and sunshine at the pub.

In the week I had got a text from Ruth Abrahams with whom we had had a long conversation about 'things to do in Dorset' back in September as she was planning a few days away in these parts with her partner for a particularly momentous birthday he was having at the end of October. Knowing we live down here, she picked our brains and we made a few suggestions mostly about the New Forest (Hampshire really) and the Purbecks and thought nothing more of it, except for hoping they would have good weather and enjoy it. Anyway the text asked us if we wanted to meet up at Corfe (Corfe Castle - at The Greyhound pub www.greyhoundcorfe.co.uk) with Mandy and Neil and the two of them? So we did - for an evening of eating, drinking (well not me as I was driving and I rarely drink anything alcoholic anyway!), embarrassing kareoke and a Mexican board game we have called Perudo. The pub shut its doors with all of us and a bunch of Hallowe'en party people in it and I think we left about 12.30! A good night. If we had wanted the dogs could have come in too. And Nellie did for a short time to have a cuddle!

We arranged to meet up today. I found Ruth at Zoe's field near Langton Matravers doing a bit of grid stuff with their dogs and Nellie was invited to join in! She thought that was great. Then for a walk, and of course with Chapman's Pool not far off I had to take them there and, just for us the drizzle stopped and a bit of sun emerged as we arrived at Renscombe to park. Not sure they were as used to the gradient combined with the mud as we are :-) but with Zoe and two of her collies, Ruth and Rob and three of Ruth's collies, Iain and me and our two (Misty went home yesterday to put her paws up!) we had a really relaxed couple of hours walking there with the waves heaving and the beach empty but for a couple of wetsuited surfers walking on to the next small beach along....

...followed by a trip to The Square and Compass pub in Worth (Worth Matravers)(www.squareandcompasspub.co.uk) which has been run by the same family for over 100 years and was almost certainly a den of smuggling at some point before that! A tiny pub with beautiful views (which I explained to Ruth she would have been able to see were it not for the sea mist!) free ranging chickens and a simple but perfect for 'rounding off a coast path walk' food menu - cheese and veg or meat pie, crisps and peanuts. With its tiny rooms, Purbeck stone floor (the same as we have here at home and probably from the same quarry and at least as old if not older), odd furniture and a fossil museum as part of the low ceiling-ed structure, you really can't find a much more atmospheric pub in Dorset. And dogs are welcome. Though we felt 7 at once was asking a lot so they stayed in car and vans.

Bearing in mind how much work I know I have to get through between now and January I feel remarkably chilled. I wonder how long it will last?

Oh and I found this picture of Al and Iain at Stourhead from last Wednesday!!

Family gatherings, another project and some walks

2011-10-27T11:33:00.000-07:00

Our 'relies' who emigrated to Australia when I was a child came over to see their enormous number of far flung family members and a couple of weeks back we went to my bother's and his partner Clare's house to have a meal together. My mother brought them up from the farm in Devon she house sits for people regularly throughout the year. My aunt and uncle were staying with her there for a few days. Alec, who is my brother's eldest son, was invited too. On a school night! It was good to catch up with Lyn and Phil (Phil is my Mother's youngest brother). Haven't seen them for a few years. They make fairly regular trips back but with their own Australian born children now grown up with children of their own and various difficult situations within the family to cope with their visits are usually quite intense, busy affairs. Alec was a tiny lad when they last saw him so they were pleased to catch up with him! When I spent a few months in Australia back in 1988 with a former boyfriend we stayed with them for a large chunk of time and they were very kind and tolerant! I rescued an abandoned kitten while I was there and asked them to keep him, which they did. He became quite a character and despite not having many teeth as a result of the malnutrition he was suffering from when I found him, he lived a good long life.

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I mentioned a pond a while back. I was right - a stone trough was hugely expensive (around £1,500 on average!) - so I bought a galvanised farm trough instead at a somewhat lesser cost.. It'll weather down eventually and, buried into the ground a little way, filled with plants and hopefully wildlife too eventually, it will create a really good place to sit and gaze into the water. I created two ponds in a previous garden and Iain always knew that, if he came home and the dogs greeted him but I wasn't in the house, he'd find me lying at the edge of the pond looking at the wildlife spinning around in the depths of it. This is intended to be a wildlife pond too and so I have built a stoney ramp up to it and the ledge in it will be a marginal plant shelf that beasties like frogs (amd perhaps the odd toad if I am lucky) can use as a stepping in or out area. We had a 'Mrs Toad' living in the hedge of our 'two pond' garden close to the pond. She would waddle out from her stoney home in the hedge (I'd put some big flat stones in there) look at me sat there waiting for wildlife to appear and blink, then make her way to the water where she would cool herself and then she would waddle back to her shady refuge, giving me another look as she did so. Fascinating!

Can't plant anything in it a) I am collecting rain water - started two nights ago with the rain and b) most of the native plants I want to put in it aren't available till late Spring..

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Walks! As reported the dogs and I had our last sea swim on the 15th October. We had swum with Mandy and her four on the Friday but I took Nellie and Arch down on my own for one last dip the next day before I headed home to go off to the place we had booked to stay the night before the WAO thing. The temperature dropped the following week and so we wait now til next year..

Been getting out and about for our various walks and I know some people who read my blog love to see the pictures of our walks so here are a few!

Cycling in the New Forest with Iain one Sunday a couple of weeks back:

A new engraved stone in the wall along the coast path above Chapman's Pool:

A couple of members of the Dorset Dry Stone Walling Association hard at work on the 15th October building yet another new engraved stone into the existing wall.

They tried to sound impressed when I told them I had done dry stone walling with the Dorset Countryside Volunteers a few years ago...but were impressed when I said we had built the steps down from Houns Tout across the bay. In the picture below Houns Tout is the highest cliff on the right and it is directly across from where I took the picture of them walling.

I took this picture on a different walk along the cliff tops from Worth to Winspit and along. It was beautiful with a nip in the air that afternoon after work.

These were taken further along below St Aldhelm's Head on that afternoon's walk:

Misty is here for the week so we went to the New Forest for her first adventure this time with us (I took them there today as well in the rain!)

We had originally planned to go to North Wales for some mountains for three days this half term but our hot water tank element decided to pack up at the end of last week and what with one thing and another and getting as much information from our electrician and then arranging the plumber, we decided to do three days of day trips instead. The first of these was to Lyme (Lyme Regis to non-locals!):

After walking halfway to Seaton on the beautiful undercliffs we found a route down to the beach that we have used many times before over the years and walked back along the stoney beach before the tide came up. There are no official routes off the Undercliff path to the beach according to tourist info but it is possible if you know the route well and are discreet. Misty needed to be carried for almost all the beach section. We have always liked Lyme. We used to walk here a lot when we lived in Dorchester and especially appreciated it in 2001 during foot and mouth. We would walk from Charmouth to Lyme with the tide going out and back again - even when there had been large landslips. Henry loved this part of the coast path. We got Arch the week we moved across to East Dorset.

We did our usual chips on or by the Cobb thing we always do and watched a rainbow forming after a brief shower, before the sun returned to dry us off. Looking down on the Cobb:

On The Cobb looking back onto Lyme:

There is something really special about The Cobb at Lyme. Its sinewy shape, stone blocks and fossil patterns combine to lift it beyond just being a stone sea wall. It is sculptural and organic despite being man-made. That appeals to me.

The next day - Stourhead - and we collected Alec for the day to join us for a few hours walk on the Estate there, followed by a very late lunch in the Trust cafe. Lovely sunshine again!

Today, with the horrid weather set in for the duration, Iain went in to work so he can take tomorrow off instead. We hope to head to Dartmoor for the day. Fingers crossed for the sunshine he insists is forecast just for Friday.....

Industrial strength tuggy

2011-10-26T13:10:00.001-07:00

I was a bit thrown at the WAO tryout day when I was asked 'have you lost your barge?' It took me a moment to cotton on to the fact the asker was looking at Nellie's tug toy. It is certainly industrial strength but until he asked I really hadn't made the link to a barge rope. He had a point though!

I discovered these ginormous tuggy knots just before the Champ Final at Wyre (our last run of the weekend), thought instantly of Nellie's scissor teeth, the umpteen rather more standard size tuggy toys she has destroyed within a weekend, not to mention the numerous holes and bruising I have endured in my hands, thighs and fingers - and bought the only one they had in stock. Then made myself anxious wondering if I could get another one! Just as well I found I could as the first one started its ordeal as Nellie's tug toy just before that run at Wyre at the end of August and by the last week of September looked like this - see picture below - the pitiful remains on the right.....

Someone expressed surprise at the hugeness of the toy at Prestbury Park and even more surprise when I said I hoped it might last a month.....

On the left is the second one after Iain has unknotted the tight knot ball for me (using a wooden spoon!). I needed this one just after Trent Park...

Please note the tennis ball centrally placed to give an idea of scale!

And below is one of the three I have stockpiled still in its original knot form....

Luckily Nellie will work 'through' her toy when we are training so even though it is huge it doesn't cause problems when it is 'dead' on the ground or in my hand. I can't hide it that's for sure.

She loves it!

Since Prestbury several other people have commented on the size of these toys in relation to her size. And they have a point. This size is meant for seriously large breeds - rotties, GSDs, ridgebacks etc with very strong jaws. Well that is what it says on the website I discovered I can buy them from in multiples. I didn't tell them they were for one relatively dainty border collie girl and that if I am lucky three may get me into the beginning of next season (bearing in mind we have only about three shows between now and March!)

But then they haven't factored in her scissor teeth or my efforts to overcome her 'politeness' when she was a baby dog. We were doing well with the tuggy game, she found it exciting to play with me this way, even around agility going on. She would play a vigorous game of tug in the local garden centre, industrial estate and two different busy high streets. I wrote about the time I threw her toy to her when I was doing some early 'wait' games ages ago in an early blog entry. I had torn the tendon in my little finger when she was 8 months or thereabouts, underestimated how it would affect my throwing, lobbed it anyway to a space behind her but it had landed on her nose! Well as far as she was concerned it had bitten her and there was no way tug was going to happen from that point on.

Re-building that fun was a learning curve in itself. One that neither Henry - who came from rescue with a ball fetish so intense he would disappear into the distance after the tiniest of toys when I first got him - nor Pop who although didn't 'get' toys when I first got her took to them with her inherent gusto once she realised the fun we could have and didn't care two hoots whether it landed on her head or any other part of her anatomy - ever gave me reason to think that hard about. Even sensitive little Archie didn't worry about the toy attacking him - he could bite it back, see!

Nellie didn't see it their way at all. Biting it back was too scarey. So I had to look at it differently too and, notwithstanding the bloodshed (mine!) that occurs even now, because even though the toy is huge she still occasionally catches my fingers and leaves bruises on my thighs, I am very pleased with the result. Yes, she has removed the skin from a knuckle at my field - a quick trip to the chemist for steri-strips sorted that out - and at the semis in September she caught my thumb as I was about to start so I ran that with blood pouring down my hand. But...

It took thought on my part to encourage her to have the confidence to be 'rude', to develop so much drive on her toy, to want that toy so much so that for a long time now she too hasn't cared what it does. And patience to let her develop it at a rate she was happy and comfortable with. We both lose ourselves in our game and she loves this game with Mom. Nellie taught me that really playing with your dog is an art in itself - play should simultaneously create a bond and arise from a bond - of trust, fun, spontaneity and love. Whether it is an agility game or any other excuse for a game!

Nellie now really,really loves all our games, for instance 'get it' and 'give' (though this one I left until way, way later - until her tug action was incredibly strong and robust again. I don't think you get good drivey 'get it' before then and if you introduce 'give' in the context of that game too soon before the driveyness is so intense you can find you take away what they do have and their confidence - especially with a sensitive, thoughtful youngster who wants to get things right. If you are patient and wait til all the parts of the game, and the dog, are ready then 'get it and give' will take your dog into drive orbit! So I waited until Nellie was so confident about winning it that giving it up on command just wasn't a problem. Just my experience...) Our toy games (with agility tug or any other toy) include 'he's going to get you', 'I'm going to get him', 'grrrrgrrrrr', 'you won him!', 'he's mine!', 'I'm gonna getcha' and 'you wanna play?' and when we are both sprawled on the grass or floor playing tug and she holds the toy by my face, asking me to 'play tug' using my teeth I can't help but laugh out loud. Ultimately I do control the games we play but she doesn't mind this at all because she knows that 'control' isn't what our games are about for her or me. We share the whole experience so 'Get it and give' are just a naturally evolved part of the game. It is our special time.

If your heart isn't in the game, if you aren't truly 'play-ful' and can't forget yourself and immerse yourself in the play, if you are just playing with them in order to get them to 'do agility' in a particular way and you don't genuinely want to play with them, then why should their hearts be in it either? And if your heart is and their heart isn't then perhaps you are forcing the wrong game on them and need to take time out to make the whole experience of playing lots of different games with you something they really want to do because you are fun and interaction with you is a warm and mutually binding experience for its own sake? You don't need any trickery or exploitative methods, just a genuine desire to bring out the playful confidence of your dog.

When Nellie's small tuggy knot 'bit her' back when she was little I simply stopped trying to play tuggy games with it, I didn't want to make it an issue and our 'wait' training therefore had to continue differently too as I couldn't throw the toy around her from a distance anymore either. That winter, for a few weeks, when we did any agility stuff I just threw the toy away from her instead and made it a pounce game. I never gave her any reason to think he might 'bite her' again in any kind of agility context. Consequently she stopped worrying about it.

Meanwhile we carried on playing our other different toy games at home and out and about. For instance, sometimes 'Strawberry' or 'fluffy duck' would pounce on her from behind the pine box in the living room and land gently on her bottom! He would then disappear and while she was looking round the corner of the box to see where he had gone, he would suddenly get her playfully on the bottom again from the other direction! Great game. Of course, gradually,naturally a game of tug with him would sometimes begin as she went to put her teeth on him...... she would always win...and there was absolutely no pressure on her to continue

Now and then, without any pressure of my hopes for anything more than what she was happy to offer, her little tuggy knot didn't fly through the air to be pounced on, sometimes he too 'got her' on the bottom before being wriggled along the ground..and of course she would start to grab him. Tentatively at first, yes, but her confidence grew.....and, when she held on even if only for a tiny moment, she always won him and got to parade about. Before being asked 'Do you wanna play?' which is her cue to come into the side of me with her toy that I taught her as a puppy.

When she was old enough the following summer, taking a tennis ball and then, once we discovered him a year after that, crazy blue bouncy ball to the sea all summer long (and our last swim in the end this year was on the beautiful sunny afternoon of 15th October!) or to the sandy beaches in the winter, and playing careful games with sticks on walks again helped to increase her confidence. Despite Henry and Pop's cleverness at these games I made sure that Nellie got the ball or stick too and winning it ahead of the others boosted her confidence no end and made the game so exciting. Sometimes I would hold on to the end of the stick.....and then Pop would join in too!

After a few weeks that first winter when she was 8 months old we were back to where we had been and we played tug and I could throw the knot tug around her again. At the time I was quite happy with that, we both loved our play but I didn't realise where our enthusiasm for it would take it.

One of the monkey knots began to fray but I found she was becoming so absolutely full on confident the knot ends didn't bother her at all. Before then it had to stay a small, predictable 'well behaved' knot that I threw away when it began to disintegrate, because if it caught her 'wrong' I could see she still worried a little bit. She would recover well by then but I didn't want any worry at all. I didn't want to go backwards again. So, frayed bits at the end of the rope knot were out. One day I found she just wanted to tug even with frayed bits and cared less what the knot did so I could go on with it even when it was 'past its best' as it were - consequently there was more to grab and she could tug harder because she could get a better grip. It all became even more exciting... It took a while to get to a completely frayed state which was probably why she adapted to it as she did, but once it was a complete frayed rope knot and she loved the fact the rope ends went in all directions around her face, that the toy behaved unpredictably, and she held on despite it 'being rude' and was determined to 'be rude' grabbing it we found ourselves on another level of play! That was the point I introduced the 'control' game : 'get it and give'. It seemed the right thing to do then and it too created a new dimension to our play.....and, it has enriched our bond and this has deepened our agility partnership as we have gone on.

So after a while I got a crazy tug monster who, now at 4.5 years old, accidently 'gets' me sometimes. Do I tell her off? Don't be silly. So we need 'barge rope' size tug toys to withstand her scissor teeth (at least for a while), to protect my fingers (as much as possible) and cope with the strength and determination of her tugging..... but do I care? Next question!

The only worry I have is do I let her play tug with lovely toys like this?

Maybe not! Well not for very long anyway :-)

Naturally, we still have great fun with Strawberry and Fluffy Duck and the fact she and Arch try to dig into my rucksack on the beach to find blue bouncy ball indicates her (and his) joy in that game! I egg them on by excitedly telling them he's 'gonna come out to play a-n-y minute....' and 'Ooh, there he is...Oh my!' Large sticks or small ones are sometimes presented to me in an invitation to play but this summer just after her paw healed we found 'Shoe' (an old discarded rubber sole) on the heath and we play with him for short stretches as we walk there and then, when I feel she has played that game enough, she watches me hide him in one of his 'shoe goes night-night' places so we can find him next time we walk past that spot. She knows all the places and stops to investigate the trace of his scent until we get to the one where he actually is waiting for us. She thinks that game is great and I love seeing her face all bright with the joy of it as she flies past me having retrieved it from where I have lobbed it for her into the heather.

So if you hear me and Nellie quite obviously in a little world of our own before a run and after, having entire 'conversations' with each other about how naughty tuggy is, how clever she is and how 'I'm gonna get him' and I laugh at her 'moomin' noises I'm not crazy. We are just playing and, nothing personal, but I have forgotten you are there listening anyway.

And no, I haven't lost a barge anywhere en route to the show...

Sounds I love....

2011-10-21T12:31:00.000-07:00

Talking to one or two people in the queue at Chippenham about how much we all loved the clucking sound that chickens make when they are happy prompted me to think of other sounds that give me huge pleasure:

blackbirds 'chinking' nearby
buzzards mewing overhead
rooks gathering at dusk
wrens pitpitpit-ing in the undergrowth
a baby's laughter
wind in the trees making the leaves rustle and whisper
cows moo-ing
Nellie's 'moomin' noise when we are having a silly game with fluffy, strawberry or tuggy
the peal of church bells drifting across the fields
Archie's 'happy giggle' type noise (sorry can't think of any other way to describe it)
lambs bleating and their mothers' low baa calling them
Iain's chuckle as he watches something funny on TV and I can hear him from somewhere else in the house!
a cat purring
a robin's 'territorial' Spring song
gulls calling as they follow a tractor across brown fields
cockerels crowing....

Especially Bert's 'Barry White' voice - all deep and resonant. He would do his 'thing' at different times of day and we would sometimes be returning from a walk along the paths leading to home and hear him. I'd always say 'That's Bert' to anyone who might be listening. Usually just the dogs :-)

I had to let him go today. He too had almost reached 5 years old, re-homed from a neighbour almost 4 years ago. The neighbour had got him from someone who 'bred chickens'. He had come with a toe on each foot a lot shorter than the others and I suspected some indiscriminate in-breeding had taken place to produce him. This contributed to an awkward gait and it was starting to take its toll. He was still enjoying his food and the sunshine and his large dust cavities on the edge of the lawn but I wanted him checked by the vet before we hit winter weather because he wasn't right with his legs. We saw our chicken vet two weeks ago and I have been medicating him by beak ever since. But the metacam was not having as positive effect on him as I hoped it would and so when I took him back for a check up on progress today I made the decision not to let him get to the point where I would know I should have let him go earlier. Now was the time, not when it was cold, wet and horrid.

I have learned a lot more about chickens this year and especially that they are even more stoical than many other creatures, masking their pain to prevent the flock from sensing weakness. They are so clever at it that if any pain is evident then they really are in pain and need veterinary attention at the very least.

He has been such a good, gentlemanly boy with the girls. Such a handsome lad and a real character! His adventures include attacking Jason who did all our lime plastering and rendering a couple of summer ago. Shrieks from the garden made me drop what I was doing only to find Bert hanging off Jason's trouser leg while Jason flailed about cursing 'that bloody bird'.....Bert would give the evil eye to Geoff next door through the hedge and Iain took ages to learn to walk down the garden without a walking stick brandished in his hand....But he was meekness itself with me - eating from my hand and accepting any trimming of spur or inspection I wanted to do. He was also good with my mother and any other woman who had cause to go up and down the garden.

I miss his reassuring, beady-eyed presence in the garden already.

Mammoth catch up...

2011-10-04T15:39:00.001-07:00

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

Going ..going..gone

2011-08-18T15:39:00.000-07:00

The bandage went ten days ago. Both the vet when she took the final dressing off, and a vet nurse friend who saw it by chance a few days after that, both said how amazing the rate of healing has been and that usually the wound breaks down that but her pad looks great. It has gone from strength to strength and now looks just like all the other pads and is as tough as they are ie very. I thought I'd have to build up her use of the pad very carefully but she was good on it straight away though I was careful about the surfaces she was able to move freely on for the first three days. And then didn't ask her to run or turn on anything gravelly for a bit after that. Since the beginning of last week we have been able to focus entirely on fitness. Swimming in the sea and at hydrotherapy pool, lots of walks and re-starting agility at Small height, V-d weaves, moving up to Medium then at the end of the week to Large height and upright weaves and leaving the full contacts till then too.

She has such a deep level of fitness that I wasn't afraid she'd lose huge amounts of core strength though we have been doing tricks like wobble board high fives (;)), skateboarding, standing in a small pot and rollovers and shuffle and reverse and rewind and circle and so on to work on the small muscles and soft tissue just to be on the safe side.

So these are my top tips for quick healing of cut pads that need stitches (though I am sure they would help too if no stitches were needed) for anyone that has not had this experience before. If you have then skip it!

Keep the dressing (and so the wound) bone dry. Not even damp. We would put our hands onto and into the grass on the lawn or out on to paths before she was allowed out. Any dampness felt meant that the drip bag had to be worn. I was paranoid about this.

No free-running walks - except 200 yards along the path to sniff, do what was needed, and then sniff some more, eat grass, look about and so on. I'd stretch it to 10 - 15 mins but almost all of that she was just sniffing here and there while on a harness and lead at all times.

I tried letting her watch the agility class I run once - just the once! - on her lead and harness with her tuggy to rag on thinking she'd just do that while watching (as she usually does) but when she began to hop up and down I took her back to the van at the top of the field away from it all. That looked like too much activity to me and wasn't taking any chances because..

As dogs do sweat through their pads going out walking and generally jumping around even at home were no-nos as this would have created a sweaty dressing and compromised the wound. Yuck.

When unsupervised for even a few minutes, she went in a crate (if I had to go out and at night) with bonnet on so she could not jump around if someone went past, knocked on the door etc. I didn't want her banging around with the bonnet on and damaging herself and if she couldn't be supervised completely then I couldn't be sure she'd leave her dressing alone so the crate really helped both problems.

Lots and lots of rest. Luckily Nellie is quiet around the house but if she had been more like Pop and ready to leap into action at the drop of a feather then I'd have crated her more as I did for Pop for three months twice! I did anyway for the first week to force her to sleep but then let her have more freedom in the house as time went on so long as she was supervised constantly AND quietly resting. It was only for three weeks with Nellie - a very short time really when all is said and done.

Keep the stitches in and all the above in place too for three weeks - not rushing that last stage of healing made a huge difference.

Keep the wound dressed for the whole three weeks too- changing once a week. If doing all the above it should only need to be taken off to check all is well and replaced.

Finally, I have no idea if it really helped but I gave her aloe vera juice once a day (two teaspoons) in with her mince etc so she couldn't taste it. I couldn't put anything on the wound obviously so I felt it could help her healing if she had the stuff internally. Your guess is as good as mine really but I'm quite taken with the idea that it did help. Consequently she is still on it each day and so is Archie for general well being and when I think of it I chuck some in some juice for me.

And so tomorrow we are off to do two days competing at Dashin Dogs, a third day judging (Snooker -eek)and then to Wyre for two days. She'll be wild and I'll be rusty but we'll have fun anyway. At the start I wasn't sure we'd be OK even for the semis so anything else is a bonus.

And of course while we have been at home for the month there has been plenty to do. I have done a lot of work - there's always more to do but I have done far more than I hoped I would - done some maintenance around the house and got on with this little project:

Much better. We edged it with oak sleepers from a reclamation yard and filled the hole with soil from a big pile of it that we took out fo the veg patch area 4 years ago to create the raised beds. The chickens have been scratching around on it all that time so it is well manured and weed free! Planted with bee and butterfly friendly perennials (some came from a neighbour which was nice) I am looking forward to seeing how it develops. Got lots of bulbs (crocus, narcissus and tulip)to go in too for the Spring and I hope to get some hollyhock seeds to throw in for next year. I'd quite like granny bonnets too....I've been restrained and not packed a load of plants in which is a mistake I have made before in previous gardens.

Alec came to stay this weekend too and we had a great time taking him out for meals and to see the last Harry Potter instalment at the Tivoli in Wimborne. We volunteered there (before agility!) for a couple of years. It's a lovely 1930s Art Deco theatre/cinema that is almost entirely run by volunteers. Bought Al a big pile of books that he chose from Waterstones in Bournemouth where we also went. It was his 12th birthday this week! Took the dogs too for an outing (and to Wimborne market in the morning). They had lots of attention and were welcome in Waterstones where they fell asleep on the carpet only waking up to have fuss! Iain planted himself on a sofa and he and Alec read bits to each other of books and I dipped into Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea(neither of them were interested in my choices unsurprisingly!) . I loved them as a child. Along with the 'Little House on the Prairie' stories. Must get the set of those someday and re-read them...

Nellie doesn't like Top Gear..

2011-08-07T14:01:00.000-07:00

Perhaps it offends her feminist sensibilities? She barks at the men's voices and her ears go all semaphoric (is there such a word?) In the staff room on the last day of term we were discussing feminism and Top Gear. Apparently there are some heated disagreements about Clarkson, May and Hammond in feminist circles. We have these kinds of chats in our staff room - the dialogue is always good humoured and mixed gender. Well, I'm a feminist (It is hard to imagine why any woman who has been born in the last hundred years wouldn't be - who would want to accept they are second class, with smaller brains and incapable of rational thought? Just some of the myths put about by men about women who dared to question, and tirelessly campaign against, the social, economic and governmental status quo at the start of the 20th century) and the Top Gear guys make me laugh. They are just like a bunch of naughty schoolboys playing pranks on one another and taking them seriously misses the point entirely. They don't even take themselves seriously for God's sake. Scratch the surface and most grown men would like to prank about like they do. Then come home and be husbands, partners and fathers.

Nevertheless Nellie doesn't like it so we have come upstairs to write this instead and she is asleep under the spare room bed - a favourite place for her when I am up here. Archie, who had a long walk on Martin Down with me this evening, is lying on his side nearby dreaming of rabbits.....

During this time at home I have hatched a scheme for a very unprepossessing part of the garden. It was once intended to become a shed most probably but before our time. We have been looking at it for four years and had assorted ideas - cover it with decking and have a covered seating area? Dig it up and make a pond here? Dig it up and grass it? Put a shed on it? But finally I suggested a large raised flower bed and so, with Iain's agreement, that is what it will be - with oak 'sleepers' to edge it and then I can fill it with spring bulbs and summer flowers and herbs and with luck the poppies that are to the left and now died back can spread into it too.

So Iain has been tasked to put his back into removing the concrete. Whoever put it in did a very good job......

There will be a pond but it will go where the sinks are in the picture below and to create it I'm going to buy a trough...When we were in Derbyshire in May we visited Eyam. Never been before, shamefully. But we remedied it this time and apart from being inspired and touched by the humble heroism of Eyam villagers back in the time of the plague in the 1600s, I was also inspired by the water system...and the way they had used one of the stone troughs to create a pond. I think I'll be extrememly lucky to find a stone trough like the one I saw there for the kind for a price I can afford but I can, instead, use a metal farm trough perhaps......Something to research. I do like to have projects :)

While Iain sweated over the concrete I did some sewing! I used to do quite a bit of sewing. I used to spin wool too on my own spinning wheel. Bet you didn't know that (!!) I have made curtains, cushions and patchwork quilts on my maternal grandmother's 1938 Singer complete with an electric foot control that my grandfather fixed up for her much later on in the 1950s. She bought the machine when she was expecting my mother so that she could make all the clothes for any children she would have (she had four in the end - my mother being the eldest and the only girl) and my grandfather and then she used it to do all the sewing for the lodging house she ran for young working men as well while granddad worked in the power station. As well as caring for four young children, she did all the cooking, cleaning, sewing and washing for her family and the lodgers. She was a high energy lady. The Singer is in the roof at the moment waiting for me to re-organise the spare room eventually.

This quilt started me off. In 1997 we went to Northern Ireland for a holiday. We stayed with some friends we had made who lived in a beautiful Georgian house in Belfast. It was in a brief 'ceasefire' period and everyone we met was thrilled to see English faces on holiday - well the four guys in a car coming towards us round a bend who all put up their hands in mock gun gesture when they saw our British number plate car perhaps didn't make us feel so welcome, but it was still very beautiful and very, very quiet...The Mourne mountains were gorgeous and in Newcastle we found a little shop owned by a lady who made patchwork quilts....she made this one. I chose the fabrics and the different designs - all of which are part of patchwork history. Over the years the seams have become worn or small holes have formed and as I do not have any spare fabric from the lady (tried to contact her a few years later but she had closed) I have used patches I had in bags of fabric I have around. That's the essence of patchwork I guess.

Aren't these pots cute? Having bought some of these as Christmas presents for my mother and another person last year I decided to get a couple for our garden recently. They came from a potter called Jonathan Garratt (www.jonathangarratt.com) at Hare Lane Pottery, two miles along from Cranborne and he is well worth a visit. I think he may even send pots out by mail. In mine I have planted sempervivums which I am just learning about. They are wonderfully simple and very tough little plants - they are 'always alive' alpine succulents. These will spread all over the top through the chippings.

This is another pot from him. I bought an identical one for my mother for her birthday recently with these little plants in hers like mine. Again, in time, the plants will cover the surface.

Being at home so much I'm getting more time to look at things and I think the acer is looking really elegant now. It is probably my greatest plant success and more by trial and error than anything else. Most of them don't like too much exposure to wind or sun! It was pretty small when I bought it ten years ago. Finding the right place for it to thrive in our last garden took a few near misses and I was constantly asking Iain to heave it about (without breaking any of the branches - poor man) and then the same here for the first year or two, but it is definitely happy now in this spot even though it is actually very sunny (hence the fig I have planted in a pot behind!) but is out of the stronger winds. It goes to show that plants can decide to thrive regardless and it is just as well it is happy here as I can't see us moving it in this huge pot now! Grown men have visited and cast envious glances at this acer :) I had no idea they inspired such passion in people. I just think it is beautiful and particularly love the way the leaves cascade. In the autumnn the leaves become a stunning flame red. Even without leaves in winter the branches are interesting

Our first garden was a south facing 10 ft by 10ft blank off the side of a one up and one down corner 'house' we bought in 1991 (and gathered lots of negative equity on...). It had a 'lawn' and narrow, sad borders which Mutley and Rosie peed on. Needless to say the lawn (and borders) had to go. We paved it and I planted some climbers including some beautiful roses and honeysuckle (to disguise the tiny shed). Then lots of herbs in pots either side of the door and a spreading shrub at the bottom of the small twirly washing line. We left there in 1994 some three years later (taking the pots - and the negative equity debt with us which we eventually managed to pay off some years later) but I still occasionally go back in the summer to drive around the cul-de-sac and glance across at the garden. The last time was a couple of years ago and it was still a riot of colour - like a Mediterranean enclave - but with lovely English roses bursting out of the trellis above the fence line. No idea who lives there now but it is nice to see the planting I did is still appreciated. One day I'll maybe be brave enough to knock on the door!

I'm not a 'gardener' as I don't know enough, nor have I been tested by horribly awkward sites. I am someone who 'gardens' and have nurtured and created garden 'spaces' in the five different houses we have called home in our time together (we did rent in Milton Abbas for a bit - to pay off the negative equity before we could start again..)and made quite a lot of mistakes both in terms of planting decisions and in terms of layout! The mistakes go on...the fruit trees we have planted here two years ago - two apple and one plum - are going to go we think. Two are no really in the wrong place and they are too dwarf and too quick to fruit. Despite taking off masses of the young fruit earlier in the summer branches are breaking or are bending too low. The chickens do their aerobics everyday with the brambly apple tree by pecking the fruit off.....So I need to re-think that.

There is always something to plan for or do in any garden that's for sure.

More news..

2011-08-05T10:28:00.000-07:00

Been to the vet and it is all looking really sound. The vet said the stitches could have come out today but after discussing the issues we all decided it would be better to take a 'belt and braces' approach. I'll be happier that we have done this knowing the lifestyle she has. So she has a new bandage on til next Friday.

Nellie has captured their hearts - vets and nurses alike. All she has to do is grin and lean and people are like putty in her paws! I sympathise as it has the same effect on me! Not only that but they love the fact she just lets them do all the things they need to do. 'She just held out her paw for me to bandage it!' said the nurse who changed the dressing today, with a kind of glazed expression on her face!

I took Nell and Archie into the last training day when we broke up at work and one of the office admin ladies came after me having seen Nellie with other colleagues. She felt a bit embarassed when she explained that actually she didn't really like dogs but that she had to speak to Nellie. 'She's gorgeous', she said as Nellie leaned against her. Another notch to Nellie!

Anyway the vet and the nurse today said that it is the enforced rest she is having that is making her paw heal so well and that most people they have had this kind of problem with let their dog do everything as normal 'because, well, it's all padded and bandaged isn't it?' when all the dog really needs is rest and as little pressure on the paw as possible.

So we carry on on this track as it seems to be the right one. I am hopeful that as of next weekend she can begin to have some hydrotherapy swims and we can start short on lead road walking sessions two or three times a day. Fingers crossed.

Meanwhile the envelopes continue to arrive stuffed with running orders only to go straight in to recyling.......Agility Club, KC Festival, DIN.......

My other little heart throb (!) is busy astonishing everyone when they realise he is 10! (and a bit) When Archie and I went for our walk together today on the heath one chap did not believe me at all..

We are off to the pub to sit in the garden with the dogs and have a meal. It is an outing for both of them but especially for Nellie. She gets to lie down and rest in different surroundings out and about. Maybe we'll be able to walk or even cyle with them there again before the month is out?

Mustn't grumble

2011-08-05T02:35:00.000-07:00

Nellie is doing a lot of sleeping. Here, in Iain's office, where he has taken her to allow me (see below) a little bit more leeway on the odd day here and there so that I don't have to leave her on her own; to make sure she really does rest her paw, and to create variety for her over these three weeks. Iain's colleagues for the most part love and/or have dogs themselves so she gets lots of visits. Anyone coming to see him has had a lean and a cuddle from Nellie too :)

Still obviously on lead and harness for all her short - 2 or 3 times a day - walks though I am trying to vary where these happen as opposed to along the path from our home every single time. While we do live in an amazing place surrounded by fields and with footpaths in to and through the beautiful and quiet countryside that characterises this part of the world, I think it is important for Nellie that a short lead walk along any of the three routes from the house for 15 mins isn't the sum of her outdoor experience for these three weeks. She thrives on going to different places - and I have to admit, so do I.

Just to complicate things further I used a stretchy lead belt arrangement for Jazz (to explain later) last Thusday on a walk I took her, Dex and Archie on, and the pressure it put on the middle of my body aggravated my already temperamental right hip ligament. I was in agony by Friday morning and had to see my ever patient chiropractor. That took the whole weekend to feel better. So even though Iain took Nellie to work or was here over the weekend to stay with her so I could walk them with Archie, I couldn't do more than an hour of slow walking until last Monday of their stay here!!!!

So for both Nellie and I the walls closed in a bit at a time, now I have this holiday, when we would all be enjoying more freedom and all day jaunts to places like Dartmoor. Possibly I miss our usual round of long interesting walks more than she does. She can't tell me of course. Trying as usual to make the best of a bad situation I am using the time to get on with work (lots of schemes of work to create, reading to do, thinking to give brain space to, in a bid to make sure I am not running to stand still next term) and trying hard not to feel sorry for myself!

All Nellie's training (lots of postive reinforcement for crate rest,and calm behaviour)and her inherent wise head quality have come to the fore - she puts her head up for her bonnet as she does for 'harness' and she simply accepts cratey as her place to sleep. 'Bag-y' on her paw for damp/wet conditions is just part of things and she accepts being on the lead (though she stalks along determinedly and reminds me very much of Pop doing the same during her confinement periods for injury/problems and as she does it I smile again as I smiled at Pop when she did. It is a kind of 'right, we're off and I am determined to enjoy this' kind of stance :) )

Bless them.

Nellie and Arch went to see their Aunty Amanda, their physio, on Tuesday, for their routine 3 month check. Wanted Arch checked to keep on top of any negative effects his knees might have on the rest of him and of course I thought Nellie too might enjoy a massage to stimulate all her little muscles and soft tissue during this quiet time. So even Archie too has had a couple of quiet days along with the rest of us!

Last Friday Nellie went back to the vet to inspect the wound and all of us agreed it was looking very good indeed! No sign of the flap that the vet at the show predicted would need to 'fall off', just a lovely neat line.The dressing was changed and we are off there again to have it all checked later today.....

So I have had lots of time to potter in the garden and sit in our lovely garden chairs - and to ensure we have more rain after that sweltering heat recently I bought us a parasol for the middle of the table. Very nice, and yes, it did rain. Though the sun is out today and Archie and I are off for a walk somewhere shortly while Nellie is with Dad at work.

The garden is looking lovely despite being August - so much rain means that everything is still green. I like the veg patch at every stage - the clean, compost topped sparseness in the autumn and winter, the first signs of neat rows of seedlings and plants in the spring, and the slightly blowsy 'just got out of bed' look it has in the summer. Here it is just coming into the latter stage!

I have gathered in all the garlic (loads this year due to the hard winter I reckon) and the red onions and we have spread our home produced garden compost to rot down on the bed ready for next plantings in the Spring. And we are eating our way through all the produce. The courgettes and squash plants are aiming for world domination, though I am not sure the squash are intent on producing the fruit bit. Ordered these as plants this year to get a variety of types instead of growing them from seed (only one type did well from seed for me last year) but so far I am not impressed. Think I will just try harder with seed next year myself. The courgettes I grew from seed and as usual I planted too many so I am picking them small to keep up better.... Just yesterday I made a huge pan of courgette and landcress soup. Very nice.

Way back when Neil and Chester qualified for the EOs Mandy asked if I would look after Dexter for her if she was able to go as his groom and I suggested that I had Jazz too. As she is almost blind, needs drops and has homeopathic needs too, I figured she might enjoy coming here with dogs that she knows and a person that she knows. So they duly arrived, I used the belt thing to keep her near me on the first walk (though really I didn't need it), stuffed the ligament, and so had to choose places to go each day where they got to run about a lot in places that I knew they would be able to while I didn't need to walk very far or very fast! The best day - once my hip had settled again - involved a walk on Martin Down in the morning and then later in the afternoon down to Chapman's Pool, where we swam and swam. Jazz does very well; even though I was way out by the yachts in the sea and a couple of times she was running about trying to find me up and down the beach, all I had to do was call a couple of times and she would pick up the sound and swim on out to me!! Much fun was had with blue ball. It was good to be able to get out and about and to be in the water with the dogs.

Archie also had several wurzel gummidge rolls in the seaweed, Dex just wanted to go back in the water (please!) and Jazz wasn't going to pose for anyone not when rolls were to be had thankyou very much.

Archie enjoyed their company out and about and Nellie enjoyed their company around the house (Dex was even permitted to play with fluffy duck!) so their visit created a different kind of interest for her. Though originally I had intended to have lovely long walks with all of them each day and of course take them to Agility Club show, it didn't turn out as I'd imagined. Still as they say, mustn't grumble...

Sigh

2011-07-26T12:58:00.000-07:00

Well we are out of agility (again) for the foreseeable future.

Having driven for 8.5 hours on Friday - the first day of my holiday - in order to spend two days at Weardale and another day walking in Yorkshire (we had planned two days but Iain had a work meeting he had to go to) we had to drive back on the Sunday instead.

Why? Because somehow Nellie has cut a pad really badly.

I had taken them along the river next to the site on Friday evening. We couldn't believe our luck the dogs and I - such a beautiful limestone river valley with plenty of places to have a wallow for them. I took them along on Saturday morning for a few minutes and then again on Saturday night we all went for a walk for 1.5 hours along there almost to the next village with lots of stops for the dogs to wallow and for Iain and I to hone our stone skimming skills....

Very happy dogs.

I was happy too. Nellie and I had done some good work on Saturday together. We were 7th in the Champ Jumping and 6th in the Champ Agility. And I didn't push, just worked the courses. So we qualified 16th to run in the Final where I did go for it (God that felt great! I love Finals - always did with Henry and with Pop) but I made her drop a pole. She was lovely.

Sunday morning I had walked one course and took the dogs for ten minutes along the river path again before going back to the rings to walk another one. As Nellie jumped up into the caravan when we got back suddenly we could see blood everywhere...

Having tried and failed several times to get through on the emergency vet number Weardale had given out I was told there was a vet on site. She pronounced it to be deep (it quite turned my stomach when I looked at it) but also sideways so that it could not be stitched or stapled (though my own vets told me pads should never be stapled anyway!) and should just be left to heal by itself well wrapped, kept clean and being re-dressed every couple of days. She prescribed antibiotics and told me that I should go to my own vets in a couple of days to check the anti-biotics were keeping it all clean.

Well, you'll know by now how I am about my dogs so first thing on Monday (we drove home Sunday night to avoid heavy traffic) I ring my own vets and take her in for a second opinion and get a different prognosis. Here I'm told it needs stitching under a general and the stitches will need to stay in for 3 weeks and after that it really depends on the way in which the flap heals. She's admitted there and then and by the afternoon we can collect her.

She ate her small evening meal of rice and scrambly egg (no butter or milk added just two lovely fresh eggs!) with gusto.

So there you have it. I admit I was surprised the vet at Weardale said no stitches as were one or two others, but at least she was there and could start the process of antibiotics. I do wonder though how things would be if I had simply accepted that and left going to my own vet a couple more days.....

Nellie is having three ten minute walks on lead and harness a day. When she can be completely supervised her bonnet is removed and she is allowed to hang out with us in the house. She's allowed in the garden supervised and if wet - a plastic bag is put over her paw. When she cannot be fully supervised in the house and at night she is put in 'cratey' - the big estate car crate we bought from Barjo in our pre-van era that she has been put in since she was a pup for naps and time when I was at work or at night (for her safety and well being). This will stop her over using her paw and along with a 'bonnet' her snazzy pink camouflage vet wrap covered dressing remains un-nibbled too....

At the moment she is conducting essential 'housekeeping' tasks on her coat and three other paws lying next to me on the floor while I write this :) Something she cannot do when wearing the bonnet and which must stress them out if they are never allowed to be bonnet free. She is being carried up and down stairs. She is having even more cuddles and close leans than usual (so a lot then :) )to make up for the psychological issues of the bonnet.

In times like this, as I had to do for Pop and Henry before, I just shut everything down. Yes, she'd like to trot and run about on her dressing but she stays on lead and harness. Yes she is going to be more than a little bored at times and Yes she would like not to wear the bonnet. But I'm the human and I know the potential consequences so this is the way it is going to be. Back to the vets on Friday.

I just need some sticking plasters apparently

2011-07-04T06:14:00.000-07:00

The hairy sprout a.k.a. as Archie won both his Anysize/Allsorts Small and Medium Combined classes at Lansdowne.

Bless him.

At least I seem to be able to concentrate long enough over a the kind of course these involve to run him properly.

Doesn't say much for me though, and the least said about my handling of Nellie the better.

Really enjoyed the FCI day the Monday after. Great courses and really friendly atmosphere. A huge difference from last year. I went along to work in a pressured event situation with her not expecting anything, which was just as well really :) But Nellie was great and we did some really good work in many places on different courses. But the same problems beset me as I outline below!

Nellie is running really well - she just seems to be getting faster and faster both across the ground, over the jumps where she is really dropping her head and going, and across the contacts, and I am just not keeping up mentally.

Her confidence is high because she knows her job (through the training she has had) and she is so incredibly responsive. I know I have done a really very good job on so many aspects of her training and on many levels with her to build these skills and qualities.

I just need to get my head sorted.

I think fast in my job - balancing numerous plates in the air: tasks, questions/demands, people (and teenagers are not on the whole patient and reasonable) - lots of things coming at me in an average lesson. Lesson after lesson. Spatial awareness (who is trying to stab who with a pen at the back of the room while I help someone at the front!) is a key skill too. I can run (as people tell me) and I am agile.

I do think too much - Iain tells me this all the time - but where does thought have to be left behind (ie the planning and the strategy to prepare for a course) and where does instinct have to take over (to be in the moment just doing it)??

I can do these two modes - but I don't seem to be able to control them. How do I turn them off and on when I want and need to?

How do I become better at judging how I should be handling a course with her? Angela told me I needed a Plan B on the Jumping Champ at Tuffley as I trotted round assuming I'd get ahead...so I took that on board and got a Plan B and sure enough I needed it as I had no chance of getting ahead. I had walked it that way once but dismissed it as I thought I'd make it...... She clearly knew I probably wouldn't!! Why didn't I know that myself?

Why didn't I realise I would never get ahead of Nellie on the dog walk in the Agility round and certainly not be able to execute a full 'front cross' type move that would mean my feet were fully pointing towards the long jump and not the tunnel (E) as I released her from the contact? I knew I would have to run like stink to have a chance at all and I did run like stink too. Why didn't I realise I should have had a plan B - to flick her from behind?????? Even though I knew I was going to find that almost impossible to achieve I still set myself up to do it. And I am not a stubborn person so I must be stupid instead!

Stupid mistakes.

The thing is next time I am in a quandary about whether I will get somewhere on a course I'll assume 'No I won't'. Only to find I do and then I'll balls it up that way.

Must have Plan A and Plan B and remember what to do in each case and be quick enough mentally (concentration) to make the split second decision to act on whichever one needs to be used in that nano-second of a moment.

No-one gets it right all the time so I know it's OK to make mistakes. I'd just like to get it right rather more than I'm doing now which isn't hard!

Iain watches me closely and he tells me there is nothing intrinsically wrong with what I am doing but that I just need a few sticking plasters.

He says small ones - and I'd like to believe him but I'm not so sure.

But if you can see where I need one please tell me! (my mouth excepted!)

In three parts

2011-06-22T08:47:00.001-07:00

Part I

On Sunday - on the anniversary of his death - we took a walk for Henry in the sun (which came out in the late afternoon) down at White Nothe and Ringstead. One September day when we had had Henry around 10 months, we walked all the way from Dorchester, where we were then living, to Ringstead beach. This is a bit of a hike and by the time we got there we were determined to have a swim - or a skinny dip as it turned out having not taken our cozzies. It was the first time Henry had the confidence to swim with us in the sea way out of his depth, and we were very taken with the way he used his tail as a rudder. Then we walked all the way back home again. It was a lovely day.

The picture above wasn't taken in the sea. This is a ford on the River Frome that was always a popular stop for him when we would walk out to my mother's place from Dorchester. Rivers he got used to quickly but the sea took a bit longer. Then he was hooked.

It still feels unreal that he isn't here. I still tell him that I love him every night like I have always done. I recall someone thinking it odd that I kept a picture of my dogs in the wallet I used to carry about. Now of course I keep them all on my phone like everyone else. 'I bet you tell them you love them every night too, don't you?' they asked, quite clearly thinking that even I couldn't be that pathetic. So they were a bit taken aback when I said 'Yes, I do'. God knows what they would think about me doing it still a year after he has gone.

My Mum will be along sometime soon I hope to tell us what this is:

I found it at the bottom of White Nothe (see picture below this one). Iain has lugged several largish fossils and interesting stones back from out of the way places for me over the years (bless him) but this one was just going to have to stay put. Shame really as it would have been lovely to have it in the garden. The crystals inside were lovely.

The view of White Nothe route from near the bottom. The path is an exposed zig zag down to the lower cliffs from the very top cliffs. It is quite spectacular.

Part II

Iain updated my computer software last weekend. The result was I suddenly found I couldn't publish my blog entries. Well, I discovered a very convoluted way of doing it but then found I couldn't edit them once they were published. It doesn't matter how many times I re-read a draft, it often isn't until I see it on the screen published that I realise something isn't right or whatever. I get so picky about it that I have to just leave it be in the end or I'd never stop. Nothing OCD ish about me you know :) Anyways, Iain took the Explorer bit back to the old Office and left the rest updated...How he knows these things defeats me. Anyway, the result is that I can write and publish my blogs as you can see from the previous two entries. I can also edit them once they are published.....BUT it seems I can't now write a comment on anyone else's blog....Believe me I have tried... There's a couple I have now tried several times and it doesn't work. I am not going to say who, but all I can say is sorry.

Part III

The rain continues and the garden chairs and table I took almost two years to save for and decide on (more obsessiveness - Iain just lets me get on with it :)) are busy proving they are indeed all weather kit. The one quality that isn't being tested is their UV protection......

But I think they are beautiful colours. This is a pic of a sunlounger in the same colourway. I know some people don't care whether a cushion, curtain, wall, chair etc is one colour or another but I enjoy looking into colours and the way they blend or set each other off. Muted colours and bright colours. Some are quite mesmerising on walls, doors, window frames and in fabrics and I can lose myself in them for several minutes especially when the light around them is changing. My inspiration for the colours we have already used and will be using as we complete the rest of the spaces of (as well as on the front of) this cottage was a Bridgewater pattern - Polka dot. Crazy perhaps, but true. At least I can think about the sun when looking at these stunning strips of vivid summer colour even if I can't sit in the chairs for more than a few minutes in the sun before the heavens open again....

Nellie, Archie, Iain and I walked to the annual fete in our nearest village. We have missed it every year until now. It rained a fair bit but then stopped for all the doggy bits and our walk home. I entered the dogs in every doggy competition we could enter. And got one rossie - Nellie and I got 2nd in 'Best 6 legs' only losing out to a very cute little girl with groovy pink leggings on and a very tall greyhound type beast on the end of the lead :-)

I am quite miffed that Archie did not win best veteran - at 10 he really is in excellent shape. Even most agility people don't think he looks that age and they are largely used to seeing slim, fit looking dogs. Ah well.

I picked our first bunch of sweetpeas from the garden.

The pale white/lilac ones with a light lilac edge to the frill have to be the most scented sweetpeas I have ever grown. Must look for the packet....Gorgeous. Planted a mix of four packets with the highest scent I could get.

The swallows that use our wood store every year have just fledged their second brood of the season. I watched them on their first visit to the world beyond the store this afternoon. They sat on the tiled roof swivelling their heads keeping their parents in view at all times. Hopefully the parents will manage a third brood. The brick store isn't the same without a cacophony of twittering as we go in and out to get things! Watching the parents show off their aerodynamic prowess darting in and out of the store via the hatch we had created in the door makes washing up much more interesting.

We got the call to tell us we can have our caravan back last Friday. It has taken two weeks and the wheel arch 'skirt' still isn't fitted. The part is on order and we have to wait.So I look forward to Lansdown when Nellie and I will be back in the saddle and we can have our little caravan. Although it will be a little undressed as it were :-)

On Friday Iain collects the caravan and takes it back to the store place we use. He notices a funny noise emanating from beneath the van. Later that day I come back from work and we go down to Poole for something. The noise isn't funny at all, it sounds really very serious. We contact the Mercedes specialist garage we bought it from new and have had it serviced at ever since. We are in Poole so it seems like a good idea to leave it there now and take a taxi home because we are that anxious about the noise. But no. Can we bring it down in the morning? So, tomorrow it must be. On Saturday I follow Iain down to Poole in the car. He drives the van slowly. We leave it there. The noise sounds expensive as well as serious. But even we aren't quite ready for the enormity of the bill we will have to pay.

£1,279. And a few pence!

It was the propshaft apparently and it is a very good job we took the van in when we did too, we are told.

On Tuesday we are told it may be a week before the part is in the garage...Panic. What will we do for Lansdown? The car is a Golf hatch - we never expected not to have a bigger vehicle to tow the caravan and even more importantly transport the dogs to shows in. Eek.

Just as we are hatching hotel plans today (Wednesday) we get a call. The part arrived last night, the van is fixed this afternoon.

So at least we will have something to tow the half naked caravan to Lansdown with:-) Iain now doesn't have to cycle 19 miles each way to work each day all the way through into next week.
And I don't have to suffer the indignities of the ipod playlists he has stashed in the car. I mean 'Woa, we're going to Ibiza!'???!!! I knew his musical tastes were highly suspect when I married him but even he couldn't stoop to that on a ipod playlist...could he? Tomorrow I get back to the umpteen albums I have stored on my phone and the Belkin attachment I stick on the bottom that lets me play them through the van radio. Now that is definitely worth singing about.

Blame me....

2011-06-12T16:51:00.000-07:00

The torrential rain is my fault, sorry. I ordered some garden chairs and a table six weeks ago and the day they arrived in the country the weather turned and today it had to be the heaviest rain yet we have had this summer..and I expect delivery tomorrow. It seemed like a good idea in April during those endless sunshine days.

Glad not at Thames today..but would have liked to have been there yesterday. Nellie came into season this week so it was not to be.

We did manage to get to the coast yesterday to swim. The Purbecks are in some ways an 'island' in that the ridge (in which the castle at Corfe is nestled) does make the weather slightly different there. It has been blazing sun here further inland before now and I have hotfooted it off down there for a swim only to find a thick, damp sea mist enveloping the cliffs. Yesterday the opposite. Sometimes sun, sometimes cloud here but we could see the edge of the blue sky as we looked coastward and sure enough down there that is how it was. Windy - with big waves - but warm and sunny. We had a lovely time!

Nellie came into the veg patch with me while I took advantage of slightly lighter rain (as opposed to the torrential that dominated the day) earlier today. Now she has actually stolen some of my salad from my bowl on the kitchen worktop before so I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised to suddenly notice (as I was planting some more cut and come again salad leaf seeds in a couple of places)that she was grazing the baby rocket leaves quite contentedly!!! The only time Archie was allowed in he peed on one of the honeysuckles I have planted to grow up and into the hedge.....And Pop and Henry thought it was fine to clamber about on the raised beds when my back was turned. So it has for the most part become a dog free zone...

It is also a chicken free zone naturally. Though chickens are known to have squawky flappy moments periodically that land them in new and unforeseen places, they are not usually scheming. They don't usually have a plan; wherever they land is the plan. However they are opportunists and can definitely respond to positive reinforcement should one of those opportunities arise.

Coming back from work one afternoon I found to my horror that Fliss was absent from the gathering by the top gate. I soon discovered she was next door 'helping' Simon clear some ground around a big pile of old bricks. She had apparently eaten about 20 worms, several centipede types, a dozen or so woodlice and a few spiders.....He was quite amused and I actually heard him having a little conversation with her as I reached the part alongside the fence where she and he were...I warned him she could well be back for another happy troughing session before we managed to 'whoosh' her back over the fence with a broom. Chickens, as I say, are not daft.

Sure enough, the next day she was back. Turned out she had found a hole in the fence. We are always finding places where the mesh fence in the hedge has been pushed apart - we believe by badgers going through the gardens. She had found it on two days. Once by accident and the second time most definitely by design!!

As for our veg patch - today I found a nest in amongst the potatoes that have grown quite high in the last couple of weeks. The rain had weighed the stems down and exposed this pile of eggs. I blame Tilly........And a couple of sections of chicken wire are now over the top of the seeds I have planted to keep them safe from marauding claws I hope. Now she has a 'secret' nest she too will be back.

Nottingham (Derbyshire Peak District) Hinkley

2011-06-10T08:48:00.000-07:00

Derbyshire was sandwiched between Nottingham and Hinkley and I am so glad that it was or Hinkley would not have happened for me at all. I don't think ANY agility would have happened for me ever again if it weren't for those lovely quiet slow few days in Derbyshire.

Nottingham - the best bit was Archie winning BOTH his Small and Medium combined Allsorts Jumping :)

There were horrid bits; the main part on the Sunday isn't really mine to tell but suffice to say we helped a couple get themselves to a vet following a fight between two of their dogs. Despite all their efforts their little jack russell died in the afternoon. Our sympathy goes to them. We too have had a little jack russell in our arms as we screamed to a vet, only to lose him so unexpectedly only hours later. Seeing their little mite brought back very vividly our experiences with Henry. No words could help them any more than they helped us a year ago. Heartbreaking.

Agility consequently went haywire for me - it hadn't been brilliant the day before. Exhausted from work and being ill I don't think I could have run Nellie in a straight line let alone in Champ. I tried and that's as good as it got. Sunday was a grey sheet over my head and in the end in sheer frustration at my total lack of leadership, Nellie flew in to me and bit me on the inside of my leg. It really HURT. All I could do was yell 'Don't ********** bite me' and try to exit with whatever dignity I could muster. The only run I actually looked like I had ever run a fast grade 7 dog before she took herself off into a tunnel despite even the judge looking completely flummoxed as to why she had! She was telling me very clearly: shape up or ship out.

I wanted to give up agility and I didn't want to give up agility.

Gradually, walking, cycling and just being very quiet with Iain, Nellie and Archie as company the light began to come on again. The sun came out and we only did what we wanted to do, when we wanted to. Lovely. Slept A LOT. Cooked lovely food. Did things slowly. Read. Played board games. Listened to the wind in the trees. We even rescued a cockerel on the road. Last time we were up there we stopped to rescue a lamb on a very busy road and a farmer stopped to help us. Had to be done, couldn't just keep going.

On my birthday we took ourselves up on to Kinder Scout in the sunshine just like last year and sat in exactly the spot we sat with Henry and Pop when we were blissfully unaware of the fact he'd be gone less than three weeks later and of what was going to happen to Pop. We remembered how happy we were that day and checked to see the spot where Henry taught Nellie how to hunt for mice (or meece as we call them).

And then we walked back down and I felt much better.

Still didn't want to go to Hinkley. Head straight for the things we did in Derbeyshire was one thing. Head straight for a show as big and as eventful as Hinkley was quite another thing altogether.

Decided to go. There was a lady at the little campsite who had done breed and done even more obdience in the past. Our van stickers intrigued her and we chatted. Told her how I was feeling about agility and I think because she understood how losing Henry and Pop has knocked me sideways and undermined my confidence it really helped. Bereavement makes you feel isolated, like no-one understands. So...

..I braced myself to try to run Nellie properly with a whole brain and made a decision NOT to be videod. I am way too critical and having watched Nottingham runs it was an easy choice not to bother. So no more videos - just Iain's gentle criticism or praise.

And I am glad I went.

Yes, we had two very good runs that boosted my confidence and gave me a real lift. Perhaps Nellie and I aren't that bad a partnership after all!?!
One was Crufts Singles where we placed top ten and so got a few points. (We just need to get some more..) and the other was a clever KC Olympia course that rather perversely I really liked because it was different. And we got 5th. And we had two wide bits! So that puts us in to Day 2 of the semis. You could call that a result. I was a disaster in Champ. Had to put Nellie in a sit and re-start in the Jumping somewhere in the middle as I had messed up and Nellie was running in every wrong entrance of each tunnel like she was on speed or something. As I told her after: I guess that is how it is going to be at the moment - on it, or most definitely not on it at all!

What was also nice was finally being able to talk to a few people about things without getting myself into a mess and finding that many people do understand how I feel because they too feel the way I do about their dogs.

Packing up the awning later exposed a flat tyre on the caravan which Iain duly changed for the spare. He tightened the bolts as he has had to do before and off we went. A couple of hundred yards along the road leaving the venue we heard a clunk, and saw smoke billowing out behind us...the wheel had come off and was jammed into the wheel arch. We were blocking the road and there was nothing we could do about it. All the bolts had sheared off and we had no spare..it was the spare. Stuart and Ann Harmes, who found themselves stuck behind us, were very helpful and then they had to reverse and turn their caravan to go the other way. Another lady shot back to the show to tell everyone to turn left, not right, out of the venue while we sat and waited for the police (blocked road) and the AA. The police officer was lovely and we all had a good chat. Turned out he had grown up in Weymouth and really wanted to leave Leicestershire to move back down to Dorset...

We got to bed at 3.20 the next morning. Up for work at 7. Holiday over.

Meant to be having a break.....

2011-05-24T15:48:00.001-07:00

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!!

Different kinds of firsts

2011-05-04T08:46:00.000-07:00

It has been a strange couple of weeks. We did our first agility show since Honiton last September when Pop looked and felt so good. Olympia doesn't really count and in any case as far as we knew then Pop just had a bit of arthritis. I had been putting off starting up again with agility but knew sooner or later I'd have to get back to it in the ring; Nellie wants to do it and I should not let my feelings about losing Pop and Henry prevent her having fun with me. Yet still it was hard to walk up to the rings at Easter Celebration. I felt really exposed. I didn't want to talk to anyone and I didn't want anyone really to talk to me. It was enough just to go through the motions. Which we did. It became easier as the weekend progressed as I knew that those who knew me realised I was feeling like that and left me to it. Thankyou.

It was Nellie's first time sleeping in her van crate all by herself at night. She is the only dog I have loved that likes to go and snooze in her van crate even when we are perhaps in the 'garden' or in the caravan. We leave the van open and she can choose for herself. She likes her own company (like me!) and likes the peace of it (like me!)but really I think she worked out that lots of fun things start there. Inevitably she is in it before we go up to the ring (ooh we are doing agility) or we are arriving at the hall to do my training classes (ooh I get to do things with mom and meet my friends and 'aunties') or when we arrive at the field (ooh ooh we are doing agility) or when we arrive at a place where it is clear we are going for a walk (ooh ooh we are going for a walk!). So, yes, she likes 'cratey'. We thought she'd get too lonely at night but no, the association and the inclination are ingrained and so she takes herself off to 'strawberry' who she uses as a pillow when she decides she wants to go to bed and then, in the morning, she hops onto the passenger seat (the crate is left open all night) to bark at all those people who are heading past off to the exercise area. She seems to have adapted to being without Pop.

I haven't. I still have to take a deep breath everytime I am reminded that she really isn't with us any more.

Our caravan sofa blankets still have Henry and Pop hairs attached to them, and in Henry's case probably always will have. Her harness still has her hair and the mud from her last New Forest walks on it and still smells of her. Perhaps I am just a little bit stuck at the moment. I haven't yet accepted that she can only be with me in spirit. It really isn't enough. And starting agility again reminds me even more of this.

There have been happier firsts in the last couple of weeks too:

Whilst walking in the New Forest I spotted a water snake in one of the bigger streams. The only time I have seen snakes in a river was in Australia and we were swimming in the river.....They brushed past our legs on their way down stream, harmless and busy creatures. I have never seen a snake swimming in this country but it turns out that it was a grass snake, and that they are often referred to as 'water snakes' as they love nothing more than a pool or ditch or stream to live in, and catch the odd frog or fish to eat from. I stood and watched 'til its lithe body had coiled itself in a tangle of small branches hooked up by the current at the edge of the water, avoiding the 'danger' of my shadow. Quite something.

Found a whole nest at the bottom of the garden last week - the first one I have found with what is clearly Nellie and Archie's hair lining it. This is a shame as this must be a recent nest that maybe the wind caught? And it would have been a lovely nest - all warm and snug inside.

The construction is incredible, don't you think? I have put the dogs' hair in the hedge the last few times I've groomed them through March and April and watched assorted birds (including several pairs of goldfinch) gathering it up in beakfuls ready for their babies. Whichever birds built this one have an enormous job ahead to build another one.

We have been eating our own salad now for a couple of weeks - the first ones of the year. Have planted three different mixed leaves combinations including oriental mixed leaves, plus some single leaf slad leaves, lots of rocket and radish and along with the winter mix from the green house, parsley and chopped mint from the pot on the patio, we are crunching our way through enormous bowls of really fresh leaves. Such an easy thing to grow, quick cropping and all the mixes and the single leaf, plus the rocket, are 'cut and come again'. It's like magic!

The veg patch looks very efficient now - although we hope to move the chicken pen to the other side of the brick store next autumn and then I can have a couple more raised beds and have the compost bays rebuilt in this part too. This was planned for last winter but with losing Pop we lost the impetus to get on with it. So it will have to wait now. I am mollycoddling my sweetpeas a bit having had a hint of a frost couple of nights ago - they look like deranged wedding veils.

Iain created a couple of brick edged places within the patch so I could plant our first red currants and our first raspberries. We are hoping the two from our neighbour will produce fruit this year, the ones I bought won't til next summer.

The sugar snaps are growing in fibre pots and the runner beans in empty loo rolls so they can be planted out in the raised beds without disturbing their roots. Peas especially hate root disturbance. Planting them as seeds directly into the ground seems to invite the pigeons to eat the first shoots so I do it like this instead. It's worked before.

And, I have eaten my first few platefuls of asparagus.....Everything I have read about how this vegetable is just amazing when grown and eaten really, really fresh is correct. Even the best supermarket can't compete. I sometimes can get it from a wayside stall on my way to the New Forest in the season, but even that is not as good as the stuff that came out of our raised bed. You could eat it raw it was so crisp, crunchy and sweet. As it was I chucked it into a pan of boiling water for less than a minute, popped it on a plate and dropped a spoonful of hollandaise sauce I made on top. With some nice bread - divine. It has taken enormous restraint NOT to cut anymore. To last for twenty years, which a nurtured asparagus bed can do, it is essential not to take too much too soon (ie in this the third year)The advice is to take enough to bring on the crowns, but not enough to deplete their strength.

The poppies we inherited in front of our house are in first bloom again. Last year the wind destroyed them before I took a picture. I got in early this time round. One of the few plants we could keep when we moved in. Almost everything was knotted with ground elder and bindweed and had to be dug out and got rid of. They are quite dazzling growing there.

We also had our first swim in the sea. Yup. No kidding. Iain and I swam as did the dogs on Monday 25th of April....

Someone had spent a pleasant sunny morning building this:

To which I added stones for us, Nellie, Archie and for Henry and Pop too. They loved it down here and it was our first swim without both of them.

Here we are, proving that we did swim. Really.

We took a different route down than I generally take mostly coming across from Kingston, down over Houns-Tout, to Chapman's Pool. Iain and I (and Mutley and Rosie too) helped to build these steps with Dorset Countryside Volunteers years ago. We met through this group on a different task one cold January day when I was full time teaching and desperate to meet people who had nothing to do with teaching AND to be outdoors all weekend in all weathers! Looking for a future husband was not part of my plan......

Back to the swim:

Yes our shins went numb initially but once we got through that it actually felt 'warm' and was comfortable enough to go in and swim several times and then the sun was warm enough to sit in to dry off. Topped off with a walk back to Kingston and a drink in The Scott Arms pub garden with the dogs, the glorious views over to Corfe Castle....

.....and several packets of crisps each. Simple pleasures.

It was Nellie's first grade 7 show at Easter, having had her last g6 one in September and then missing Honiton as she was in season and of course not competing.

We did our first UKA show of the year (not sure of any more looking at the season booked so far). Before I go on to write about Nellie I would like to mention that Archie had his little moment winning a Senior Midi steeplechase! He enjoyed it and had a good game with orange gorilla afterwards. He did one steeplechase run on all but one day. I think he came 3rd in another one!

Nellie and I started the show just starting in Senior (she'd won out of Novice finally last June - the day Henry died - but I had deliberately held back. I think in the end she had 78 points in Novice, you need 36!) and ended the show in Champ. She got a LOT of firsts across Games, Jumping and Agility on the Friday and Saturday, chocked up the 48 points, and bumped us out of Senior and on into Masters and Champ for the Sunday. Not going to say a great deal about the Masters (not the best agility experience I've had) but Champ was OK. Won an Agility, nearly won a Gamblers, and ran her very badly in a rather excruciating Jumping. C'est la vie.

It was also a first for me to go walking off site from the Newbury showground. Armed with my OS map, rucsac and walking boots, the dogs and I headed off to explore the bye-ways (on our own on the Friday and with Mandy and her three the other two days) and were pleasantly surprised by how much lovely countryside there was to have a two hour walk (or more) in the evening, and once we had passed the A34 we couldn't hear it either. The 'exercise' ( I use this term loosely) areas at Newbury are guaranteed to make me feel like a hamster stuck in a wheel after just one day, and my dogs are not used to being cooped up like that either, so I went prepared knowing we'd be marooned for four.. I'm glad I did as the areas we were allowed on were even more restricted than usual there.

It was Nellie's first KC Champ show at Vyne. I got E'd in Henry's first Champ (Tina's toy episode), got E'd in Pop's first Champ (underestimated how long it would take to get to her number, arrived to be told I had to get on the line and couldn't recall what the hell I was supposed to be doing...) and erm, with Nellie, although we did OK in the Jumping, got E'd in the Agility. My fault (when isn't it?) for not being another step further forward past an A frame and using 'OK Nell' when I should have just called 'Nell' One of those situations when just her name would have been better. Don't do it very often as she has to wait for the 'OK' to release but just occasionally there isn't time for two words - and there wasn't here......Hum. Still our timing was better this weekend than last and I hope that continues to be the case. She did some lovely work in both courses and, I think anyway, looked lovely moving, turning tight to wings and much more drivey and grown up. There is still more under the bonnet though I am sure. I need to use all the gears and push my foot to the floor more often now. I am very glad I haven't rushed or pressured her. There might be flaws in my training of her, and in my handling definitely, but there are no flaws in her.

At the risk of coming over all 'here's a pithy truism' I'm nevertheless struck by the similarities between training a dog to do agility (or any other discipline really) and developing a viable asparagus bed!!! Yes really....Both require ideal nurturing conditions and 'good preparation of the soil', both require patience and both require restraint and you will never truly know if you have got it right, or not, until maturity is reached:

'the mind and the spirit become ripe in their own fashion and at their own pace. Beautiful music plays, but not everyone with ears can hear it'
(Danielle Trussoni)

Going boldly where not very many shih-tzus have gone before (well, not on foot maybe!)

2011-04-19T04:19:00.000-07:00

We met one other shih-tzu going up Snowdon on Saturday. It was in it's own bespoke carry sac on a man's back! He commented on how fit Misty looked...

Making her way through the throng, Misty looks ahead for Nellie and Archie who were setting the pace!

Misty did have a lot of carrying but it is a long way up and down and she did a fair whack of it - missing out only the very bouldery sections, big steps up or down, or where there were edges....

She just copied what my two did, met lots of people and some other dogs and had a great time. I have put these pictures on here so her owners can see she actually did go up Snowdon...

Not once, but twice..

Playing with a dog called Freddie:

Nellie had her picture taken several times and was told how beautiful she is more than is good for her ;) People become quite mesmerised by her lovely face, her glossy coat and her obvious athleticism when we are out and about and are thrilled when she sidles up for a lean and a chat...She always looks at me as if to say 'these humans are a pushover!' She does good PR for border collies but I try always to point out that they are lovely dogs though you need to put in the work/time/thought/give them things to do to make them truly happy....

There was very low cloud on Saturday as we went up the Pyg track and the top was thickly covered. Of course the sun came out as we descended via the Miner's track... I think I have only been up Snowdon twice over the last twenty years to find it clear up there. One of those times we needed crampons to get to the top the snow was so thick. So when Sunday was even brighter and more sunny and the top was actually clear we decided to go up again. This time we took the Rhyd Ddu route up and down.

So Nellie had a great 4th birthday weekend. She ran up and down the mountain about three times, I suspect, each day. She, like Pop, loves the physicality of it. Hopping from rock to rock and skittering over loose stone at speed is her idea of living life to the max! She, as Pop did, always looks like she is in her element. Archie ran like crazy up and then paced himself down like a little mountain goat. Misty, well, she drank from little streams, chased Nellie (when it was safe for her to do so) and really enjoyed the great outdoors. She made friends everywhere - from big butch looking blokes to teenage boys who wanted to fuss her in either my or Iain's arms at different points. Or talk to her as she headed determindely past them up and down.

Between all three of them they did a lot of socialising. Nellie and Archie were always up ahead mingling with others on their way to or from the summit. Hands were always reaching to stroke them as they trotted past groups of people and I would hear cries of 'hello'- and Archie even got a lift down one little bit from a complete stranger who he was near just up ahead!

We did meet someone we knew! Linda Smith was walking with family and her brood up as we were coming down, which was a nice surprise. Small world.

It was Easter hols and we were doing one of the busiest mountains in the country so it was going to be packed. Usually Iain and I avoid it to go and explore quieter ones but for some reason we decided to go with the flow and it was really enjoyable. There was a strong sense of camaraderie and cheefulness along the way. Some of us were more experienced and fitter, some were clearly struggling. But we all felt good when we got to the top!

I heard one mother tell her two boys (age 10/11?)'remember this feeling and how good it is! Just so you can think about how it feels when we go up another mountain'. A good plan for just about any endeavour I reckon.

At the top - Saturday. We invited Freda - an old friend of Peter and Jessie, Iain's late parents - as she likes the hills too, as they did.

More Saturday pics:

Misty develops her ability to kip anywhere...

And even a rucsac makes a good napping spot! On it...

Or in it....;-)

Sunday

On the way up from Rhyd Ddhu. You can see the top..

On the top - with some of the views (no low cloud!!!)

Misty isn't wearing her harness because it is a bit too loose for her now. The one bought for her fits her with a full coat but I had to get permission to have her coat cut right back as such a long coat was not coping with the walks she has been having here. So now she needs a smaller harness - oops.

Nells and Misty catch some zzzz in the sun while we eat some lunch:

Misty continues to develop her skills of being able to sleep on anything or anywhere...

More socialising!

Misty was being carried in these sections of the route!

On the way down - the girls still have energy for a game!

More views on the way down and yes, that edge is straight down several hundred feet so Misty was being carried all along that section too.......

We didn't come across anyone who didn't like dogs or who didn't at least smile at them. Both days. Considering how many people we met that's quite something.

What else did we do?

We'd driven up through Thursday night and so after some sleep we did a low level walk all afternoon to warm up for the high level walking that we were planning for the other two days- Newborough Warren on Anglesea which is one of our favourite places. Don't know if Misty has been to the sea but she certainly loved it this time!

Hope she has enjoyed her nearly three weeks with us! She goes home tonight.

Been a bit preoccupied lately...

2011-04-14T04:07:00.001-07:00

Over a month or so ago I noticed that Lizzie chook's legs looked a bit, well, old. I googled chicken legs + health and found some pictures that seemed to be Lizzie's legs. She had Scaley-leg mite. Yuck. So did the others (except Bert, and the newbies, who were still thankfully sleeping separately although mingling in the garden during the day) Lizzie had it worst.

My chooks don't get mites. I take care to give them all year round dry dustbathing facilities to prevent lice and the lack of wooden nooks and crannies such as you can find in even the most stringently diatomed of wooden coops means red mite don't have anywhere to hide either. I've had chooks for 7 years now and had never heard of Scaley leg mite. 'Til now.

There is certainly always something to learn.

It is disgusting, forming as it does scabs, lifting the scales and, if the literature is to be believed, is excruciatingly painful. One of the reasons I didn't spot it is because mine were still eating, dustbathing and running about in their usual way around the garden. Eggs were in short supply but that's to be expected in early Spring. Lizzie was slower but still doing all the above and I had, as it turns out wrongly, assumed it was a side effect of the soft shelled egg laying that hybrids tend to do when they are coming to the end of their egg laying days at around four years old.

I know I took my eye off the ball when Pop died. I had given them really deep straw in their overnight pen all winter to generate warmth beneath their perches. I changed it all regularly, but with the warming of the days had kept on clearing it and replenishing it to the same depth. The warmth and moisture had combined to create an ideal home for the mite to flourish it seems. Having said that they can also catch it from wild bird populations apparently. And as a fellow chicken keeper once found when I asked her, they can even get it when they are roosting in bushes. So it is really random whether it'll strike or not. All the straw is gone now and next winter I'll have to monitor them and the temperatures even more closely.

Looking for what it was led me to what to do about it.

Didn't want to use ivermectin as my dogs are in amongst the chooks daily. Nellie likes chicken poo and although it would have been a spot-on treatment I am not sure what would end up travelling through the chook. Ivermectin is one of those avermectic drugs that can adversely affect border and bearded collies with the genetic mutation and even those without it. There are lots of arguments both ways I found but I'm not taking any chances. Even poor Misty (see other entry) is going to have to wait for her Advocate spot-on til she goes home. I know the chances of Nellie licking it off are slim but it contains moxidectin (another avermectin drug)and what I read about that and its effects on BCs is enough to make me not want it anywhere near her.

So I went a different route.....

A week of vaseline and tea tree oil mixed together and splodged all over all their legs and up under their knickers (Bert's too) every night for six nights caused a great deal of bad feeling in the ranks. There were episodes of slipping off perches and landing in feathery heaps beneath.....Moved on to every three/four days to kill off the mite within it's life cycle, easing off the scabs and monitoring each chook each day. They reeked of teatree and their feathers took a beating from the vaseline but.....

Now they are all clear. Lizzie went lame part way through this messy process. Daily inspections and extra treatment on her legs seemed to help then she'd relapse and although keen to eat, dustbathe and mingle she wasn't improving consistently. So off to the vet we went (yes, we have a chicken vet!) and, relief to find she was clearly a very healthy chook in every other way and then anxiety finding she had a secondary infection that had got into the skin when the mites had got under her scales.

So every day for a week she has had antibiotics and metacam - by beak...Have you ever held a strong-winged chook under one arm while holding her beak open with the hand of the same arm and used a syringe with the other hand?....Thought you'd find this amusing:

Iain did.

Glad to say she is much much better - I have to be a little more more devious about catching her as each day comes which is always a good sign with a chicken - but we're not clear yet.

If the antibiotics and metacam haven't clinched it by next week we are back off to see Lynn the vet.

I want my chooks to live as natural a life as possible and my management of their environment is geared to this with almost all their food 100% organic (the odd handful of sunflower seeds are not), they even have probiotic organic yoghurt. Big mess! Being out all day on grass around trees, hedges and bushes, with access to earth to scratch up, as well as the access to shade and sunshine and dustbathing, AND roosting overnight on branches in a large airy roofed pen overnight should mean no problems for the chooks. I am not that naive or so into holistic living I believe that it will provide all the answers and avoid all nasties. I use Drontal four times a year to worm my dogs (they are often amongst livestock - eating poo sometimes - and unborn lambs are especially vulnerable to the faeces of inadequately wormed dogs) and they have lepto jabs every year (it has reared it's head in the New Forest) but the others every three years (though I am thinking that Archie now ten might be able to skip those from here on). Like Arch and Nellie, Pop and Henry ate a raw diet, most of the meat, offal and bones they had came from within farming practices that have the same views as me - minimal intrusion free-range or organic. They had holistic treatments and only minimal intrusions on their bodies, in the form of antibiotics or anti-inflammatories. Yet they both died of sudden-onset cancer. There are no easy answers to the roots of disease and 'science' is not the enemy.

So I use flubenvet to worm my chooks which is the only preventative intervention treatment I use for them. Otherwise I will use antibiotics/anti-inflammatories if there is a likelihood of suffering if I don't. But this is the first time in as I say 7 years of keeping chooks that I have had to. The vet was most impressed with the effects of the vaseline/teatree oil, didn't try to hard sell the ivermectin and despite my paranoia about Nellie and side effects perfectly understood my concerns.

Moving on:

As for the veg garden - we have winter salad leaves in the green house, my sweetpeas are growing keenly in their empty loo rolls (my mother and I will have lots and lots of scented blooms!)

I have managed to keep parsley growing again all this winter too despite that extremely cold weather, so I definitely feel like a proper gardener now.

The garlic bed is looking like we'll have a bumper crop in the summer (we finished last summer's crop three weeks ago). I have got red onions growing well. The charlottes are in, numerous rows of rocket, mixed leaves, radish and land cress are growing. Even trying baby carrots again - the soil here is too good for them really so chucked in some sand to see if that makes a difference (thanks for the tip Edna!)

Planted raspberry canes, some new, some from neighbours. Red currant bushes in - from another neighbour. Basil is in a pot in the green house...

Runners and sugar snaps are in the greenhouse.

And lastly, the asparagus is growing again. And, whoohoo, this year I can eat at least some of it!!!!

Loads more to plant but with the new picket fencing around it the veg patch is looking like it means business.

Choices

2011-04-14T04:05:00.002-07:00

Drive all the way to Scunthorpe (5 hours?)and then back 24 hours later.
Spend obscene amounts of money on fuel.
Spend too much time on clogged 'start of the holiday' roads.

OR

Invite Alec for the weekend (who is looking, scarily, more and more like a teenager at 11 going on 12!)
Spend a very happy three plus hours teaching my little agility classes. And they were even happier when Jane produced a big cake for them all to eat part way through!
Listen to the woodpeckers and the buzzards while we did this.
Set truly horrid weave entries for Neil before he goes off to the EO tryout (oh and try them with Nellie too who loves her weaves!)
Have Al and Iain turn up to see and chat to everyone. Al really enjoys coming along to meet everyone. Go for lovely long walks with the dogs, stopping at a pub on the Sunday half way round.
Spend the money we'd have spent on fuel taking him out to a really, really nice restaurant.
And hearing him tell me when sat in our kitchen, 'You know Aunty Helen, it is like Henry and Pop are still here with us.'

Bless him.

The pictures will tell you the choice I made.....

'It's not about you, it's about your dog'

2011-04-14T04:05:00.001-07:00

You may have wondered why there is a shih-tzu in the picture of Alec in an earlier entry above. She's called Misty and she's here on holiday while her folks are away. There's a bit of a story....

I find myself saying the words of the title quite a bit when helping people learn to train their dogs. More often at the start of the process but by the time they are happy, I am happy not to have to say it anymore because they have got my message. It isn't about them - it is about the dog. I had to learn this too.

What I mean by this is that they must learn to understand their dog and to make their dog's needs as a dog central, not their own. The dog didn't and couldn't choose to become theirs and dogs cannot 'understand' us; it is up to us to look at things from their perspective. To put them first as dogs and respect them as dogs.

Most people want dogs to learn specific behaviours and to behave in certain ways but unless we bridge the gap between them and our dog's means of learning them we will remain frustrated and despairing.

If a dog cannot do something then it isn't the dog that is failing: it is the owner who hasn't trained it properly (thereby enabling the dog to be successful in the learning of it). This sentiment is bandied about rather a lot and most people understand what it means but not nearly as many are prepared to make changes in themselves (attitude/aptitude/values) or their training approaches to help their dogs. Without that change within, there is no change without.

A case in point it the arrival of Misty in my classes back in the autumn.

Teaching 13-18 year olds in a mixed state comprehensive brings its own challenges. Hormones and problems and pressures + that particular age group = plenty of them. It's 'mood city'. Outbursts, aggravating behaviour and an inability to use the good manners they know exist are expected at least occasionally. It's an age thing. They are teenagers. It's not an excuse but they will grow out of it sometime. Anglo-Saxon isn't yet the norm between teachers and students but the words are used to rile and subvert. These long honed skills of 'being the adult' in the face of quite provoking behaviour can sometimes come in handy in my hobby job!

Teaching adults that have chosen (as opposed to being in compulsory education) to come along and learn (although the occasional very well behaved teenager does join us now and again) means I don't, as a rule, have to deal with rudeness. Most adults know that strops are not adult behaviour. That's not to say adults don't have 'moments' when the child within erupts! They do, but most often they realise that's what they have done and apologise. The people who can't even do that can't be helped.

People drop out of training for all kinds of reasons. Family and work commitments and other problems that there is little control over. I do know that some have dropped out because it it patently obvious that there are no quick fixes or that I do not allow pushing, shoving, shaking, shouting or hitting, or that I do not have a magic wand to wave to ensure an effort free process. They go quietly, and that's fine! (well it isn't fine, but as I say, not everyone wants to make those changes in themselves - they want the dog to bend to them)

So when a lady turned up and shouted at me in the car park of the hall that 'she HAD to be able to come to my dog training and that if she didn't it would be all my fault that she would have to give her dog away etcetc' (in front of everyone else coming in) I was quite stunned. I didn't even know her name. The formalities of a phone call to enquire about the classes had been omitted. It turned out that she had a 1 year old shih-tzu (see above) and had done absolutely no training and was now at the tearing her (own) hair out stage of desperation. She was adamant the dog had to go. We 'went round the houses' quickly to put her under a bit of pressure to argue her case whilst I evaluated whether she would bottle out or be able to turn the dog around. Having decided the latter (keeping fingers crossed) I told her I'd give her a chance. In she came.

To say she feels mortified by her rudeness is an understatement. She reminds me and the others (including anyone new who comes along!) of it regularly and apologises everytime. I laugh about it now because she is another person who has learned at least a little bit that it is all about the dog rather than about her. And to her credit she and her family have gone away to teach their dog to have fun with them and that learning and doing things with them is fun and rewarding. Little dog is much happier and so are they. The fact that Misty has settled in so well here and been a lot of fun to have around is testimony to their determination to see things through. They just need to trust their training now!

You might think this lady's behaviour was intolerable but rudeness borne of desperation I can understand. I will always want to help the dogs and to do that I need to have people who are prepared to learn how to help their dog! If they are as desperate as this lady was then they might be ready to learn. So I am more than happy to give them a chance, build them up when they hit brick walls of incomprehension (theirs and their dog's) and rejoice with them when it comes good.

Thankfully the overwhelming majority of people I have had the good fortune to get to know by helping them through a sticky time or issue with their dogs have ended up falling in love with their dog again. And while it is always nice to be appreciated, anybody who helps people with their animals knows that it is those who go away and do the work that do the best. And it is very satisfying when they tell you it works :)

When Misty's owners asked back in February if I knew of somewhere she could stay while they went on holiday I couldn't think of a good reason why she shouldn't come here! Not sure Nellie and Archie were happy initially but they have accepted her and she is enjoying being one of the gang out on our walks and all the other places we have ended up.

She's had longer walks with my dogs than she is used to but at 18 months and bursting with energy she has loved walking for anything between one and two hours each day on the more level terrains we like to go to. And although we took our time (5 hours!) to walk the five miles with Alec on Sunday - we stopped for an hour of that in a pub garden and stopped several other times along the way just to sit in the shade and look at the views or while the boys attempted to climb trees (!)- she (and Al) enjoyed it. She still wanted to nick, and charge around with, all Nellie's toys as soon as we got back! Haven't taken her to the rockier places (did think about it) as that is asking a lot of her but have made sure her pads are exposed to gritty tracks over the last two weeeks on a regular basis, because she is coming to Snowdonia at the weekend. We'll pop her into Iain's rucksack quite a lot, stop quite a bit and take our time and give her a lot of underarm carries over what will be for her quite challenging bits.

Having looked at shih-tzu websites it isn't clear just how much exercise they need. Some say they are indoor dogs (!) and some say they are busy active high energy dogs that love to be outdoors and going on pack walks......I do know from two other shih-tzus that come to my training and who have joined us on our social walks that they are proper outdoor dogs (given the right opportunities)and that they do have quite a lot of stamina and energy..she certainly seems the same, she never stops. She makes Nellie look like a couch potato at times!

She's snoring blissfully beneath my kneeling stool as I type this.

She likes mud, almost as much as Pop used to.

Nellie's her hero:

And in return Nellie nicks her crate.....

Taking pictures

2011-03-22T14:03:00.000-07:00

Been having fun with the reverse camera on my iphone.

Look into my eye.....

oops!

Landscape?

Or portrait?

Another phone feature I'd have dismissed before I had it! Do rather like the fact it is 5 megapixel. It doesn't like to be zoomed in to something some way off and performs even less well if the object at a distance is moving but hey, it is a phone, not a dedicated camera, so it can't do everything. But it seems to be coping well with my demands so far.

Some recent chook pics:

Tilly (Bluebell) - one of the newbies

Lizzie (a Copper Maran) - the eldest - a newbie we brought in just after we moved here along with Dot and Ruby, both of whom are now buried beneath a favourite dustbathing spot in the garden. Lizzie is 4 now and today she laid a perfect egg so that will do her I hope for the week or more. Don't want her overdoing it. She has laid several soft shelled ones recently which is possibly a sign (in an otherwise healthy chook) that she is nearing the end of her laying life.

Edna (Cuckoo Maran) and Fannyann (Light Sussex), the other two newbies, settling into the dustbathing craters on the edge of the 'lawn'. Chickens are not for the garden perfectionists who like everything neat and tidy. They are anarchists - orderly doesn't figure. I want ours to have free and all day access to grass and to make their own choices about where they sun and dust bathe so the middle part of the garden is sacrificed to all things chicken.

All mixing together now:

The newbies started to lay their first eggs and do their 'cockerel crouch' when near me last week at around 21 weeks. So they've had 5 weeks longer to mature than they would have had if they had gone on to a middle man to be sold on as point-of-lay pullets at 16 weeks. I moved them on to their Organic Feed Company layers pellets a few days later and began to let them be with Bert and the others in extended periods. Now they are all together free ranging in the garden all day but separate at night. That's the next stage!

Spring weather is bringing up all the bulbs and flowers. We have a couple of very old stone sinks my mother gave us and over the years I have stuffed them full of all kinds of flowers and some herbs. The fritilleries, hyacinths and grape hyacinths are all starting to look lovely. The primroses Mum gave me last year are waiting in the wings, though I have seen them on sunny banks out and about round here already.

If you look really closely you can just see Nellie's face peering out from the porch to see what I am up to in the picture above :)

Was really lucky to see a couple of hares recently. One didn't realise the dogs and I were stood on the other side of the field edge and loped past only yards away, in no particular hurry. I was so mesmerised by the fact I could see the whites of its eyes and the various colours in its coat because I was so close I forgot I could have videod it. Lots of hares here and have seen them 'boxing' before now here too but not usually so close. Also have heard skylarks here in the last few days - one even in the fields next to the cottages and the others in the lightening tree field up beyond the woods.

Even had two starlings around the feeders last week and am seeing some sparrows in the garden this year too. Starlings were regarded as a 'menace' to small garden birds when I was a child and sparrows were everywhere. But haven't seen either here since we came - til now. It is good to see them again.

Another walk in the sunshine

2011-03-18T14:32:00.000-07:00

Another favourite for me and our dogs. Walking from above Kimmeridge village, taking the route along the Purbeck Ridge towards Swyre Head, coming down off the top of that across skylark fields to the coast path and then along the cliff edges to Clavell Tower, Kimmeridge Bay and the sea. Back up through the village to the disused quarry where we parked.

Breathtaking. Beautiful blue skies, green fields, warm sun, blue sea.

On the Purbeck Ridge the view north towards Corfe Castle, across Poole Harbour and on to Bournemouth:

Turn 180 degrees south and this is the view the other way! The bay dead centre is Kimmeridge Bay and just to the left on the cliff line above is the Clavell Tower (here it is tiny but up close in the clip below you can see what a lovely buidling it is - rent it for holidays from The Landmark Trust - not sure about dogs though....), and on to the west - Devon beyond.

Bit spoilt for choice on the views!!

And a couple of clips:

Turn up the sound to hear the skylarks!

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Spectacular views of the Ridge, Kimmeridge Bay as well as a closer look at the Clavell Tower made even more famous than it already was as a landmark by PD James in her detective novel 'The Black Tower'.

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The chap that did the lime rendering and pargetting on the front and back walls of our cottage and lime plastered some of our interior walls also did some of the lime work on the Clavell Tower. Another Purbeck link for our cottage.

Mandy's Dex joined us for this one as I was passing very close to her door on my way down to Kimmeridge and she had spent half the previous night getting an arm injury sorted so I thought taking Dex out for almost 4 hours would mean one less thing for her to worry about. Therefore today I had three dogs. He stayed on the longline for the edge stretch as he does not have the experience mine have and I promised to bring him back....

Rounding the afternoon off nicely with a nap after their supper! (though for me there were training classes to run all evening)

Another blog entry on behalf of the 'Promote Dorset' campaign ;-)

Mine all mine and 'on the ball' (with some footage now)

2011-03-13T14:19:00.000-07:00

My Mum came for something to eat last weekend bringing Scout, her collie. Our toybox is pretty much first thing on his mind when he comes in. Henry, Pop and Nellie have all enjoyed the numerous nylabones (varied flavours and sizes), kongs, assorted indestructable (haha) rubber items including blue bally and red handled thing....Nellie and Pop would play tug with the latter as did Henry and Pop. Archie has never been into any of them particularly. Nellie isn't really that bothered now either, without Pop to tug with or vie with over the 'best' nyly (ie the one the other had...) Until Scout turns up that is. He merrily flings the toys in different directions and while his back is turned looking for the next she sneaks in and nicks them, taking them off to the living room mat and making it very clear that THEY ARE HERS. OK?

On the heath in more sunshine one afternoon earlier last week:

Apart from one I took on the stile last week but didn't publish these are the first pictures I have taken of my dogs on their own since Pop died. Took me a while before I could take some of the three of them after Henry died. It just reminds me that they are gone when I look at the picture so I don't take them. It just feels very sad. On Saturday it was 2 months since she died.

Sent this one to Iain as he was away a few days for work. Haven't sent a picture attachment before (my old phone I'd had for what felt like centuries - well about 5-6years - was too prehistoric to bother trying and of course I'd argued many times that such facilities were a waste of time but I have eaten my words. It was a nice thing to send a picture to him.)

Here's a trick I have been working on since a little before Christmas in my usual way - sporadically!

These first three pics are Nellie responding to my 'sit' command while I get myself sorted to get pics of her doing 'on the ball'. Bless her, she decides to offer other things that may get a click while she waits for the OK release but she is still sitting!! So before I say the 'OK' I got some pictures of her looking too cute.

In the next pictures Nellie demonstrates her ball skills....She motors up and down the kitchen like a demon. Not as fast as she skateboards but then that really only goes forward or backwards. With an occasional flip! A ball goes everywhere. She really has to be able to multi-task to keep it moving forward in a straight line..I compare it to us tapping our head while rubbing our tummy while hopping on one foot.....I was teaching Pop this one too before we discovered her toe and she was really getting the hang of it. I was really pleased with how dexterous she was. She started off less confident but she then caught up with Nellie quite suddenly. Archie is becoming more confident and is starting to push the ball by himself without any gentle resistance help or food lure. Couldn't get far enough back from him doing it to take pictures just yet.

Nellie sees the ball as her cue to interact with it, same as the plastic box, the mat, the skateboard and various other items we use to play these balance games. I do think we can be too keen to put words onto behaviours way too early in the shaping process. I used to be too. Although I call it 'on the ball' as far as Nellie is concerned it is just 'see the ball, I get clicked and treated for pushing it about..' For a long time now I have been more keen to get the behaviour really strong through making it highly rewarded/re-enforced ('building value' I think is what some call it)and then proofing it out in different places with different things going on, BEFORE I start to put the word (that will become the 'verbal cue', or name of the action) in place.

I have found that if you put behaviours on a verbal cue too early the dog may learn to do the behaviour slowly (ie in the more tentative learning stage at the start) or form an unwanted behaviour within the whole behaviour that more careful tweaking of the learning process in a later stage of the shaping will iron out. I don't put a verbal cue even to a 'down' until quite some way in to the process ie when I'm stood up and the 'down' hand signal is working alone. Otherwise you can end up with a slow down. Just my view! I have a hard job convincing those who come to my pet obedience of this. Like most humans they find words too reassuring and forget that for dogs it is about association. Once I have what I want is when I want to put a name to it. Up til then I am reliant on how well I can create the value/reinforcement in the item being interacted with itself (ball for example) or in the shaped behaviour that is not reliant on an item (doing a high five or a down for example). Sometimes I will use a hand signal that may or may not come from using food to lure a behaviour at the start.

For anyone who might be interested in teaching this and maybe isn't sure how they could start or didn't have anyone to chew ideas over with.....here is a guide to how I have. I am sure there are other ways but this has worked or is working for me with three dogs.

The clicker is in my hand while holding the ball. I have a pile of treats on a lid next to me on the floor so that I can have one qucikly in my hand as soon as the last one has been either fed direct (very early stage with all of them but the girls had the treats thrown ver soon after we started. I have taught both of them elephant on a stool that is a bit lower than the ball height and all of my dogs could skateboard to a greater or lesser extent so already they had an understanding about putting paws on 'things') or after the previous treat has been thrown. If you are fumbling around for another treat you miss the opportunity for a quick repeat of the behaviour or the dog repeats the behaviour, you click and then take too long to give the treat so you have missed an opportunity to reward and reinforce the exact behaviour you marked with the clicker.

Ball skills began with my dogs with me creating resistance (holding the ball with one hand while on my knees on the floor!)with the ball so that all they had to do first was find putting both paws on it rewarding (at this stage a food lure in my hand helped with all of them initially though I faded it very quickly with the girls and less quickly with Arch as he had less physical confidence with the ball). However, not so quick that the girls weren't sure what I wanted, but quick enough that the lure didn't influence the behaviour incorrectly (that is, make the dog only able to do it if my hand was in front of their face). I wanted them to be able to act independently on the ball by the endof the process and not need me or food to do it. So I was careful to build independence in as I developed their learning.

I threw the treats away from me but still near the ball. It did not come from my hand. As they found this stage really rewarding and wanted to repeat doing it, I gradually allowed the ball to move slightly forward though not sideways yet. I let them learn that moving their back feet while keeping their front toes balanced on the ball was a good thing to try to do (ie if they showed any small sign of doing this I clicked and treated) and so gradually they did more of that until they were quite competent and began to move the ball forward a little themselves. Which of course I clicked and treated.

(Little Archie waits for his turn. They have all been taught to do this in a line up in the room we are doing stuff in even when all four were with me. I started to work on this aspect of their training back when I just had the two boys and had managed to make some progress with Arch's general training. This was before agility began for us(2002?),so bringing Pop to that level and then Nellie seemed like a good idea when each of them came along. Regular treats for 'wait' reinforced it. But I needed good 'waits' first. And no I have never even looked at a copy of 'Crate Games'though I am led to understand that these are the sorts of things people can learn to teach from it??)

Back to 'on the ball'. I with-held the click for tiny increments of distance as and when I felt they were capable of moving it further distances while maintaining their balance and control. This was to ensure I didn't ask for too much too soon in their early shaping stage. Once they were doing this more confidently I began to let them move the ball slightly side to side and as they did this I clicked.

Then eventually I made controlling the ball in all directions (though in tiny distances) very rewarded. As this stage became more 'valued' ie they were rewarded a lot and were obviously keen to get on the ball as soon as they saw it, I let them have even more control. Before Pop died I knew in my heart of hearts we were going to lose her but I let her do tiny bits of this trick as well as skateboarding and the wobble board. If it had made a difference to her survival I wouldn't have, but like everything else we did, it was about making sure she enjoyed her last days as she had enjoyed her life with us. She really wanted to do stuff with mom and took particular enjoyment in these games. I didn't get any pictures though as we hadn't got to stage Nellie has got to and no video clip either.

Pop was beginning to move the ball around without me nearby and starting to wheel it away from me as Nellie does. I get this stage as soon as they are independent on the ball by clicking for interaction with the ball that takes the ball in the opposite direction from me. At first this happens randomly but enough reinforcements of it as well as ensuring the treat is thrown in front of the dog as they are clicked really makes it clear to them.

In all these pictures Nellie demonstrates her ability to work the ball independently. She can turn it with two paws on the ball and get it out of corners and off walls. She can manoeuvre it towards and away from me. She's definitely got it. Archie is a bit further back but he'll get there too.

I would never teach this behaviour to very young dogs or pups as it is a hard one to do requiring as it does a lot of strength and balance skills which should have been developed more gradually with gentle progression. Nor would I teach it to older dogs that have little muscle strength or that are overweight. Or ones that are recovering from recent injury. There are again much gentler ways to teach or develop balance. Dogs need highly developed balance skills before learning 'on the ball'. It is asking too much otherwise to do something this hard with them.

Archie is nearly 10 (in May!) but he likes to learn things and it does him good to keep finding ways to keep him balanced and strong in his soft tissue. Pop was 7. Henry learned to skateboard at 9! And Nellie will be 4 in April.

But all four of them were or are incredibly fit and strong with excellent proprioception skills built up over time through other behaviours and walks in very varied terrains. So even Archie can learn this one despite his age.

Balance and proprioception skills are not just for young or adolescent puppies. I think they are for life.

Here's a little bit of footage. My ineptness with technology revealed itself again today. Went to take a picture of Nellie on the ball this morning and must have accidentally touched the video option that I hadn't yet noticed. Couldn't understand why there was suddenly a red dot on the camera shutter button and it made a different noise when I pressed it...Several video clips of the kitchen work surface later (!) I realised what I'd done. So finally I 'work out' how to take video clips with my iphone.......and upload them to youtube....Sad or what?

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This clip shows that there is a lot more I can do to improve her skills. She does well to turn but she doesn't maintain her hold on the ball. So I need to shape this a bit more with some micro-shaping on how she controls it as she comes out of turns.

There's more to do on maintaining the straight trajectory when she is coming towards me too - she's keen to see if I am going to click (even though I keep my iclick very firmly hidden in my hand she is looking to see any thumb movement..) so she looks up and 'takes her eye off the ball' as it were, which means she heads towards the cupboard. This is my fault too. If I hadn't been so busy doing the filming I should have clicked her while she was still concentrating on and successfully holding the forward line she was travelling on before this happened and while she was still getting the balance right. But because I was filming it, I with-held the click too long so got some 'undesired' behaviour. It doesn't matter. I can iron it out. If anything it helps me see how she is learning and how I need to to tighten up where I put in my reinforcements in order to keep her learning of the behaviour progressing the way I'd like it too.

I may never get it as perfect as it could be but we can enjoy the process and enjoy thinking and working through that process, taking heed of the small things within it that add up to the bigger picture.

This is one of the reasons why I like to work at teaching behaviours sporadically with different ones on the go all the time. Gives me time to think about how a behaviour is progressing before I have accidentally built in too many things that would be really hard to unlearn. Can't say I am always successful in this endeavour but I'm better than I used to be.

Nevertheless, no more vid clips for a while ...

Notice the emphasis is on me to teach and shape it effectively, not on her to work it out.

*No 'feeding from the hand' aka 'learn to earn' practices have been used to teach this skill or any others my dogs have learned in or out of agility. In case you've missed me on this subject before - I hate it. I really do consider it an admission of failure to create the right bond of fun and trust with a dog. Too often the dog is labelled as 'difficult' or 'stubborn' as a result but if you are an experienced owner who has had the dog since puphood and it won't interact or work with you unless you are with-holding its meals (ie it is so hungry it is desperate to please you) then you've gone wrong somewhere - why should the dog pay for that? Or it is a failure to understand how to break down a behaviour for a dog. Just with-holding the dog's food unless it 'works a behaviour out' that hasn't been carefully shaped and reinforced positively and thoughtfully is to my mind cruel.

I do however recommend this practice in three circumstances: with young pups who need a lot of re-inforcement and who need lots of small meals but who fill up very quickly I tell people to use some of the meal kibble or food to teach some of the things they are working on and just reduce the amount they have in their three meals a day OR if someone has a rescue dog that they need to do a lot of intensive interaction with I suggest this for a brief time particulary if the dog has resource issues OR if someone who is either very inexperienced or has personal problems that mean they have not been on top of aspects of training and they hit a crisis with their adolescent dog (very often this is when they contact someone who might be able to help them) and need to get back on the dog's radar. I have never used the practice with any of mine despite Henry's 'behaviour report card' when I got him at 14 months. As with Pop (also rescue) we just did things together and I made sure doing them was FUN and I don't think anything was missing in our bond or in our successes together. However, I perhaps wish I had known about it when Arch hit his adolescence. It would have helped me get back on track with him sooner. Even then, almost ten years ago, I would still have seen it as an admission of failure but I got him in the throes of depression and most definitely did not have the right frame of mind for such a teenage terriorist. This wasn't his fault - it was entirely mine. Still we got through our troubles together without it in the end, by sheer bloody will power ('I will pull myself through this') , some hard learned lessons (Mine. Ones that I have shared repeatedly and helped others from having learned) and eventually, more formal dog training culminating in agility! I am proud of the bond he and I have. But I am aware that not everyone has the patience or the ability to push themselves that hard. So I will recommend 'feeding from the hand' to those who have bitten off more than they can chew and who acknowledge they have 'gone wrong' but who can't get back on track with the dog the way I managed to.

EBTG for Iain

2011-03-08T15:24:00.000-08:00

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'And do you know even when we disagree
And freedom holds out a hand to me
I know I would never want to be without your company
And I mean that totally

We have reached an understanding...'

'Understanding' Worldwide

(You'll maybe have to read the previous blog entry to make more sense of this one..)

Permit me a little more indulgence

2011-03-08T14:28:00.000-08:00

Proving again (see Icehouse entry) that some '80s music actually was intelligent and articulate and not just a bunch of blokes in frilly shirts and slap with glam rock hangovers. Or just soft metal anthems. Maybe that was your thing! For me it was OK in small doses or loud parties.

Here are two tracks from what is said to have been possibly the most influential indie album of that era - 'Rattlesnakes' by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions.

A Sark islander friend of mine put this on cassette for me in 1984 when it was released. I played it and played it on my succession of personal stereos and, yes, eventually found it on CD when it became available some years later. I think he was alarmed by my fondness at the time for ZZ Top's 'Eliminator' album. I kept on listening to it to wind him up more than anything else.

However, I was always a sucker for 6 and 12 string guitar acoustics and quirky, intelligent lyrics that said something even if I did occasionally lapse into shtick. I read Simone de Beauvoir because of Lloyd Cole - not because it was on any of my student reading lists (it wasn't and arguably should have been).

I have embedded these two tracks from 'Rattlesnakes' but actually, if you are at all interested, you can scroll through to other tracks before and after them I found....Only these two plus 'Forest Fire' though are from 'Rattlesnakes'. The others came later in the Eighties or from albums afterwards. I believe they disbanded in '89.

Lloyd Cole And The Commotions - Rattlesnakes

Lloyd Cole And The Commotions - Perfect Skin

And here is 'Are you Ready to be Heartbroken?' - the final track from the original album and a favourite of mine. Here being performed by Cole solo - a lovely acoustic version and still sounding fresh 25 years on.

Unlike quite a lot of 'singers' past and present he actually can sing and play and still has that edge in his voice, that made it so distinctive, even after all this time. He still sounds as young as we all were when he asks:

Are you ready to be heartbroken? Ready to bleed?

He was and still is a poet.

The same friend got me into Van Morrison and Everything But the Girl about the same time both of which have stayed with me album after album ever since. If kids at work ever ask me what music I like I always say 'lots of stuff though my two top ones are Van Morrison and EBTG'. Usually they look blank. Taught a Ben Watt once and I told him he had a famous name and that he should google it...I prefer the older VM albums up to and just about including 'Avalon Sunset' when he went all Evangelical and lost me a bit. EBTG stopped making albums in the late '90s - the last album I bought being 'Walking Wounded' (1996) and I bought their collaboration 'Protection' with Massive Attack (1994). 'Love Not Money' was a birthday present from my friend in 1985when it came out which led me to 'Eden' which had been released the year before. They were even less commercial and more New Wave than Lloyd Cole. Essentially though both were student bands.

From 'Love Not Money', 'When all's well'(well most of it...)

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These three from 'Eden':

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From 'Amplified Heart'(1994). 'Walking to you'. One of my favourites. Beautiful lyrics and her voice as gorgeous as it always is.

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And he introduced me to Vaughan Williams' 'The Lark Ascending' and 'Thomas Tallis'! I recall he gave me a cassette he made of Strauss' 'Four Last Songs' too. These too have made their way into the CD collection. I don't pretend to actually know anything about classical music or the opera arias I have developed a penchant for over the years - I don't - I just hear something, track it down, buy it and then like to immerse myself in it.

Although I had an eclectic musical taste even in my late teens when I first worked on the island I was more than happy and grateful that my Sark friend taped such a variety of music for me. I really could not afford to buy speculatively as I earned very little money in France, Sark and, briefly, on the farm we lived on when I was at home in between, and then had even less when I was a student eventually on one of those 'government grants' Cole's friends had in 'Perfect Skin'. I really was quite broke most of the time but I could listen to all that music for the price of an endless supply of batteries.

Going back through this catalogue of music as I have been doing lately is like spritzing myself with the youthful energy I had then with all the uncertainty, excitement, the openness to new places, people and ideas that comes with it. I don't feel any different listening to these tracks than I did when I used to all that time ago - though maybe I'm just a little bit more wise? Perhaps....:)

For old friends. From 'Worldwide'(1991)

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