12th March 2012

We had a lovely walk this morning. I took a foootball out with us and all the dogs love playing with it.

Well actually Lilly would prefer it if the Bostons would find something else to play with as they keep trying to take the ball.

Two onto one is not really fair

Spice reigns triumphant!

29th January 2012

I was out for my normal walk yesterday morning. I had Lily, Daisy, Pippa and Spice with me. We were walking along minding our own business when up ahead I saw a woman with a smallish brown terrier on a lead coming towards us.

As soon as he saw my dogs the Terrier started barking and lunging at the end of his lead. As they got closer to us I could see the lady was struggling to hold him and was being pulled along by him even though he was quite a small dog. In the interests of avoiding any trouble I decided the best thing to do was to move off the footpath and stood in a driveway to let them both pass.

My dogs were very good, they just stood with me and waited while the lady and her ferocious hound passed. They did look fairly incredulous at the amount of noise the other dog was making but they didn't bark back.

As she drew level with us, the lady stopped, looked at me and my dogs just standing there and said to me "four dogs?!!. Gosh, you have got your hands full with those, haven't you!!. Then proceeded to drag her  dog off away from us. He was now hanging back still trying to get at my dogs and still barking his head off. It was a real struggle for the woman to pull him away. Once they were safely gone we carried on with our walk. All four walking nicely on the lead.

16th January 2012

While the weather is so cold and wet we have to
make do with playing ball in the house. Which is fine except that sometimes the ball lands in the wrong place.

Poor Daisy desperately wants to get her ball but won't walk on the wooden surface to get it. She insists on keeping 2 feet safely on the arm of the settee and stretches as far as she can to try to reach the ball. To make sure I am aware of the fact that her ball has landed on the table she makes the most horrendous shrieks and howls and pathetic sounding wails until I come and rescue the ball.

I just wish I could get her 2o2o contacts as good on the a-frame as they are on the settee!

14th January 2012

So many people have comented on the fact that I have not updated my blog for such a long time and asked when I would start it again that I thought I had better start updating it more regularly.

We have had a very good year competing at agility. We won into Grade three at the beginning of the season .

Lily has only been competing for a year but is doing very well. Regularly getting placed which is quite an acheivement considering the large grade 3 classes usually have nearly 200 dogs in them.

The photo is Lily with the rosettes and trophy she won at Wilmslow show last weekend where she won a 3rd and 4th in agility and a 14th in jumping

Milo also started competing last year and has had several places in grade 3. Daisy is also doing well with several places in grade three culminating in winning into grade 4 at the end of the season last year.

Ruby has now retired from agility due to having a fall from the dog walk which reawakened her fear of the contact equipment. I am finding running 3 dogs is plenty, Running 4 was getting to be hard work.

28th January 2011

The Boston Babbies are now 6.5 weeks old. Very lively and into everything. I wanted to take pictures of them standing but that proved a lot more difficult than I expected as they just don't like to stand still.

We have had several people round to visit. It seems as if they know when we are expecting visitors as they run round and play and play until the visitors arrive and then fall asleep while the visitors are here then wake up once they go again

This is James who is now Theo

Jesse

Jesse

Belle

Belle

Jingle

Jingle

22/01/11

Today was Agility Addicts Show. The first one we have been to for absolutely ages and it was really nice to be back competing again. Unfortunately Lily is still in season so she had to stay at home so it was just Ruby and Milo, who was competing for the first time.

Ruby was first in the ring. It seemed to be quite a complicated jumping course and I wasn't sure how well we would do but Ruby surprised me and jumped clear. She did everything I asked and I was able to handle her exactly how I planned. Actually that is not really unusual with Ruby as she is always really good at following my cues, the problem is more often that I get it wrong and she does what I say. We got a clear round but were just outside the places.

Next was Milo's agility runs. He did really well. We did get eliminated but it was because I didn't make sure I got close enough to the tunnel to pick him up so he got a bit confused about which jump to do next. Once I got him back we carried on and everything went smoothly until we got to the sea-saw. He loves the contact equipment and in spite of me yelling sea-saw he shot straight up it and into space. Thankfully he landed well and the judge told me to put him back on it again to make sure he hadn't frightened himself too much. He went straight back on but much slower this time and did it properly. Although we were eliminated I was really pleased with how he ran. He went where I said most of the time and going over strange equipment didn't seem to bother him at all. On the next run we corrected the previous mistakes but did something else wrong so got eliminated again. He did do the sea-saw properly though.

Next was Ruby's agility runs and as we are still working on her dog walk phobia I decided to do them not for competition and just do a couple of jumps and then the dog walk and leave the ring. She was a little unsure but didn't get too stressed out about it. We will keep working on it and hopefully will get over it again.

Finally was Milo's jumping run and it was a very nice course with several changes of side but each one was at the tunnel which made it quite easy. His first run was fantastic, he did went exactly what I said and got a clear round. Not bad for his first ever competition. He was 6th but unfortunately the places only went to 5th, but I am still really pleased with him.

Milo was measured as well and I really was not sure if he would be small or medium. He is so close to the cut off point for small but luckily the measures decided he was just small enough to be small. I am glad about this as he is quite a stocky dog and he would struggle to jump the medium height jumps. I just have to hope he doesn't grow at all in the next year.

15th January 2011

The puppies are almost 5 weeks old now. They are full of life and really getting playful now.

The weather is quite mild at the moment so they have been outside a few times now.

Today Clare and Eryn came for a visit.