And how is Henry?

Well as you can see he is happy. He has a lap and that always makes him happy :)

Last week he had another physio session and she said he is 'really juicey and springy and he has the suppleness of a puppy in his spine' so you can imagine I was very pleased to hear that cos it means that all the things we are doing are taking him in the right direction. He will always have a prolapsed disc above his sacral joint but he is enjoying good walks again 6 months after the original nail bed infection which the vet and the physio believe caused the disc to slip. After the initial diagnosis in June he had the steroids for two weeks and then he was drug free for 6 weeks, lots of rest and very short walks twice a week, before we began the therapies. He has had several acupuncture sessions. He has another of each in two weeks time. He is also having 2x200mg arnica tablets each week. And I have now a set of little stretch exercises to do with him which makes things fun as he is a fidget and as he has done so much clicker stuff he thinks my hands are signalling him to do tricks and moves so we make slow progress with the stretches!

Here he is with his bro and sisters (!) and two best mates on top of Hambledon Hill - a huge Iron Age fort that is one of many in Dorset:


You can see for miles. On a clear day you can see six counties. The little bump of trees on the horizon is the clump on top of Win Green I have written about. So that's two covered in that direction - Dorset and then Wiltshire:

Needless to say Henry will never do any jumping, weaves, A frame or long jump again so no more agility even if he is able to go for two hour walks (and in time even longer ones we hope). I don't meander on our walks so two hours of me walking is a really good walk (as Alison will testify!) After work today we went to walk on some chalk downland and I guess I covered nearly 4 miles in 1.5 hours. They are off leash for that time and Henry is not stiff or uncomfortable this evening. Sometimes we only do an hour and the odd day he just rests, so I mix it up for him. Jumping though involves extension, as does hydrotherapy (so that's out too) but he has been able to do the odd dog walk, seesaw and tunnel and poles on the ground in my field. I sneaked him into a practice ring to do exactly that (not telling where or when!). Tennis ball miraculously appears and he is so happy. I discussed this with the vet, Cheryl (acu) and Amanda (phys) and they all said I was doing the right thing giving him the mental and emotional satisfaction that he gets from being with Mom doing something agility.

And he still gets to do clicker things of course.

On first telling people he was retiring due to his back someone very nice said 'well done for making that decision' to which the response was 'well what other decision was there to make?' The cryptic reply? 'Well you'd be surprised..' Sadly, now almost 7 years into agility, I don't think I would be. Anyone looking at him around the rings will see a lean, fit dog who belies his 11 years. And that's the way I want to keep him.

Can we play?

Massive blitz in garden today as planned - clearing, weeding, composting, grass cutting.....Planted all the garlic cloves. If they all grow we will be eating a lot of garlic next year! Trying the winter salad leaves in the greenhouse. And we cut the grass in the field at the end of the garden as I am able to use the space for training - I have a set of weaves (when I was teaching Nells with the channels I could leave them there all the time so I could just go out, do three or four run throughs and then leave it. Perfect ), a round tunnel and four jumps. I fling out variations on this depending on a)time available and b) the focus I have in mind. When I don't have time to drive to where my main equipment is, this space has made so much difference. So this is one of our agility play zones.....

Everytime I looked back to the garden gate whilst mowing the field these little faces were what I could see. Aw!

Went to Walking the Course session. Interesting as usual. Confirmed my suspicion that Nellie is my slow dog, despite her elastic turns :):) Seriously, reflecting on my performance I am not getting the best out of her by any means. For a start, I am too slow to re-direct her after turns. So used to waiting for Pop so she wouldn't knock a pole (in the bad old days) that I am doing the same with Nellie who can turn in the air on the pole. How daft is that? Also I am not driving her into turns. Again I suspect a bad habit from poor old Pop's and my past. Also that I don't know yet what tools to use for the best outcome in any given situation with her all the time. You know? When you are walking a course and you hear people saying 'Oh. X will land here and want to turn that way so I need to take him this way and do a reverse, flip, rear cross, pivot (delete as appropriate) and then he'll be able to bounce through those and won't see the tunnel......' Well I can do that a lot of the time with Pop and mostly be right. But with Nellie when there are lots of options I usually get it wrong. She can do it but it isn't the fastest for her. Maybe that's a new partnership thing? Like we did a two jump sequence. Jumps opposite one another and slightly offset. We all did 'exit tunnel, reverse turn off jump 1, flick away pivot on jump 2' , then 'exit tunnel, rear cross pivot off jump 1, reverse turn off jump 2. She was quicker on the second option though my first choice had been option 1....Natch! So then we did the last option: 'exit tunnel, reverse turn jump 1, reverse turn jump 2'. I didn't see any point really in this option and confidently said to Mandy, 'Oh yeah this will be the slowest for all of them' and it was, for all of the other dogs, except Nellie. It was a significant chunk of a second quicker for her. I think even Lesley was surprised. I certainly was.......One thing I keep learning about agility is that you never stop learning. Well I don't anyway.

Stuff

Half term next week and I am looking forward to a break. This term always gets a bit relentless and everyone (kids and staff) grows more and more tired. By Christmas we all need a break from each other! Thankfully my classes this year are no where near as challenging as the last two years. I have the whole range of abilities - from support sets in Years 9 and 11 through to Year 13s who are targetting A* and a range of behaviour issues to teach through above and beyond just being teenagers :) I have to be on top of everything as any teacher who wants to do a good job needs to be - everything planned and prepped and resourced appropriately, but this year nothing like the behaviour issues that exhausted and depressed me over these last couple of years. I had one particular class every Friday afternoon as well as last lesson on other days and it was only the determination that I would not let them taint my weekends that got me to shows. That sounds awful but you'd have to have been there. You need lots of energy and optimism in this line of work - you've spent hours of your own time planning and creating lovely resources to enable learning because you care. Without compromising anyone's privacy - some kids are so messed up by, perhaps, experiences in early childhood or disaffected by years of an education system that has reinforced their inability to jump through hoops that even with only ten students and three learning support staff it was pretty pointless trying to work through endless poems for an exam that they knew they would probably fail. Even knowing all of that and knowing it is not my fault, it was hard not to take the 'abuse' personally. But hey, all of that to look forward to another year...

So this half term we will be decorating Iain's parents flat for some of this holiday so it isn't exactly going to be restful...Figured we'd do that in this holiday and then turn our attention to our own decorating - will have been here 2.5 years and we still haven't painted any of the walls apart from the newly renovated bathroom of course - over the Christmas hols.

Today Nellie and I had our once a fortnight one-to-one hour with Lesley as i have one Friday in my two week timetable cycle off. Started that a month ago after two years of, first, puppy group moving on to more growed up company as it evolved. Pop gets to have a go for a short time while we are there. She is doing minimal maintenance more for her psychological welfare rather than anything else. She does not like to be left out! She joins in with one of my classes once a week doing the bare minimum, and Nellie works in the other one. Rest of the time, as usual, Nellie, Pop and I train alone. I reckon that 80% of my training time with Nellie so far has been alone. It has its advantages and disadvantages. What are Nellie and I working on - well like practically everyone else ...contacts...and trying to keep a balance between straightforward stuff for speed and confidence and more tricky stuff because that's what we will need to come out able to do next Spring. Went to an independent show last weekend and was impressed with Nellie's confidence, speed over, technique on and final position on the d/w and a/f. Long way to go though still and I guess it won't all come over the winter - some things have to develop in their own sweet time reliant as they are on personality and confidence, as well as training. The trick is knowing which ones are which and as she is only my second collie with a quite different attitude to Pop I have to rely on other more experienced and knowledgeable eyes to keep things clear. No seesaw at the show sadly. Lovely waits and beginning to flatten a little over jumps. Been trying to work on that too! And keep our turns.....

Naturally this has to be fitted in around work! Work at school (going to it and then doing all the planning, prep and marking that I have to do at home) and work at dog training - pet obedience and agility. And keeping up with the house and garden. And our usual walks. So there's really no chance of doing too much cos there isn't actually that much time available.....Each day Nellie and I work on something for 5 or 10 mins. Sometimes we split the 10 mins into two sessions on one day. I have to have a clear focus on a skill for each session which I decide on as I'm getting up, eating my breakfast/lunch or driving home from work (depending on which part of the day I have to go to work in) and then we play, we do it, we play, we have huggles(all training ends with huggles with Nellie - she loves them) and then we stop. Pretty much this has been our schedule since she became mine - whatever it was we needed to work on - tricks, general obedience or later, agility. Though obviously the time spent 'playing and learning with mom' was very fluid when she was younger - lots of one or two minute slots in the day were very useful for all the basics that we all lke to teach our pups. It seemed to work with that and one or two short core slots for agility stuff as she became old enough meant we moved things on a little each time we worked on them but we always worked at something different over each day so no boring repetition. One of many reasons why I would not want to do running contacts - I could not stand the necessary repetitiveness of it and as I wrote a good while back I am very sure Nellie could not have stood it either. She doesn't have that sort of temperament. Some do, some don't. Pop would have been OK I think. The fact that Nellie is a very happy dog and we have a lovely bond would suggest that continuing with this approach works for us.

As for the garden, we have jsut picked our last runner beans. The freezer is stuffed with them! The squash are in the bottom store. The last of the potatoes are now in the fridge and the courgettes are fading off just this week - we have been eating loads up til then. We have been eating all of these plus lettuce and parsley since June/July. Amazing. I cleaned the tomatoes out of the greenhouse last weekend and scrubbed the glass inside and out, ready for the winter. Am thinking about winter lettuce leaves in there and kick starting some garlic as my neighbour tells me garlic likes that! So the veg patch is now being tidied and all the dead growth goes into the compost heaps and the old compost will be spread on the beds and left til the Spring. Cleaned out the chickens tonight after a long walk this afternoon with the dogs in the New Forest (after the one to one), scrubbed the eglus inside and out ready for the winter (we have a pink and a purple one! See http://www.omlet.co.uk/ ) and moved all the straw from their covered pen into the compost too. They love having new straw and much happy clucking goes on as well as leaping off the logs they have in there for recreation to land in it. If they could make 'weeee' noises they would! To prevent rats getting into the pen for chicken pellets or corn, we slabbed it so to protect their feet the straw goes in and I change it every couple of weeks or so. I like seeing them scratching about in new straw and having clean nests. They are out in the garden most of the day - though the really heavy rain the other day meant that when I came back from work they had all elected to go back in the large airy pen and shelter under its roof. There they all were on their night roosting branches or the large flower pots staring balefully at the rain.......We attach our eglus to the pen (length12ftx width9ft xheight7ft) rather than use the eglu runs - don't think they are big enough for chickens myself. There is something very satisfying about using all their bedding and nesting material (aubiose) for compost, as well as all the kitchen peelings and teabags etc. No waste and even better it contributes to more produce next year. Iain spent some time this evening turning the heaps. Like wine they improve with the right care! I know I go on about the veg patch but it really is such a brilliant thing to do. I loved having one ten years ago but I think I am even more smitten now. I like the self -reliance, the resourcefulness of it and the magic of seeds turning into plants that produce things you can eat!

I am looking forward to a Walking the Course session tomorrow with Nellie and in the evening we are off bowling...well Iain will be bowling and I will be trying not to end up flying down the alley bit with the ball still jammed in my grip......Looking forward to it as will be meeting up with friends and I think they may well turn out to be just as awful as me at it :) :)

Normal life resumes...

Whatever 'normal life' is....

However, Devon Dogs being my last show of the season proper we have been doing other things now for a couple of weekends..and there are a lot of other things to be doing that's for sure.

One of the most important things was to catch up with Alec our nephew which we managed to do this weekend. I ran my agility training on Saturday and so off Al and Iain went to Salisbury to some bookshops where Al could choose some books he'd like. He also gets to choose books for Leo, our other nephew, his brother. Leo does not come to stay with us, though he does sometimes come to visit, because he has a form of autism and he would find staying with us without his mum or dad quite stressful. He likes his routines and to know where the things are that he wants. He is always very pleased to see Iain in particular because Iain is so tall. All the better to lift him onto the air REPEATEDLY as high as he loves to be, to shriek loudly and run about after each landing in a very excited way :) :)

It seems Steve Cole is a very popular writer of the moment and we became intimately acquainted with Captain Tex, Arx, Gypsy and Iggy travelling about the universe in their Sauropod solving crimes and dealing with skin tearing vicious bananas or egg eating oviraptors at every turn. Al even wanted me to read some of the Astrosaur story he chose instead of 'The Deathly Hallows' this time. Heavens! Iain and Al bought me a book too - Al chose 'The Tales of Beedle the Bard' by J.K. Rowling and I am looking forward to reading the one about Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump...should be a goodie!

After a walk for the dogs we headed off to Osmington Mills on the coast path to the 13th century pub called 'The Smugglers' for a meal with Nanny (my mother) which we all enjoyed.

Today we paid a visit to the Cranborne Chase Woodfair at the Larmer Tree, Tollard Royal. We all went to the first one two years ago (it is a biennial affair) and I took a then 6 month old Nellie-Bean to it. Well she loved it then and she loved it today,as did the others when they had their turn. We met a really lovely family who fell in love with Nellie whilst we waited for bespoke wands to be magically created and who sent me this wonderful picture they took. From left to right: Ali, Verity and Eleanor :) :) Thankyou for the picture!

Again, it was full of people and their children and many, many people had dogs and it was a lovely environment for all of us; a real advert for country ways and happy, responsible dog ownership in a world that seems to be increasingly anti-dog. There were woodturners, coppice experts, all kinds of wonderful food, there was falconry and the beautiful eagle owl pictured above. There was Hagrid's Hut where you could be sorted into Houses (Al was relieved to be in Gryffindor) and design the wands mentioned above complete with runes and a crystal(!) and there was archery, and real and laser clay pigeon shooting....

The three muskateers (Al centre and two other children keen to try) learning about how to stand when firing an arrow:

Al learning about why the hugely feared English longbowman in in our Medieval armies used to to wave two fingers at the opposing armies (usually the French!) and why, if caught, they could expect to have those fingers chopped off in revenge (and worse) and, so the insulting gesture originated.....

And Al tries to hold on to a laser gun that is too big and too heavy, but he still manages to get three hits!

For Dex

This run is for you Dex. I know she is not a 'proper dog' (ie a big bouncy hairy beardie!) but after Pam told me the news and I had talked to her for a good while on Sunday I went off to run this tricky little graded 6/7 jumping course with Nellie first and then Pop later. It wasn't the kind of course I wanted to run Nellie in first out of the two of them but that was the way the numbers fell....I stood on the start line and thought of you and how you would have told me to get out there and get on with it. So I did. And here's the result:

Well she won the class so this was her first win to Grade 7. Blimey! I saw the g6 run I thought would win it and could not believe Andy when he told me she was 2 seconds faster. She was only a fraction behind the winning grade 7 dog too and that dog is no slouch believe me! I saw that run too! I am still a bit stunned TBH. Both they and I could have worked it tighter but this way worked for me and my girls. Pop came 2nd in the g7 and would have been 3rd if it had been combined, behind Nellie.

I have taken Nellie around a jump like this before on one or two occasions in training but never yet in the ring and never with a big fat round tunnel right in front of her face. But I hoped that if I stood my ground and held my nerve we might be able to pull it off. Thanks to Lesley for the recall/changing direction training :). Also I knew that if I pulled her this side of jump 2 I would never get in the second box to do a pull through either in front or behind her so I chose to bring her towards me and flick her to the weaves. I knew she could do that.

(NB Tried another way tonight in the field(Weds) - calling her in from jump1 on my left on the left wing of jump 2, turning her out around the wing, over jump 3 and then over 4 as I did above and doing the reverse turn again before flicking to the weaves. Even tighter - for both of them. But even scarier with jump 3 just there on the left the whole time until the dog was safely behind jump 2...and I definitely hadn't done that before with her! Some people did it like that up to jump3 but then did a pull through from behind from 4-5. There were several mix and match options on this course, which always makes it more interesting.)

Anyway Dex, this run was for you. You used to make us laugh at that person we all knew. You saw straight through her. Iain and I will miss you.

Saturday @ Devon Dogs (and Sunday evening)

Nellie got 3rd in C6/7 jumping which was brill. Even more brill that I wasted a fraction of time and had a wide bit. There was more in the tank. (Not pleased I didn't handle better!)



She and Pop did good full end stopped contacts and we made use of the practice ring....


Henry and Arch slept in various places in the caravan, 'garden' or van all day. Henry following the sun as usual.



In the evening our gang and Alison and her two went to Lyme - the Undercliffs for a good walk first and then to the Cobb. Iain and I always have chips on the front when we go to the Cobb and as Alison had never been to any of these places we inducted her into this ritual also.


When she sends me the pics from her phone I will upload them (hint!)



On the Sunday ( agility report above) on our way back the gang and I went to one of my favourite West Dorset places - Golden Cap. Didn't have time for the beach and the whole Charmouth/Coast path scene that we have enjoyed so many times over the years (beautiful) but had a nice walk nonetheless and as always was enthralled by the views, particularly on such a beautiful September evening. It was a good place to think and remember.

The Other Woman...

Bit busy last week rushing about doing all the things I normally do and some of the things that Iain normally does cos he had gone away with another woman. She is very pretty for sure but she is also black and white and she loves her mom! Hehehe.

Pop and Dad had a week away in the caravan in Glencoe and spent every evening and night snuggled up and each day roaming the large mountains in the rain and mist.

Iain finally realised how much more fun it is to walk with a dog than without. It was her happy face running on ahead, he said, that kept him going further and further up despite the weather. She had a lovely time and even enjoyed being taken across rivers in full spate (on her harness and lead). Anyway, here she is:

What most people don't know is that if it were not for me Iain would not have dogs at all. I have offered to train a dog up for agility for him (and yes, I do have to go to work too)if he really wanted to do agility again but he is not interested in the commitment. He loves our dogs and although travelling about to shows gets to him at times he is happier supporting me and enjoys being part of the excitement that the dogs and I have been fortunate enough to enjoy. This was the first time he had taken one of the dogs away on his own.