Brackens 8th Birthday and meet Sparkle!!

We have had a very exciting weekend! Yesterday our gorgeous ickle Bracken was 8 years old :) So what did we do? Certainly no agility as the snow is still lying and the shows were cancelled.We woke the dogs up at stupid o'clock and went for a walk across the fields. Only managed to pose for a couple ofs picture as too cold to hang around!

So after our early morning walk we got in the car and went on a snowy road trip up North :)

Look what we got! Meet Sparkle - she is a Border Collie puppy and is just GORGEOUS!!

We had started thinking about adding the fourth (and final for a long while I hasten to add) puppy to the pack. Matthews two ginger girlies are six years apart in age and we got Brooke 2 years ago when Brax was six. Brodie has just turned six and with Brooke now 2 it seemed like a great time! We also had decided that next doglet would probably not be a sheltie. I will always love and have shelties but Brooke is too young to keep a daughter from at the moment. Its really Baileys fault - the lovely collie who comes to stay and does training. We thought about many different breeds but just kept coming back to our pastoral hairies! 

Anyway having seen an advert for BC puppies I couldn't resist contacting the breeder to ask if there were any little girlies left. She replied saying there was and sent me this picture - well we HAD to go and meet 'splodgy bum'!! So getting the ok saturday night that the roads were fine round the breeders off we went yesterday on a serious road trip! The puppies were great - so curious and bold and very cuddly! There are six in total, four boys and two girls, all just beautiful. We met Mum, Dad and Granny who were all stunning and very friendly. 

We had a loooong drive home but little'un was fantastic and slept most of the way. This is her having a hug from Matthew before we set off! We had a lot of time to think about her name and were torn between Sparkle and Sprite. I have discovered that apart from being the bestest hubby in the world Matthew is uber talented at naming animals!! He pointed out that Sprite sounded way too much like right in agility so we thought Sparkle really suited her! Her posh name is Reivermorada Fiery Angel so that kind fits with Sparkle!

 When we got home she had a play and some food and then claimed Brackens bed (its actually a cat bed!) She slept really well and I woke her up at 2am for toilet visit. I took her outside to where Matthew had cleaned some snow off the grass in the garden and she pooped, peed and went back to sleep! Clever puppy!

She is very playful, loving tuggies of any description but is particularly taken with the smallest tennis ball we have - she will bounce up the hallway and bring it back which is so sweet!

Its hard work being a puppy!!

Here are a couple of pics from earlier in the week of Brodie playing in the lounge doing balance stuff - the girls were not as good at posing this time!!