We have a little sheltie shaped visitor at the moment! Blaze has come to stay while his Mum and Dad are on holiday. We are loving having him to stay and he has slotted in really well with the other doglets. He is a very happy, cuddly little boy :-)
Here he is posing with his Mama Bean-he isn't as tall as her yet but taller than Brax (not hard!)
Grandpa Matt and Blaze at puppy class-he was very attentive!
Granny and Blaze selfie! (although it makes me look like I have a moustache lol!)
The whole gang together-what a gorgeous load of doglets!
In between puppy cuddles and work I have done a bit of dog walk training this week-I did a session that was 100% hits (on 11 reps) which was brilliant as its finally coming together after me being almost ready to chuck a stop in!
Brodie found a fake cat on his walk and stared at it like this for about a minute while I almost wet myself laughing-he never fails to make me laugh, my little clown!!
First rainy day for a while so I went fishing in the field and caught a collie :-p
My two have had a very busy three days! I hired Chance dog trainings lovely indoor venue to practise contacts somewhere else with Sparkle and see how they coped on the carpet. Unlike a lot of the training arenas with poorly cushioned astroturf, this one is actually the same as the one at Crufts (it is the actual carpet from Discover dogs) My guys loved running on it! Here is a video of them training-thanks to Jenni for filming :-)
Jenni ran Rommy and bought Squidge out for a play as well. Being somewhere new didn't bother him and we discovered he has inherited his mamas love of cage balls!
On Saturday we went to a local fun show. Brodie only did one class but managed a 3rd out of a decent entry in AV Pastoral/Working. Jenni got this lovely picture of him in the ring. Just love this boy!!
And here he is posing! His coat has been looking so lovely since he has been on Millies and its hard to believe that he was struggling with pancreatitis for so long. Sparkle was a good girly at her first showing show and came away with 3rd in Best Condition and in Best Trick!
Yesterday we went to Wallingford show. Brodie managed a 7th in C6-7 Agility and was a bit too wild in the jumping getting E'd! Sparkle had two E's but they were good ones. She found the distances quite tight but left the poles up which is progress!!
We had a quiet weekend, no shows but did some training at the field and went for some nice walks. Some of my lovely J9 people were competing at Shuttleworth so I went along to watch and as usual they all made me very proud doing some lovely runs and coming away with some great results!
We have been trying to entertain Brooke with various things that tax her brain but keep her calm as she is so full of the need to run but can't be let off lead. We managed to get a thundershirt to fit her (yay!) to limit the amount she can move her shoulder sideways. It definitely seems to help. This was us shopping in the pet shop...trust her to find some cage balls! She looks very scruffy at the moment due to losing her hair after the pups. It is slowly starting to grow back!
Modelling her new thundershirt in St Albans on a trip to the market
She also took Brodies place at Rally and was a very good girl! I took this while I was walking one of the courses and she was sitting watching one of the other dogs have a go. She was so good that I have been brave and entered her in a competition along with Brodie and Sparkle in May :-)
And just to prove despite her lack of hair that she can still look pretty!
It has been so warm here over the past couple of days-the older two couldn't even pose properly!
We have a few exciting days coming up! Hiring an indoor astroturf venue to practice contacts, a fun dog showing show and an agility show on Sunday!
Two weekends in a row I have done a UKA show in not the best conditions! I took Brodie and Sparkle to Lydiard and the wind was horrendous to the point an Aframe blew out of the ring! Brodie was a good boy and came 2nd in a steeplechase. Miss Sparkle had a couple of poles in the Beginners steeplechase qualifier and would have qualified if she had kept them up! She had a crack at Gamblers (all contacts had been removed so it was a tunnel or weave gamble-I opted for tunnel so we didn't get max points but she had a nice blast and came 2nd! Her first rosette this year :-)
I took Dolly and Brodie to UKA Easter and he did a lovely agility run to finish 3rd despite a bit of dithering! Dolly did a lovely jumping run and was 5th (placed to 4th) in a good sized novice qualifier-good spanner! Well done to Jenni and Rommy who qualified for the Grand Finals!! Brodie had fun socialising-here he is trying to get into Rowenas caravan :-)
I also got to see Squidge and Blaze at UKA Easter-what fabulous pups! Happy and confident around the rings at their first show on the ground. This is Blaze doing some downs next to the rings
And Squidge having a tug round the rings-yes it was very muddy and chilly but the pups weren't bothered!
Yesterday we went to Matts Mums for dinner and took Brax. She was eyeing up Matts carrot cake but trying her best to be sweet and innocent!
Brooke is still on lead walks only and very fed up bless her. She has her physio check up tomorrow so hoping to find out how she is doing. She is very naked after the pups and is shedding hair like crazy! Still such a pretty girly though.
Sparkle and I have been trying to practice our running contacts as we have had a few ropey session since her coming back into work after her season and my 8 weeks off due to the pups. I think it is lack of confidence so trying to get her out to different venues on varying dog walks. She was good in our session the other day-she did five dog walks in total and had three hits like the picture, one total miss and one miss where she tried to dunk a front foot in.
I will give it a few goes in the ring and see how she gets on but sooooo tempted just to whack a stop in and be done with it! All the courses at Crufts pretty much required a stop and a lot of handlers with running dog walks either struggled or their dogs missed. Same story in a lot of champs. Lots of think about! Brodie has a running contact and when I got to G7 most of the courses had turns off the dw so I trained him to stop too and its come in really handy. Here is Toad demonstrating his stop at the weekend (wrong end of tunnel after dw) Please excuse the dither by the weaves and the messy handling after the tunnel!
