Demo's and Rest

Lots of people have kindly asked how Miss Brooke (should that be Mrs Brooke?!) is getting on. She is being a very good patient considering how dull her life must be, despite our best attempts to cheer her up! Her favourite thing is to sofa snuggle with Matthew in the evenings. You can tell its getting colder as Bracken is only interested in laps as a source of heat! 

The older two shelties did a demo for a hospice on Wednesday this week and Sparkle did one for Age Concern on Monday. They really enjoyed showing off their tricks and as ever Brax enjoyed the biscuit crumbs :-) The pic below is the pair of them walking in St Albans squirrel hunting!

At the weekend we ran the ESSC Sheltie Agility show and it was a brilliant success thanks to a few hardcore helpers. It is amazing the number of people who will sit and watch you run backwards and forwards and not lift a finger to help! It is generally the same people that help every year and we are so grateful as otherwise the ring would have ground to a halt. Our dogs really enjoyed having a run! Bracken was brilliant getting a 3rd in 4-7 jumping, a 4th in agility and winning the Best Veteran trophy! Brodie came 3rd in 4-7 jumping and n2nd with his mate Rommy in pairs so a good day all round!

On Tuesday evening I discovered Miss Sparkle had come into season. She had done a lesson on Tuesday morning and ran nicely but she is now on her winter break for a month of not doing agility. She is a terrible flirt so poor Brodie is not getting any peace! Here is a pic from their last day running round the field together.

Mr Toad in lesson on Tuesday-he is just so much fun!!

And this is Sparkle running her last sequence for a while-boo hoo!

Sparklelina goes Gradey 5!!

One of my goals for this year was to finish the season with Sparkle in Grade 5 as its a nice place to be going into next year competing. She isn't consistently going clear enough on the lower grade courses to be Grade 6 yet and we still have work to do on our contacts and weaves over winter. I am pleased with her five runs at Dog Vegas (one agility....see below and four jumpings) In two of her jumpings it was just the weaves that let her down and in one it was wrong end of tunnel that got us E'd. So actually we are getting far less E's which is good! The video below shows her only agility run of the weekend and the refusal and pole were totally my fault for late cues. So happy with her contacts tho!



The other nice thing about being in G5 is that she can have a winter of just doing jumping runs at monthly winter shows to get her used to tackling some 5-7 courses. I have also found a couple of shows where she can do some nfc contacts :-)

Dolly was a good girl at the show getting a 2nd in G4 jumping. Her weaves weren't very confident to start with but got better the more she did. She is so very close to getting her Bronze agility warrant now! My Brodie boy was fabulous, at almost 9 he got a 1st and 2nd in 6-7 agility classes beating some dogs quarter of his age and much taller-he really is a little superstar! The pic above show the lovely trophies we got.

Brooke continues to recover well from her operation and is having her stitches out tomorrow. She is being a perfect little patient and very good about being on rest. Will do a proper Brooke update next time. We have sheltie show coming up this weekend which we are running-eek! Lots of shelties in one place is always great tho and I love watching them compete :-D 

Holiday time and Brooke's operation

We spent last week in Wales on holiday and caught up with my family for my Aunts 70th birthday. It was lovely to see everyone and the cake my Mum had made was amazing! My cousin who is very talented at art had done drawings of the family and my Mum had drawn them onto the cake. My sister had made models to sit on a toy train that went round the edge too :-)

Matts Mum and Dad joined us on the first weekend and we went for a lovely sunny walk

And played some games when my Mum and Amy came over...spot Sparkle snuggling with mu Mum!

Our cottage was lovely and the dog friendly garden got the thumbs up from this lot!

We walked round some beautiful castles

Shelties in an oven!

Sparkle had a thing about looking out of the windows!

Brax with a halo! :-)

Dog friendly cottage was great!

Walking at Dinefwr, such a lovely sunny week!

We drove over the Brecon Beacons-the views were amazing

The weather was nice enough to sit out on the patio-Brooke enjoyed cuddles!

Walking at Ferryside...the jellyfish were disgusting!

But the views were beautiful, all the better for doglets in the picture!

We carried Brooke Bean down to the beach 

And she got to visit my Mum and sister in their holiday cottage for a meal

So when we got back from Wales Brooke had an operation to remove her biceps tendon. Its complicated to explain but she had a lot of calcium deposits in her tendon and despite rest she was still lame. As soon as she exercised again it aggravated the tendon and it flared up again (no blood supply to tendons so no healing) Patrick our vet thought it best to cut the tendon loose as it stops the cycle of inflammation and he explained that dogs don't actually need biceps tendons and can function normally without. We are keeping fingers, toes and paws crossed that she makes a full recovery and can go back to all the things she loves! But first we are in for a long slog of 12-16 weeks cage rest and then very slow careful rehab work. I will post updates on her but if anyone knows/has a dog who has had a biceps tenotomy operation I would love to hear from you!