Lockdown Day 38 - Happy 100th Birthday Captain Tom!

I apologise for the slightly miserable post yesterday, I have felt much more human this morning! Also who couldn't take inspiration from this remarkable man, Captain Tom Moore who turned 100 today!! 🎉🎉🎉

How amazing that on his Birthday he not only is Number 1 in the charts with 'We'll never walk alone' but he has also now raised £30 million for the NHS charities!! The Queen made him a colonel and he got a fly past from a Spitfire over his house as well as being made an honourary member of the England cricket team! The Prime Minister mentioned him in a special speech too!

I haven't done a proper walk today yet as the weather has been atrocious again! The boys had a quick poop outing and I did a bit of conditioning work with them. They are soooo cute together! 

It might happen to be a birthday in the house soon! So I have been brave and experimented with some piping...not up to the wonderful skills of my Mum or very talented friend Julie but I was pleased with how it turned out! I had no icing sugar (none in the shops!) so made do with chocolate! 

I forgot to post this yesterday, I took Spark to the park and she carried her ball all the way there and all the way home! 

Lockdown Day 37 - No motivation!

I can honestly say today that I have had absolutely zero motivation, I've had stomach cramps and felt tired which probably didn't help. Sometimes you just need to read and book and curl up with a sheltie! So although it hasn't been a productive day and I've done nothing useful (which would be fine if Matt wasn't working away upstairs!) I do feel better for taking it easy.

I did a teeny bit of jump work with Spark in the garden this morning, just some easy send ons at full height. I probably do a short bit of jump work with them twice a week but mostly on lower height but occasionally its good for them to jump their competition height. I got these stills from a video

I had a walk this afternoon and managed to miss the rain! Brooke and Toad had a great time on the fields and Brooke was hilarious, she found a 'treasure' and had so much fun playing!

Crazy Bean!!

Here is quite a long video but it made me laugh! She used to pick up all sorted of things as a puppy and carry them around

Lockdown Day 36 - Bru's Birthday!

How is our beautiful little Bru puppy three years old today? 💛💛💛 He was just meant to be, it wasn't the right time for a puppy but sometimes I wonder what we would do without him! He is a cuddly, funny, crazy loving little boy and we love him to bits!

He has had a bit of a rubbish birthday to be honest bless him! Its been raining all day for the first time in weeks. The garden does need it but its cold and grey as well. So far he has had a short walk this morning and played a bit of agility in the garden at lunchtime. It was mainly to finally finish a jump skills video that I've been working on for a while! Here is the finished product below!!

I had a rare outing today to pop into a local village, get a few bits at the shop and drop off a friends birthday present. She had got us this beautiful tribute to Bracken, its on a piece of wood and is gorgeous ❤ Our hearts still ache with missing her so its lovely to have some special reminders.

An unusually deserted High Street! Co-op was letting in 8 people max at a time and had shields up for the cashiers.

Bru has spent much of the day snoozing with his Auntie Bean!

This afternoon I made some ginger cookies, they are chewy and very moreish! 

 My little helper watching me baking! He has been doing his hind end awareness exercises and looks forward to the extra bits of kibble that he gets!

Lockdown Day 35 - Impulse control!

News from the world outside today is that Boris is back from his time off with Coronavirus and trying to keep everyone calm as there is mounting frustration about our current lockdown situation and lack of exit strategy from the government. I wrote Impulse control as the title as I was meaning the dogs but some people need some training as well! Some countries such as Spain and Italy have started opening up a few shops and construction sites but they were locked down far more securely than us in the first place. In fact if you didn't own a dog then your had to have a pass to go off your property and even if you did have a dog you could only walk 50m from your home! Its looking at the moment that the 7th May is going to be when we find out what is going on and maybe I'll get the chance to return to work then...fingers crossed!

So taking that into account I thought that I should do some impulse control work with the dogs! Toad is a great stooge dog as he isnt too barky and exciting when he works. Bru had to stay on his piece of vetbed while Brodie did a few bits. He struggled to begin with but by building it up slowly Bru could stay on his bed while Brodie did the whole circuit! 

When I said yesterday that my blog had been going for over a decade I thought I'd have a look back and see what we were up to ten years ago. Such happy memories! We were up in Scotland competing at the Kindgom of Fife show when it was outside St Andrews (where we met at Uni!) It was little Brackens first show as a Grade 7 and Brodie's first at a Grade 4 and he won into Grade 5! This is Brax sitting with Ava the merle and Ellie who is Brodies half sister. Three small but perfect girlies ❤

Lockdown Day 34 - Camera

We have had a very nice lazy day! After Matt cutting the lawn yesterday and me washing my jumps we decided that it was a perfect sunny day to take some action photos of the doglets in the garden. A few of you may know that Sparkle has a paralysing fear of cameras, both the sight and sound of them and we have managed to work through a lot of her issues but still a way to go. She was funny as when Matt got his camera out she immediately went to nose touch it which is what I was teaching her last time...good memory Sparkalina!

I worked them one at a time while Matt took pics so hopefully we'll be able to sort through and post some on here soon! This is the whole gang waiting for their turn in front of the camera! 

This afternoon we played an online pub quiz with Matts Mum! Thanks to my lovely Mum and super sister who have been playing on thursday evenings and we joined in this week (I had already blogged on thursday so forgot to mention it!) We are looking forward to playing with them again this week and potentially doing it as a zoom call! Love a pub quiz! 😁🍻

On a random note (and because this blog has basically existed for a decade as my diary) I wanted to post this photo of Toad, he has been standing quite 'under himself' this week and I'm worried that despite his decent walks (mostly an hour a day plus) he has been losing some condition around his back end. I would usually see my great vet physio but that isn't possible due to Coronavirus so I have decided to try doing some little hind end exercises each day to see if it helps.

So the first thing today was standing back feet on something which he is used to but I was surprised how unsure he seemed about stepping up so tomorrow I'll use something wider and lower.

Lockdown Day 33 - Long walkies

We have been making the most of the beautiful weather and doing some long evening walks. This was the sofa last night after our time in the garden and long walk yesterday! 

It was round two of painting chairs today, they are all done now and look much better!

Matt also cut the lawn while I washed my jump wings, all looks much smarter now!

This afternoon we had a lovely long walk, we went out for an hour and the doglets had a really good race around. It was nice and sunny again!

We also managed to pick up some free pots from someones driveway

And this evenings sofa snugglers! Cute Mr and Mr Toad 💕

Lockdown Day 32 - Sunburn!

I painted the patio chairs today and manged to get sunburn on my leg! It wasn't supposed to be as hot today but it must have been. I managed to do one coat on all of the chairs and it seemed to take forever! However it was peaceful and the doglets all slept in the garden while I was painting. I have had a couple more flowers appear and they are so pretty!

At lunchtime we did some agility as hadn't done any for a while, the gingers did weaves entries and Spark did some verbal work for a video I'm editing for J9...here is a clip

Mid chair painting, two down and two to go!

Spark got to come out and clap for the NHS last night, she was very confused about why no one was talking to her...I was trying to take her photo mid wiggle! 

On our walk today...just to prove my legs were out in public!!

Bean being the leader! 

Lockdown Day 31 - Van

As I write this they have just announced on the news that they are doing the first human trials on a Coronavirus vaccine this afternoon, sounds great but from my memory of molecular biology and viruses, it will be a loooong time yet until a vaccine will be widely available. Sadly now 18,738 people have lost their lives in hospital, that doesn't even take into account deaths in care homes and the community 😔 Both the chief medical officer and Nicola Sturgeon (aka 'the chipmunk'!) have both said that its unlikely that we will be returning to normal anytime this year. Looks like agility shows will be off the cards for a long time yet. I feel I need to write this down so I can look back and be so grateful when we can finally meet up and go out with family and friends! Who knew in January that life would be so weird.

Today has been a better Thursday, I had to take my van to the garage as it had a recall on its seatbelt but it was a great excuse to walk home from the garage and walk back to pick up the van. I took Spark with me in the morning and she had a great time...including going bonkers and running through the crop of oilseed rape!

Here are some pics from our morning walk, we did the boring road bit first

Crazy face!! 

The woods behind our house have lovely bluebells in as well so couldn't resist some more pics!

I spent most of the day in the garden sandpapering the chairs, weeding and potting out some tomatoes

I swear that Brooke is half cat...she has been following the sun round the room today! She had a special walk at lunchtime as the walk to the garage is a really busy one and she gets quite worried by off lead dogs running at her.

So I did the same walk in reverse in the afternoon with the boys and it was really hot so we were glad to be in the woods for a while!

It was hot in the sun though!

The boring road bit...almost there!

We arrived!

When i got in the van it was covered in plastic everywhere which was really sensible, it was reading 28 degrees!! Nice to be home and in the cool!

I forgot to post this yesterday but I better put it on here as it probably wont happen again! Matt managed to get a perfect score at bowling 😂