I tried my hand at some scentwork with the ginger pair today! Brooke bean has done it before and I was trying to improve her indication which is a nose touch with duration. Bru has only started working on his nose touch so there is a clip at the end of him before my phone died. With both of them I'm trying to stop them using their paws as well as their noses so sometimes I hold off rewarding them until they put their pesky feet on the floor!!
After doing some more weeding (definitely seems never ending!) I went upstairs to do pop master with Matt while we had a cuppa, lets just say we weren't on form today!! Brooke found herself a bit of sun...part cat part sheltie!
I filmed Matt doing some one jump work with Bru at lunchtime so I can edit a video for my Facebook agility group, he was so tired that he got on my lap as soon as I sat down. It looks like I've been sitting around all day but I promise I haven't been!!
Currently the kitchen smells lovely as I have been baking mini egg cookie tray bake! I hope it tastes as good as it smells 😁
I spent the early part of the morning waging war on some weeds and ivy in the garden and also had a surprise phone call from one of my lovely Monday morning clients, it was fantastic to catch up! I really miss seeing all my clients (and their dogs obviously!) and I love hearing how they are getting on with their 'homework'!
Our poor Bay tree has been taken over and it was hard work sorting this lot out!
My faithful little helper always near!
This afternoon Matt took Bru for a solo walk and I took Spark off for a walk to Badgerdell woods which is one of my favourite walks. I have never walked there at bluebell time of year and was like a kid in a sweet shop when I went into the woods! Obviously that meant that poor Sparkalina had to do some serious posing 😂 We will have to go back there with the shelties!
After our walk I went back to attacking the Bay tree pot! I have had to leave some of the Ivy in there but its much better than it was.
My helper was back on hand to help me with the garden! Brooke also did some weave entries so its on my jobs list to edit the clips!
Today was mostly a garden sort of day! That might explain why the blog is late as we are really tired after a busy day! We had a long walk this morning and didn't see many people at all, the sun was out and it was so peaceful apart from a DHL plane flying into Luton airport. This time of year on a Sunday we would be having quite regular planes but its eerily quiet at the moment. I love walking past this tree, it is so pretty
After brekkie we went into the garden and dug over the remaining weedy bit of veg bed and planted some of our runner beans and made wigwams for them to grow up!
My handsome Toad helping!
Shelties in front of the wigwams!
The other job we did was painting the other patio table, it is a smaller table but still took forever. This is what Bru thinks of garden jobs!!
Matt then managed to smash my bowling score!! Such a shame that he didn't get the 12 strikes!
Despite being on lockdown for over three weeks now the death toll is still over 800 people per day which begs the question of whether we went into lockdown soon enough. Over 15000 people have now lost their lives from this awful virus, it is so hard to imagine. On a brighter note, Captain Tom has now raised £23 Million for the NHS!! Although the world is in a crisis at the moment, there is a feeling of everyone pulling together and the little rays of kindness and friendship are so special.
We went off to the farm shop today and managed to get eggs at the extortionate price of £2.25 for six! Only one person in the shop at a time and a socially distanced queue to get in. We then went to Matts Mum to deliver some shopping and driving through town was so weird, the queue for Sainsburys was right along the street again. It was lovely to see Matts mum face to face for a catch up, we are all so cocooned in our own houses at the moment.
Waiting my turn to get into the shop!
So nice to have Toad cuddles on the sofa this evening...unusual!
Somebody was attention seeking as there was no space on the sofa 😂 Spot Bru having a post kong snooze!
No training today but this a video from last weekends jump work, I love watching slow motion jumping! Sorry about the titles, I put them on for my clients to show the different moves.
For the second time in the lockdown Matt is going to brave the shops this evening to get some bits for us and his Mum, only one person is allowed to go shopping but it will be nice to take them over and have a chat over the weekend. My Mum rang me this morning and it was so great to have a proper catch up 😁
Everyone round us clapped to show support for the NHS last night. The man diagonally across was playing his harmonica and the lady two doors down was holding a teeny little terrier puppy (about 9 weeks at a guess?) I took Brodie out with me and he was very confused a to why everyone was cheering him!
I was in the garden this morning sandpapering the second patio table in preparation for painting it. I then got carried away and ended up weeding the patio again! I am loving watching more of my tulips coming up, these are quite dinky and very pretty.
Spark and Bru did some mat work for their running contacts today, Spark got to play with her new toy (Bru has one as well in yellow of course!) She is such an idiot!!
Brooke bean did some weave entries and seemed to have forgotten what they are entirely so out came the clicker and cheese and she got there in the end! Brodie did some hoopers practice...I keep sessions really short for him so this is the whole thing with the rewards edited out! He was struggling on right rear crosses today so I think I need to practice them more.
I had a not productive and fairly sorry for myself morning, my back is hurting a bit (I normally see an osteopath every 5 weeks) and I'm really missing Bracken, work and seeing people. I really have nothing to moan about and I'm generally an optimistic person but the thought of weeks without work is depressing. They are due to announce the extension on the lockdown period today, we are expecting at least another three weeks. On a brighter note and enough to give anyone a kick up the bum...Captain Tom has now raised £14.4 million!! He deserves a knighthood and to meet the Queen after all his efforts! To think that his family thought they wouldn't get to a thousand pounds!
We decided to walk to our local farm shop today at lunchtime with the dogs and when we arrived there was a huge queue so we turned round and walked home! Still it was a nice 50 minute walk and very sunny again. I took some photos last night of our Japanese maples which are coming back to life nicely after winter, I love the shape of the leave and the colours!
The rose on the right is a gift from our friend Helen on Brackens passing, it should be a lovely yellow colour and its called golden memories which is very appropriate. Such a lovely gift ❤
We ate our first garden produce yesterday with in our lentil curry for dinner...beetroot and spinach leaves. Only a few but very tasty!
We have been worried about Mr Toad a bit this week as he seems to be reluctant to drop his head to eat, we found something to put his bowl on and he tucked in better. I'm going to use the biomag on him (although he isn't a fan!) and get him checked over once lockdown is over. I have a feeling someone has been chasing too many birds up the garden...
I have been trying to do one weave session a week with Bru and Spark to keep them ticking over and today we tested weave entries and discrimination. They were mostly very good! Flat entries were weaker for both of them and they are a nemesis for Brooke bean so I'm going to go back to entry work with all three of them
This morning I sat watching the news with my cuppa and they had a story on about Captain Tom Moore who at the age of 99 is walking lengths of his garden to raise money for the NHS to help them tackle Coronavirus. What an inspiring and amazing gentlemen who has already done his 100 lengths so plans to do another 100 before his 100th Birthday at the end of April. I went on his Just Giving page to donate and at that point he had raised 4 MILLION pounds!!! By the time they interviewed him half an hour later it had gone up to 5 million!! I just looked up the link to post it here and it is now at £7.4 million 😁 They also interviewed his local postmaster who was expecting a huge amount of birthday cards for Tom!
Apart from more table scrubbing today I dragged all the dogs balance and fitness stuff outside and did gym circuits with them! I have been bad and not done much for a while so they were really excited about it. It was nice being in the garden as it has been really sunny again today 🌞
Brooke having her turn 💚
Always smiling Bru! 💛
Mr Toad loved a little workout! 💙
Sparkle bear 💜
Spark wears bands on her legs for this as she is like a bull in a china shop!
The other achievement of the day was making a vegan pumpkin cake! I haven't tried it yet but it smells nice and the dogs went mad for the pumpkin so they have frozen pumpkin Kongs made up for later!
And just a little boast post, recording it here as it won't ever happen again!!
