Lazy Monday

Today I have had the day off work and its been fairly lazy so far... its been really nice not being at work on a manic-Monday, and it would be lovely to do it more often!!  As you can see the dogs have been taking full advantage of my day off... by stealing all the sofa spots!!  There has been a reason for my day off though, as we are having our cavity walls insulated - we've already done the loft ourselves as I've posted about before - but there are government subsidies available, so we took advantage of the deal, and I hope we will start to notice the difference; a little to help the bills, and to help save the environment a little too.

Gardening Time!!

We were due to go to an agility show last weekend, but there was an outbreak of a very serious dog virus further up the country that a young pup had contracted, so we just decided to stay at home instead.  I'm reasonably quite certain there would have been no risk of our dogs being affected, but for the dogs sake - the fact that we have a potential lower immunity in Risk a young ish pup, and Yahoo a dog in his twilight years, and for my own sanity (as I just know I would have been scrutinising the dogs every movement even more than normal) we just decided not to go.

There was more than enough stuff to keep us entertained, we went for a huge walk with some friends and the dogs, and even sat outside a cafe on what was a surprisingly pleasant morning for some well needed breakfast when we got back. Not thinking that was enough excitement for one day, on the way home we started our gardening weekend - we bought two new water butts and dug out a new border for them, and connected them to the garage gutters. Two weekends later they are full to bursting with 380 litres of water, with all the rain we have had!!

We are lucky enough to have a beautiful long garden which we love and the dogs do too, they are always playing in it!! At the very back of it, it is very sheltered from both the wind and rain but along with this shelter, it can suffer a little from less sunshine than the rest of the garden does, not a lot will grow, bushes and hardy trees are better than grass and pretty plants in this case! We have some pretty bamboo on one side which I really like, it is very picturesque and is always green so looks good all year too. Behind that - and on our other day of gardening it was time for some manual labour; digging out the mud/mulch/leaf fall to level it, laying gravel and paving on top, which now houses our wheelbarrows, compost heap and will eventually have a shed too to hold my few bits of agility equipment and our gardening bits - its tidier, and clears space within Alex's garage for his truck toys and boys stuff!! It was a hard days work, especially digging out the earth - though Alex and Kiah found a comfy resting place in the form of our new wheelbarrow - though I'm not sure that's what it was quite designed for!!

Chilly Easter Weekend!!

It was a well looked forward to four day weekend, a lovely relaxing pleasant Friday and with agility booked in for the middle two weekend days - so after a beautiful week the week before, it was slightly typical that the morning of the show was grey, and rainy and actually quite cold. Probably usual weather for March/April but I think the British way is that we're so un-used to getting such lovely weather, we crave it when its here but yet its so disappointing when it goes again. This show is close to home which is great and meant no camping, as much as I enjoy camping it is nice to get home of an evening, especially when its not sunny and warm, to relax properly!!

The first day of the weekend, we had some fab runs which I was really pleased with, a qualifier that unfortunately we messed up - the start was awesome as there was a spread that Kiah turned over safely but really well, and her contacts were great too, but then we unfortunately pulled off a tunnel, she is SO responsive that sometimes she just won't commit to a tunnel properly, more training required on that!! No poles down on that course either, always a good thing too. We did even have a clear too in another run, which I was so pleased with, it was messy as I just couldn't keep up, but so pleased with Kiah - it was a fantastic course set by Mand Pigg, very different to the usual 'pull in/go round' that is quite often seen, but just awesome, an enjoyable challenge, but really let the dogs stretch out.

On the second day, all our three runs came up at once in the mid afternoon, a little frustrating as all three rings were busy at once, but there were some ok courses, so not so bad waiting for! There was a funny (in a good way) tunnels and jumps helter skelter, which was another nice spread out ring, even though after three tunnels in a row, Kiah just couldn't believe we had to do one final one, so there was a couple of refusals on that!! Our best run was in the agility, quite a simple course but some clever traps, set by Andrew Dicker, though unfortunately we just had a pole down around a corner, but pleased with Kiah overall, really listening. At the end of the weekend Alex had even bought me two little gifts - he spoiled Kiah and Risk with new fleece plaited agility leads in their respective purple/lilac and orange/black, I love them!!

Easy Like Sunday Morning

The dogs and I have the house to ourselves for today (well and last night) as Alex and a friend Jason are off on a 'boys day' doing landrover things, it has actually been quite pleasant - I do miss him a lot, but its still nice just to have the odd day of me time. Mind you, not that we have done much, all the boring housey things have to be done like washing, cleaning, tidying, dusting and vacuuming, but there is a small element of 'feel good factor', seeing it nice and tidy when its done!!

This morning was very peaceful though, after getting up to give the dogs their breakfast as their normal routine during the week, I went back to bed - and so did the dogs (on our bed!!) and had a wonderful lie in, just for about an hour and a half but it just felt like I had the BEST nights sleep!! After a shower, I took the three youngsters out for a long walk around the local park/forest, it was nice and quiet as it was still fairly early, so it wasn't too hot either. Its not an easy walk - on purpose - as there are a lot of big hills which we try to 'power walk' up when we do this walk, but its a good feeling when you get to the other side, a bit of an achievement.

So after a quick detour to have a nosey at a new pet shop that has opened up nearby - and buy the dogs a pigs ear each, for later on - it was nice to come and chill for the afternoon too. Its a beautiful sunny and warm evening, the dinner is already on, the house is tidy and the dogs are sleeping... just one person missing - due home soon - but its a pretty good day :)))