New Arrivals

Tuesday morning I woke up and could hardly move, the trip to Batleys on my way home from work for our fortnightly dog food shop had taken it’s toll and my back was agony again (shifting 9 sacks of dog food probably not the best thing for a bad back!). I struggled to get showered and dressed and get the dogs sorted by which time it was 10am, I rang work and told them I wasn’t going to make it in and went and laid back out with a bolster cushion under my back until the pain killers started to take effect then went and let the dogs out for a run for 20 mins (all the standing around in the wild wind I could manage) and shut them back in the yard with roast bones to keep them busy. When I went back in the house I found Dottie in the whelping pen digging furiously….hmmm…puppies on the way it would seem! At least she’d already had her ‘pre-whelp groom and trim’ so was nice and neat and ready to go! Normally I hate the hanging around waiting for a bitch to whelp but on this occasion laying on my bed all afternoon/evening was a godsend! lol

The first pup arrived just before 11pm, she was pushing and pushing and obviously struggling so I took a look to find 2 enormous fat feet protruding, they looked quite dark and I feared the pup may be dead (paranoid after her first litter!), he was coming backwards so I hooked his tail out and gently pulled down while Dottie continued to push…he was fairly firmly wedged but we managed to get back end, abdomen and chest out in one push and he started to wriggle (much to my relief!), another strong push and the rest of him came, a flashy black dog with a dot on his head just like mum! As he dried I realized he wasn’t quite black and looks to be a seal/white, darker than Wren when she was born but we’ll see how he develops.

The rest came quite easily, I had to just keep an eye on her as she’s quite enthusiastic over the chewing down of umbilical cords so a couple I had to tie off and trim down with sterile scissors to get her to leave them alone.

We finished up with 4 boys (2 seal, 2 blue) and 3 black girls. We will wait and see whether any of the girls develop tan points, there are no clearly defined points at the moment but paler areas under the tail, sometimes this can fade and other times it will develop…we’ll just have to wait and see.

There are individual pup pics on the website Current Litter page.

We have a couple of weeks to enjoy this brood before Dazzle’s arrive, she’s starting to show quite nicely now and Lexie is day 40 today so starts her panacur worming regime and a step up in her feeding, just 3 weeks before she is due so we’re going to be very busy in November!

(this was written a week ago it's just taken me that long to get around to posting...sorry!)

NWBCC...bit of a damp squib :(

We got home after 9pm on Saturday and were just so exhausted we crashed out and did nothing. I waited for Heather, Audrey and Sharon to arrive and we all went straight We got home after 9pm on Saturday and were just so exhausted we crashed out and did nothing. I waited for Heather, Audrey and Sharon to arrive (around midnight!) and we all went straight to bed in preparation for the busy day ahead at North West Border Collie Club Champ show. Those 3 left early to get to the venue when the show opened but we didn’t have any dogs bathed so Drew did them all in the morning with a quick blow dry and then left home just after 9.30, judging started at 10.00am with the bitches so Mouse was first in. My fears were confirmed and she found the stinky floor in the equestrian centre irresistible and would not get her nose up off it to move, I am despairing with that dog! When I came out of the ring someone said they had thought she was lame and a quick trot up and down did reveal a slight hop on her left hind. I asked Anna Fox, who was there showing but also happens to be a McTimoney Corley practioner, to have a look over her and after a thorough ‘once over’ she was declared to be perfectly ok but likely suffering some soft tissue injury, not suprising the way she throws herself about! Rest for her…that should be fun!

Next in was Fynn who moved really nicely but just would not stand! Too much ‘sit’ training me thinks, he placed 4th (again) but tbh, the less I say about the dog judging the better I think, suffice to say that I shan’t be entering under that judge again that’s for sure. I was pleased with the way everyone else went… especially Vi and Fi who haven’t been in the ring for a year and both went really nicely, neither were placed though 

No pics I’m afraid, I just wasn’t in the mood and it was so dark and damp I think we’d have struggled to get any decent ones anyway!

I really wished I hadn’t bothered tbh, especially since the standing around in a freezing equestrian centre for 5 hours really didn’t help my poor back! The only consolation was the 10 min drive home, I really felt for those that had travelled a long way to experience some pretty bad judging. I just got home and climbed into bed…to warm up and rest my poor throbbing spine. After a couple of hours I was feeling better and decided I needed to get moving so set up the whelping pen in my bedroom and gathered all the necessaries (towels, newspapers, extra vet bed etc) in preparation for Dottie’s pups arriving, she was due Wednesday to the first mating but had been mated twice 6 days apart so I was expecting the pups any time over the next week.

Rotherham Flyball - ending the season on a positive :)

Well, it was a cold and miserable weekend, not least because I was suffering with a terrible bad back. It’s not so much the pain that was getting me down but the fact I couldn’t easily do all the things I wanted to! Saturday was actually a beautiful crisp, sunny day but involved a 5.30am start to get all the dogs up and sorted before we left for Rotherham, I also had 3 cocker pups to take with us that were leaving for their new homes but we had the van packed and left for 7am (a little later than planned) and headed off for the scenic journey over Woodhead pass. We made good time which was lucky because they started racing 5 mins early and we were second race in Division One with the Speed Demonz, the only team we had entered. We were 6th seed out of 7 teams on a seed time of 17.90, top seed being the Live Wires on 16.96, nearly a second faster, we expected a drubbing! I had been a little undecided who to run in the absence of Dottie or Lexie (both in whelp) so we ended up with 6 dogs named…Dylan, Bailey, Teal, Faith, Ethan, Mac. The first 3 were our set line up and we’d try each of the other 3 and see how we got on. We started with Mac but I soon put him away, he just doesn’t run all that well over 8” and Ethan and Faith seemed to be running better. Of course, they both have the ‘turning the wrong way in the opposite lane’ syndrome but fortunately in different lanes so I just alternated them in and out with each other depending on what lane we were in. Dylan was back on top ‘pre-injury’ form running consistent low 4 seconds and everyone else seemed pretty fired up too. We did better than expected and beat both Dolphins and Cheshire Set but stupidly lost against Moltens (yep…you guessed it…lights!), this put us 5th so we exceeded expectation but we also ran a new seasons best…in the last leg of the last race of our last tournament for the year! 17.71 which consisted of a perfect rolling start, 4.12 from both Dylan and Bailey, 4.57 from Faith and 4.90 from Teal. Ethan was also running 4.5’s which is pretty damn good for him, maybe we’re finally starting to see his potential coming through. This gives us a nice base to start working on over winter, we know Fi can run 4.2’s over 8” so she definitely has more to give, I’m sure Dyl and Bai will shave a little more time off as they get used to running the lower height too and Teal…who knows…we can but try! I am toying with the idea of trying out a flat fronted box over winter to see if that brings any benefits. I’m conscious of not wanting to fix what ‘aint broke since most of our dogs have a decent box technique but I am told that a good box turn on a boomerang should hold up on a flat fronted box too, we’ll see.

The cocker babies all left with no problems…Tally (Bryning Totally Trouble) has gone to Ellen from Cambridgeshire Canines

and Charlie (Bryning Brock) has gone to Hannah from Ready2Fly

...so hopefully we’ll see both out on the flyball circuit next year. Bracken (Bryning Bracken) has gone up to Co. Durham. It’s very quiet at home now with just Ziva and Tarka and will be more so next weekend when Ziva leaves us to go to her new home in Northern Ireland.

We also saw Jude (Bryning Crazy Talk) from Ethan and Dottie's litter and what a handsome boy he's turned into...

the joy of puppies! :)

Well, not a lot happening in the last couple of weeks. We had a couple of birthdays…Faith and Dylan turned 3 (which meant it was also my brother and sister-in-laws wedding anniversary and I still managed to forget!) and Spud turned 9.

Spud is my little choc tri working sheepdog, he’s a very funny character and was like an old man from the day I brought him home at 6 weeks old so I guess he is gradually ageing into himself. He was diagnosed with an additional and malformed vertebra in his spine as a puppy and with arthritis in his elbows and then his wrists a few years later so he’s always been a bit ‘special’ and limited in what he could. He took what felt like an eternity to train but turned out to be not a bad little obedience dog and was a pretty good little flyball dog in his youth too; still running sub 5 secs up ‘til last season and having the occasional run out in starters this year but he’s slowed dramatically in the last 18 months so I took the decision to retire him completely. He had his last run out in starters at Rotherham back in July and hasn’t run since. He is however still playing a very active role at home as ‘Nanny Spud’…I wouldn’t like to guess the number of pups he has played Nanny to over the past 9 years, he is supremely patient with all our litters and the pups we’ve brought in, he’s playful and caring with them but a good gentle disciplinarian too. Everyone loves Spud and he is greeted every morning by an excited flurry of frantic licks by all the girls and youngsters which he patiently puts up with (bless him).

Last weekend also saw visits from Susan Owen and her husband who have Mouse’s litter brother Jeep, they were over visiting the UK from their home in Oklahoma, we spent a lovely hour or so with them being harassed by Mouse, Faith and granny Lexie for fusses and cuddles….what a soppy lot! Gemma also came up to collect Fynn …hurrah…peace and quiet at last!! lol He is of course quiet and lovely now he’s gone there! More time and attention is all he needed and now he has it which is great. We snapped a few pics of Faith, Lex, Ethan and (a very pregnant looking) Dottie too for a friend who has written an article featuring show bred dogs that are competing successfully in flyball and wanted a pic of the four of them to go with it. Why is it you can’t ever get a pic with everyone looking good at the same time?? These are the best three from the 44 we took in total!! (don’t you just love digital cameras?!)



Sunday Gem and I travelled down to Mansfield to bring the cocker puppies home, we spent a nice hour or so with Julie (Trevellis Border Collies) before loading the babies up and bringing them all back up here. James and Keeley (and of course Maizy) have done a great job, 5 happy, outgoing little monsters! They were 6 weeks old on Monday and I’d forgotten quite how mental 6 week old cocker puppies are! Here’s their first foray out into the garden at our house…

Cocker pups at 6 weeks old
They start to leave this weekend so we only have a week of them all together. I’m not sure if I’m happy or sad about that?? lol Although I had decided not to keep one of these after getting Travis (their half brother), I weakened and we’re keeping Tarka, Bryning Riverine…she’s bonkers!! (reminds me so much of grandad Drake!!)

‘Brock’ is still to find his perfect home, he’s going to be a very unusual dog, it doesn’t look as though he’s going to roan up so he will likely remain open marked white and black with light flecking and tan points…this is pretty rare (well I’ve never seen one before!).

This weekend we’re at Rotherham on Saturday, competing in what will likely be our last tournament of the year and at NWBCC Champ show on Sunday which is really local to us (great!). I will also start preparing the whelping pen in my bedroom in preparation for Dottie who is due next week (to her first mating)…fingers crossed all goes well with that, she’s quite big and very unhappy and restless already (I’m not getting much sleep with her night time fidgeting!). I’m still not sure about Dazzle ; I think she probably is in whelp but she’s very good at hiding it (like her mother before her!); Lexie is definitely in whelp though and starting to show quite clearly, her more slender frame and considerably less coat make it impossible for her to hide!

Lune Valley and Becketts Farm

Saturday was another ‘day off’ but turned out to be another busy one. Why is it that my supposedly relaxed days always seem to find me rushing from one place to another? Anyway, we went down to Manchester first thing and took Faith to see my friend Katherine who is a McTimoney Chiropracter to have her checked over. It was a few weeks back we’d competed at Acremead and I noticed Faith was struggling to run under 5secs (she’s usually around 4.3-4.4) we’d also done some agility training and she’d refused to jump full height so there was obviously something wrong despite no obvious signs of lameness. I decided to get her checked over before running her at Becketts on Sunday and I’m really glad I did because it transpired she’d suffered a hamstring tear and had quite a build up of scar tissue on her right hind leg as a result (cue me feeling really bad), no flyball for Faith…lead walks and hamstring stretches prescribed. We’re not doing very well with these, she’s resisting the push forward and I don’t know if this is because it’s just very uncomfortable or just Fi being her usual stubborn self?! Lol I’m going to see about taking her for some hydrotherapy.

Anyway, we then headed back home, popping in to see Paul and Alison and Nico to see if they fancied coming along to Myerscough to watch some of the agility. I thought it might be a good way to break Nico into the noise and activity at a flyball show since Agility tends to be less noisy and manic so a good transition. Luckily he absolutely loved it and didn’t want to go home :) Hopefully he’ll enjoy watching Dylan run at Rotherham in a couple of weeks. Had a nice afternoon watching lots of runs and catching up with folk. I was slightly peeved I hadn’t entered my girls (although Fi couldn’t have run anyway) since there were no weaves and the small G1-4 agility looked like something Teal and I could have tackled. I have bitten the bullet and entered Wilmslow at the end of next month. Now we just need to get Fi back fit and get some training in! Sparks’ brother, the lovely Max (Bryning Bright Star) and Sharon were back running now she’s out of plaster, only 2 clear rounds but both saw them with trophies, a 2nd in G3 jumping (losing by 0.02s!) and a 3rd in G3 agility…clever boy! :)

We left Myerscough and headed over to Clitheroe to meet Steve and Bridget who were at a wedding reception, we went to collect Orlaith with the intention of mating her but unfortunately it was too late and we’ve missed her season, better luck next time (which won’t be that far off she has such a short cycle!). We did stop and have tea at the Calf’s Head at Worston, I don’t know about being in a recession, the place was absolutely heaving! We then went home, fed everyone and got changed and went round to Paul and Alisons for drinks and X-factor. Very sensibly though we didn’t stay out late since we had the early start for Becketts in the morning.

Up bright and early on Sunday to get everyone out and loaded up for Becketts, I decided to leave Travis and Wesley at home since Trav had a dicky tummy and I didn’t want him crated in the van for long periods. I do need to get some new piccies of the pair of them though. We arrived for the start of racing at 9am and were ring party first thing, this wasn’t too bad, the weather was kind, bright and sunny but it was rather nippy. Next we were in Division 6 with the only team we’d entered, Demon Pawz. I did feel a bit bad because we were already top seed by quite a margin (about 0.4s) but since entering the team Gemma had decided to come and wanted to run Bailey so I knew we were going to run quite a bit faster (Bailey is probably 0.75-1.00sec faster than Pip who he was replacing)…we ended up running 18.51 with Paul from Cheshire Set still telling us off for not tightening up! That’s the Pawz seed time well and truly blown! We ran Mac - Bailey - Teal - Ethan. Genna from Alpha Dogz kindly ran Eth and Amanda boxloaded for us and I have to say…Ethan ran really well and he even managed to consistently turn left all day, regardless of what lane he was in. I actually think this is because we were so much faster than the opposition so he was always well ahead of their last dog going in…there was nothing to look at in the other lane! I will have a think about how we might use this to train him out of his ‘nosey beak’ box tendencies! The last race of the day was rather sad as we ran Drake in place of Ethan. These 3 legs will likely be his last as a Demon Dog, he went to his new home straight from the tournament so it’s just a case of seeing how he settles but I don’t forsee any problems to be honest. We will miss the mad little buggar, he’s such a loveable character but I think he’ll be much happier in a home where he gets more one-to-one. What was quite interesting was that in that last race where both Teal and Drake were running, she dropped to running 5.2’s despite having been under 5.0secs for the rest of the day, I knew as soon as we went in the ring that her focus was not there, they really do not run well together! I must say she did look rather lonely curled up in the back of her crate without him on the way home bless her, she’ll soon have Travis coming everywhere with us to keep her company though.

Fynn and Lola both had their rabies vaccinations at the show, the first step in getting their passports so that they can travel to the Euros next year, fingers crossed they’ll both be up and running by then! I haven’t had any dogs done this year, anyone who’s likely to come with us is already passported thankfully!

I managed to take photos of other peoples’ dogs and videos of other teams but nothing of ours…sorry!

This is Bentley who runs with Molten, aka Littlethorn Bentley, he’s another son of Tally (Sh CH Littlethorn Contintental) and is a super little flyball dog. I’m hoping for something similar from our expected Tally-Lexie litter…fingers crossed!

So that was the weekend, next weekend we have visitors from the US (the people who own Jeep, from Rico and Faith’s litter) and I will be travelling down to Mansfield to bring the cocker puppies home, am just awaiting confirmation from the KC that their names have been accepted (2nd attempt, these new naming rules are proving a bit of a nightmare!); hopefully we will find the little boy the perfect new home in the next couple of weeks too. I think he’s just lovely :)

The Next Generation...

The latest crop of Bryning Agility dogs are up and coming. The Bond-Lori and Rhett-Quinn pups have turned 18 months old in the last month and are set to make their debuts in the agility rings, however Surf thought better of it and decided to come in season! Brother Chief made his debut at the weekend though, he got lots of ‘nearly’ runs with just 5f and a clear in Grade 3 jumping with a 5th place :)

Some pics of Chief…lovely jumping style…very like big sis Teal.


Pics by Action Replay Photography

Diesel is also going great guns

Pic by Giruff

You can read all about D's training and progress on the Giruff Blog

Not much to report...

Haven't done a posting for a couple of weeks but haven't really had much to report, we had a weekend off at the end of September so I spent it doing ‘normal’ things for a change…hairdressers, shopping and lunch out with my mum, family round for Sunday lunch and a bit of DIY and gardening…how very civilized! lol

I have finally secured the fence between us and the cows so no more jaunts for Spark et al out under the netting and into the field to roll in cow shit! The cows found my fencing very interesting and decided to assist by licking my hair and just generally being very annoying!! lol Squirrel has decided that now she can’t squeeze under the fence and run gaily around the cows (who just stand and stare at her rather bemused) that she will stand at the fence and bark at them instead…oooh…BAD parson!! This does of course also now mean that I can let dogs out into the main garden without having to be supervised which is much much better, they love having the space and freedom to really run around like wild things playing their chasing games and will soon wear each other out! Going for a run in the fields just doesn’t seem to cut it when they’re used to being away at the weekends and I do tend to find that we get a lot of loitering around the back of the van with hopeful glances every time I walk past. It’s funny because they get as much, if not more, exercise when at home but it seems they miss the mental stimulation/excitement of our weekend trips.

Dazzle had a bath and good groom on Sunday morning, she has more coat than any bitch I’ve ever known and it’s like a soft sponge that soaks up every bit of dirt and moisture! It’s a shame because it does actually limit how much I show her (i.e. very little), aside from keeping her in a box or her permanently wearing one of those all in one suits I don’t think there’s any way of keeping her coat in the sort of condition required for the showring. Thankfully Spark has inherited the harsher texture from Ethan and doesn’t require quite so much work!

Fynn also had a bath, he’s at that funny ‘in between’ age, 9 months old…not quite an adult yet but not really a puppy either. He’s an absolute pillock, very boisterous and bouncy…in fact he’s just a bigger, stronger version of Kitten! He’s shaping up quite nicely, just needs to mature and ‘tighten up’ a bit, he actually reminds me very much of Kitten’s brother and his namesake…Finn, Locheil Finnishing First who lives out in Hungary. Fynn will be going to live with Gemma and I’m hoping the one-to-one will do him some good. Hopefully he’ll be trained up for flyball and also attend a few shows in the future.

Dottie is starting to show signs of her pregnancy now and has gone onto 2 meals a day and started her daily panacur treatment, I just wish she would learn to slow down and take a bit more care of herself. Some bitches seem to instinctively do this when they’re in whelp, like a self preservation thing but not Dottie…she still tears around like a wild child, I think I’m going to have to separate her from the others and force her to stop; she whelped 5 days early with her last litter and 3 of the 9 pups she produced were stillborn, I can’t help wondering if this had something to do with her behaviour and am obviously keen not to have a repeat of this.

We were at Lune agility show (just spectating) and flyballing at Becketts Farm this weekend, I'll post an update on that later.