A slightly odd and eventful week

My busy day off proved to be the start of a rather odd and eventful week since my mum was on holiday and on the Tuesday night I had headed off to bed and, unusually, I completely shut my bedroom door to stop the dogs from opening it during the night. Perhaps more unusually I hadn’t taken my laptop to bed with me since I was so tired and intended to go straight to sleep, nor my mobile phone. When I decided I needed a glass of water just before going to sleep and went to open the door I had a terrible shock…the handle had broken so I couldn’t get out! I tried for about an hour with various implements made out of coat hangers and the such like but to no avail so decided I would just go to sleep and look out for the postman in the morning and try to catch his attention. I woke early (not surprisingly) and sat by the window looking out for the postman. I should just point out here that we live in a totally detached farmhouse down a small private lane that we share only with a church and another farm.

view from my bedroom, church...

farm...

as you can see, not a great location when you want to catch someone's attention!

Someone drove past on a quad bike around 7.30am to feed the heifers at the top of the road but I had no hope of being heard above the engine. At about 10am the postman went past, he always goes to the farm first and stops at our gates on the way back to the main road where we have a post box, but….he never stopped, we had no post! I did contemplate climbing out of the window but it’s quite a long way down and I had visions of me falling and breaking something and lying there for hours instead! I was most concerned about what my boss was thinking about the fact I just hadn’t turned up for work! To cut a long story short (ish), my mum arrived back off holiday around 7pm and let me out so I had been trapped in the room for 20 hours with no way to contact anyone, no TV, nothing to drink and no toilet…as you can imagine…I was very glad to see her! Fortunately most of the dogs had been in the utility room with access in and out of the house, the few that were in the house had been camped outside my door, probably wondering why the hell I wasn’t coming to let them out and give them their breakfast! There was just a single pee on the landing, they had stayed clean that whole time…good doggies :o) Needless to say, I shan’t ever be closing a bedroom door again!

Saturday morning Spark and I headed over to Darlington Champ show by ourselves while some of the flyball team headed down to Norfolk Park for the tournament taking place over the weekend, taking Travis, Ethan and Dottie with them. Travis was joining the Water Orton Extreme team in starters and Ethan and Dottie were running in the Pawz. I was going to travel straight down from Newby Hall to camp overnight and run in the other two teams on the Sunday.

Well, in typical fashion things didn’t run quite according to plan. I decided to get up early and bath Spark on the morning of the show, judging started at 9.30am, we weren’t in until Limit Dog and the venue is less than 2 hours from us so I reckoned we needed to leave around 8.30am. Best laid plans and all that! Well, we left on time but as I got a couple of miles down the road I realised I’d forgotten to pick up any bait so quickly decided to stop at the village post office and buy something suitable rather than turn around (first mistake!), I bought a packet of cooked ham and as I came back to the van noticed an elderly man standing at the side of the road beckoning me so I went to see what he wanted. Apparently he was waiting for a bus which hadn’t turned up and wondered whether I might give him a lift into town…well, what could I do?! Of course I’d packed the van for both the show and flyball with all my camping gear too so had thrown a load of stuff on the front seats which I had to move into the back before I could get this chap in, I duly drove him into town (in the opposite direction to where I needed to go) and he was a really nice guy, he was 99…and a bit and I was really amazed by the fact he was still getting the bus into town to be honest! He was a little deaf but bright and chatty and extremely spritely for his years (getting in and out of my van is no easy task!). I did have to smile at the ‘and a bit’ and wondered at what age you started adding the ‘and a bit’ when people asked your age again like you did as a child, I remember proudly telling people ‘I’m 7 and 3 quarters’ but am not so keen on ‘33 and a half’ nowadays lol

The route from Preston to Thirsk along the A59 is a pleasant and scenic one, but not when you’re running very very late! I recalled that the entries at this show weren’t very big so the class sizes may be smaller then usual and therefore judging going a lot quicker. I was right! We arrived around 11am and I just grabbed all my bags and ran to the entrance to hand over my pass where Spark promptly did an enormous poo! The lady on the gate kindly offered to hold him while I picked it up then we dashed to the benching area where I grabbed the first border collie person I saw and asked ‘what class is she on?’ to be told ‘Limit has just gone in’…panic! Drop all my bags and run to the ring and guess what? The bloody ham was on the dashboard in the van so no bait!! I can’t say he showed himself off to his best but he certainly didn’t go badly…we didn’t get placed but having watched the rest of the judging I’m not that surprised. It would be unfair to comment any further on the quality of the judging since others obviously placed well and I was pleased for them but I shan’t be entering any dogs under that judge again. Since I only had one dog with me (very unusual) I had entered him in the Any Variety Open Stakes class too, we’ve never entered a stakes class before but thought we’d give it a go. My friend Jackie had also entered with her Cruise son Drift, his mother is also the litter sister to my Mercy, he’s a lovely dog that has done a lot of winning and has a ticket. So we headed over the Any Variety ring and as we were waiting to go in a couple walked past with a rough collie and the lady pointed at Spark and turned to her husband and said ‘oh John, look at the lovely merling on that AUSSIE’…I think my face must have said it all because she seemed to instantly realise she’d made a faux pas when she caught my eye and I seethed ‘he’s a border collie’, she was very apologetic and made some feeble excuse about nor being used to seeing them with so much bone or coat but the fact is, she just looked at his colour and assumed. I started to worry slightly that the judge might do the same and glance him over and think ‘what a terrible looking Aussie’ lol Anyway, we headed into the ring first with Jackie and Drift behind us and joined by an assortment of Malamutes, huskies, Aussies, Rough Collies, Old English, Boxers etc I was really pleased with the way Spark went in this class (now I had stolen some sausage from Audrey!), he moved really nicely and was attentive and keen in the free stand. Drift also went really well so I wasn’t at all surprised when the judge picked him out first but kinda expected Spark wouldn’t get placed too but she picked him out 2nd so the border collies did a clean sweep…woo hoo! We also actually won money for this class, £10 to pay for that night’s takeaway anyway, clever Spark :o) All in all the border collies had a great showing at Darlington, winning Pastoral Group 1, Veteran Group 1, RCC stakes, AV Open Dog and AV Open Bitch and all that from a relatively small overall entry of 139 dogs. We had a nice day out anyway.

A few pics of friends dogs, none of Spark since I was on my own so had no-one to operate the camera while we were in the ring...sorry!
The aforementioned Drift, Locheil Stand and Deliver at Sandmont, he is a half brother to my Kitten and a nephew of Mercy


Jazz, Locheil Black Label at Sandmont, a half brother to my Ethan on his mothers' side and Dazzle, Dottie and Eabha through their father Bond


Diva, Borderbrook I'm the Diva, she is also a half sister to Kitten and Drift, pretty girl :o)




I’ll do a flyball update in another post but my eventful week was rounded off when on the Monday morning I was driving to work and the side door fell off my van as I was going round a roundabout!
oh dear!

This may sound a little random but I badly damaged this door a number of years ago while we were camping on Anglesey so I'm suprised it's survived this long to be honest! A week in the body shop and a big bill later and I got it back, good as new and sparkly clean too (for the first time in a long time! lol)