One big update...

Ok, so I've been offline for the past 10 days while we moved house. There's loads happened in that time so I'm going to try and make this update as short as possible!!

I took the Thurs and Fri off work to finish packing stuff up and get ready for moving all the furniture on the Saturday....D-Day! I have to say we are SO incredibly lucky to have such a fantastic group of friends and family who have offered so much help and support in so many ways it's just untrue. I must make special mention of Gemma who had worked like an absolute trooper for the last few weeks, helping with all the packing, cleaning, DIY and decorating on all her days off, I know how precious those days are and your help is greatly appreciated. The move itself went really smoothly with our little army of helpers and Sat evening saw us mostly unpacked and a chance to relax all cosy in front of the open fire in our new lounge (haven't had an open fire for years, it's lovely at this time of year). This really was no mean feat, although we only moved a few miles we did take 15 adult dogs and 17 puppies with us!

The pups were the last thing to move, once we'd got everything set up in the utility room at the new house, here they are at the old house waiting to go....
Lori's litter...

Kitten's litter...


The dogs have settled really well, they now have their own huge 'dog room' in one of the garages that Gem and I have insulated and boarded and painted the floor etc, they have access in and out of here all the times and have loads of room with their toy box, a radio, lots of beds and crates and best still...the tops of the crates are boarded with carpet on top so they have somewhere to sit and look out of the windows! lol I wondered how they might be not sleeping in the main part of the house as they've been used to but our new kitchen is just not big enough to accomodate them all and they seem quite happy in their own 'dog room' and have adapted to the new routine very quickly. I guess one of the advantages of feeding at bedtime is that everyone is always keen to go to bed!! lol There are two large concreted areas, one of which they have access to all the time and a nice grassed area that they can go out and play on (supervised...no hole digging allowed! lol), I will also have some flyball and agility equipment out on this area for training too. There are loads of footpaths close by as well as the canal that has a nice wide towpath for walking down so we have quite a lot of exploring to do! The location is just ideal, we share the lane with only two other houses...the nearest of which is at the farm a couple of hundreds of yards further down...in fact the cows are our nearest neighbours!! lol

Here's the view to the East of the property (taken out of the spare bedroom window)...hello cows!! lol

And this is the view directly out of my bedroom window, to the front of the house

and this is to the West, out of my side bedroom window (yeh..my bedroom is twin aspect, nice huh?)

and this is out the back (from the landing window)

and this is out the back showing the outside of the 'dog room' ...and one lonely puppy...the others were out there too just hiding round the other side of the extension, I promise I didn't shut him out there all by himself! lol (incidentally, this is the puppy that's still looking for his new home)

Sunday we had lots and lots visitors
Here's my nephew Charlie having a cuddle with Drew

and here's my auntie and uncle's cocker, Radley, saying hello to 'Beau'

We basically spent the rest of the week getting the old house cleaned up and painted, tidying up the garden and powerwashing the yard, stables and fence ready for renting it out...if I ever see another paint roller!! Again...loads of help from our wonderful friends and family...total stars! :))

I've also had Lori's puppies leaving this week. Drew was the first to go when Julie braved the weather and came up on Tuesday. Incidentally, while the rest of the country has been snowed in and practically ground to a halt, we've had only a tiny sprinkling of snow and blue skies and sunshine for the bulk of the week. Needless to say, the news bulletins were becoming rather tedious...'will everyone please shut up about the bloody snow!!!!' lol

'Fiddy' (boy 6) was the next to go as Clare and her daughter drove down from Glasgow on Friday. Here's a couple of pics Gemma and I managed to snap of him before he left (still a little damp after his bath but gorgeous nontheless!)...


Bryning Celtic Sea aka 'Fiddy' (Fiddy is short for 'Mufidy' which is a gaelic name meaning 'man of the sea'...nice eh?)

3 more pups left on Saturday...Baxter (boy 1) and the two girls...Flo and Spider (loving that name! lol) and Chance (boy 7) left early Sunday morning for the long journey back down to Essex so we're down to just 3 'til Chico leaves tomorrow...feels very quiet!!

Once Chance had left on Sunday we headed up to Hest Bank Kennels for Teal's agility beginner class. It was outside this week and it was really nice to catch up with everyone from Faith's training group afterwards. Can't wait to get Faith back training after she's had her litter...will be really weird having two dogs to work. Overall I was really pleased with Teal. She was much happier and more confident outdoors and working forward over her dogwalk nicely, she was also jumping her full height (small) with ease making no attempts to duck under at all. She was happily running through a long curved tunnel no probs and did the A-frame and tyre for the first time happily too. I did some 'wait' work with her last night at home. I've never needed to teach her a wait before so she doesn't have one (oops!) but she's picking it up. I also decided to teach Squirrel a 'sit' which took no time at all (she's a smart little cookie that one!) and started them both doing left and right spins. I may start doing a little agility training with Squirrel once she's running reliably in flyball, we'll see. I will get some of my equipment set up at home so I can do more training with Teal over the weekends, will be better when it starts getting lighter in the evenings and we can use that time too.

I think that's about it for the update...a little longer than I'd hoped for...sorry!! lol

It will be another week before I have internet access at home so my postings and replies to e-mails etc might be a bit slow in coming for a little while longer.