A rare weekend off (#1)

We weren't competing anywhere over the 18th/19th July so had a ‘quiet’ weekend at home which turned out not to be that quiet really, it was my nephew, Richard’s 21st so I spent most of the day Sat trying to find his birthday present as well as taking all the dogs down to the beach for a good run and visiting my gran who’s recently had a detached retina repaired so is having to spend long periods of the day lying still (anyone who knows my gran will know this is very hard for her!) and I still didn’t get half the jobs I wanted to do done! Where does the time go?

Sunday the weather was pretty miserable but since Drew was over for the weekend I had arranged to go training with his team over in Rotherham, we were late leaving not knowing what the weather was going to be like but after driving through horrendous downpours over the pennines we arrived to blue skies and sunshine. I just trained Drake, Mac and Squirrel. Drake did some runs with a cone in front of the box to encourage the 4 paw turn (which he does anyway) but it was more about him just having fun and keeping him happy to keep his enjoyment levels up. Mac ran really well (especially since we were using a flat fronted Canadian box that he’s never run on before), we were using him as a ‘stooge dog’ for one in the other lane that eyes and runs over. Mac is good at this job because he’s quite a big dog and not easily intimidated but is actually quite oblivious of what the dog in the other lane is doing…100% bombproof! He is however having some trouble with an infected dew claw on the foot he had the lump removed from; something that seems to have been caused by the dressing (there’s always something isn’t there?!). On top of this Gemma had taken Bailey for his stitches out on Monday, all looked fine but as he left the vets surgery the wound split open again! Straight back in and staples this time, it’s touch and go whether he’ll be running at Eastham now (wah!). Squirrel was fantastic, we ran her for the first time without netting or wings and she was great, totally focused and never ran out once…maybe she will make a flyball dog after all!!