A well earned rest...

So, after a weekend of lovely dry weather I woke up last Monday morning to another beautiful sunny day; I had booked Thursday and Friday off work so that I would be able to spend a couple of days at Crufts, as it happened that ended up being impossible because my mum went away so I had no-one home to look after the dogs so we could only go for the day but I decided to ring my boss and see if I could take the whole week off and he agreed that would be fine…yippee!! A chance to catch up with all those little jobs I wanted to do but hadn’t got round to and spend some more time with the dogs and make the most of the good weather we were finally having! Monday afternoon I popped round to see a friend and we went for a walk up Beacon Fell. I just decided to take my current competing flyball dogs for the extra walk in an attempt to get them a little fitter after our enforced winter layoff due to the terrible weather we’ve been having. We were out for an hour or so and walked through the trees and over the top to the trig point where we could enjoy the views.

Here’s a couple of pics...


...there are more here

Tuesday I had a day of catching up on chores, so while out doing all the shopping for me and the dogs I decided to take five of them round Cuerden Valley Park ; this is over in the direction of Batleys (where we get all our dog food from) and there is direct access into the park from Asda carpark which is rather handy! I often take the dogs here at lunchtime when they’ve come to work with me as it’s not far from the office. We did a nice long circular walk across fields, through trees and around the lake and were out for about an hour and a half. Although huge (370 acres in total) this is quite a busy park and the rangers are quite ‘keen’ on limiting dog numbers per person so five is the maximum I will take on my own. It’s so nice to be able to enjoy a relaxing walk and be able to stop and take photos and play fetch in the river etc rather than the forced march our daily walks usually consist of when I’m always pushed for time! lol

Here’s the motley crew I took with me (flyball dogs again)…

Teal eyeing up the ducks on the lake…


And some more pics of them here

On Wednesday Gemma had the day off so came up and we took ALL the dogs to the beach; well all apart from those in season and Spud who unfortunately is just too arthritic to go on big runs with everyone now (poor Spud). We split them into 3 manageable sized groups so were on the beach for nearly 3 hours in total…what a beautiful day it was and not at all busy, how I wish I could be at home every weekday! All the dogs had a lovely long run and swim in the sea and Aston, who was enjoying his first trip to the seaside, also had his first swim…he’s proving to be just like his mother (Lexie)…a real water baby, we couldn’t keep him out!

Lovely wide open spaces for running!!


A few more pics of them all here Then it was back home for some lunch, a bit of flyball training with the youngsters… Jovi, Fynn and Squirrel. We’re having to really work on Fynn’s drive back from the box which is currently, well…non existant! We’ve had dogs like this before and it does come eventually so we’ll just keep working on lots of chasing runbacks.

Squirrel on the box…

Although she’s jumping on the box nicely she’s still not pushing off very well with her back feet, not sure how to ‘fix’ this but will have a think about it. then off to the local butchers/farm shop to pick up lots of bones for the dogs we were leaving at home the next day then straight to the vets with Esther for her vaccinations (she was a very brave girl) and finally time to start bathing and prepping the two dogs we were taking to Crufts the next day…Mercy and Spark; both shampooed and rinsed twice then blow dried (which Spark doesn’t mind but Mercy hates) then all off to bed before the ‘Big Day’!!