November...in a nutshell...

Crikey moses, another month without a blog update and such a lot has happened in that time too!

Where do we start? Well the two pups (Flint the ‘lurcher’ and Aero ) are growing fast and have become best of friends already. Aero is very much like his father Mac in a lot of ways but his ear carriage isn’t one of them! Think we’re definitely going to have pricked ears on this young fella but at the moment they’re a little out of control! Although as you can see, he is in good company with this! lol



Beginning of November saw us heading up North to the Scottish Border Collie Club show; we usually go for the weekend each year doing the Working and Pastoral Breeds of Scotland show the day before and staying overnight somewhere but this year we could only do one day as I had no-one to look after the dogs at home. I had entered 8 dogs (!!) but since Paul had taken Jack (Bryning the Jean Genie) after I’d entered the show he was taking him so Gemma and I just had the two pups, Viva and Vogue in Minor Puppy Bitch, Faith in Limit, Dottie in Open and the 3 boys, Aston in Puppy (his last puppy class), Fynn in Yearling and Spark in Limit. It was going to be a busy day with the dog and bitch rings running simultaneously. We were a bit rushed with the girls in first as the judging started with bitches contrary to what the schedule had stated, they hadn’t travelled very well and needed cleaning up on arrival and Gemma was still out in the carpark getting the other dogs sorted when the class started so I had to grab my friend Pat to take Viva and I took Vogue…the class was HUGE and the ring was TINY so the class ended up being split into 3 groups. Had I known this in advance I would have handled each of my girls separately! As it happened they were both very naughty on the move and neither got placed. Having two in the same class is never a good idea and I had never intended to keep both these girls, just really struggled choosing between them! As fate would have it a friend of Pat’s had been watching and was really rather taken with Vogue and looking for another pup to campaign having recently lost his old girl so…problem solved; Vogue went home with Terry and I kept Viva. Their brothers, Jack and Gene, faired rather better with Paul and Pat in the Minor Puppy Dog class with a 3rd and 4th respectively. Next in was Aston in Puppy Dog, in hindsight I wished I’d put him in Junior as he has grown into a really big lad already and towered over the other puppies! He took a bit of time to settle on the move and the small ring isnt’ best suited to his long stride but if I just move out and don’t look at him he moves out much better, if I make eye contact he tends to crab round to keep looking at me! On the whole he went well and he’s certainly starting to relax a lot more in the ring; he came 3rd again (as he had at NWBCC) so I was pleased with that. If I can get some more weight and coat on him he should do well in the older classes but for the time being I think he needs some time out of the ring to mature. Next in was Fynn, he is such a fidget bum! He wasn’t placed and definitely needs some more ring practice but he did move out nicely when he was concentrating. Faith was unplaced in Limit Bitch, she was a very giddy kipper moving out with the others…she finds showing far too exciting! Spark went really nicely in Limit Dog and won his class which I was super pleased about. He won his class (Junior) the last time he was out under this judge so it was nice to see that she still thought highly of him now he’s a bit more grown up and in with the ‘big boys’. Dottie went beautifully (as always) in Open Bitch and placed 4th in very good company which was really nice too :o). All class judging and the bitch challenge completed and it was time for the dog challenge so Spark and I headed back into the ring with all the other class winners, some really nice dogs in the challenge line up and all a very similar type so I had a feeling it was going to be a close call, after a few more circuits of the ring and a closer examination of each exhibit I was absolutely over the moon when the judge called Spark out for the Challenge Certificate! What a fab end to our showing year which started out with his Reserve CC at Crufts back in March. We’ve just got LKA left on 12th December, I only have Spark entered although Vogue will be there with her new owner too :o)

That same weekend saw Sally and Digger (Bryning the Golden Ticket) competing in the KC Starters Cup Final at Discover Dogs which was taking place at Earls Court; a real nerve racker with busy bustling halls and big crowds. The pair managed to hold their nerves and a double clear in the jumping and agility saw them coming away with a very creditable 3rd place :o)



11th November, Armistice Day, saw Teal delivering her 2nd litter of puppies and a first for our young liver roan cocker boy Travis. 6 beautiful healthy puppies…2 blue roan and tan boys, a blue roan boy, a lemon roan boy, a lemon roan bitch and a blue roan bitch. I say ‘roan’ at the moment but I believe a few of them may well stay open marked; although this is the less common, recessive pattern in cockers, the open marked gene is present in both Teal and Travis’s lines and at the moment there isn’t a lot of roaning going on! There are pics and details of this litter HERE with updated photos to follow soon.

babies at 18 days old...


Last Saturday (20th) I took Tammy and Dottie to be scanned and both were confirmed in whelp, due the week running up to Christmas…should be fun! We also had several of the young flyball team dogs rabies vaccinated in preparation for travelling to the European Championships in Germany next year, including Travis, Tarka, Maisie, Pixie, and Tiger. Fingers crossed they all get positive titre test results in a couple of weeks time. We went down to the playing fields and did some training in the afternoon, I was particularly impressed with Fynn and Jovi who both seemed to have moved up a gear, more training required me thinks! On the Sunday we travelled over to Gap Farm near Doncaster for our last flyball comp of the year. Fergus (Bryning Virage) and Pixie (Bryning Russian Doll) were due to make their starters debuts having turned one earlier this month but it became apparent that Pixie wasn’t quite ready so we put her away until she is. Hopefully she will be ready for the starters comp at the end of January. We borrowed Eabha (Bryning Prime Time) from Rotherham and ran Travis, Tarka, Fergus, Eabha and Spark…with the exception of Travis an all Bryning bred team of dogs :o) I was pleased with the progress they all made, Spark managed to run with a new boxloader (he is funny about who is boxloading!) and Fergus made a very promising start, especially considering how little training he has done so far. I was also very pleased with both Jovi and Maisie who ran on the top team for the first time. This was only Maisie’s second ever open tournament and she was paw perfect bless her. Jo ran much better than she has been and even remembered how to run in the red lane, much to my relief as she also picked up her flyball dog certificate so there’s no going back into starters now! Several of the dogs, including Jovi, need to do some serious box work over winter though, far too many ball fumbles costing us races :o( I also picked up Squirrel’s flyball dog certificate and Pip finally picked up her Ice Blue Moon award :o) We went to look at a new indoor training venue earlier in the week, fingers crossed that turns out ok.

I think that’s about it for now!

A very positive start!

So the day finally arrived and we headed off down to Newark for the starters tournament as part of the Robin Hood Country Game Fair. It was a pretty early start as I had to go and pick Hannah and Charlie up first and it was still dark when we hit the road. Little
aisie had to stay home since she came in season straight after making her open debut at Doncaster…typical! I’m actually not complaining as this is her first season and at 18 months old I was starting to get a bit worried she was never going to have one! I took Jovi in her place, she is still technically a starter dog (not got her 200 points yet) and after last weeks performance at Doncaster she needed the practice! I also got a last minute request from Kristian from High Flyers to see whether we had any spares for their Intermediate team since Lola had also come in season and couldn’t run. Since Gemma was coming anyway and Fynn is also still technically eligible for starters (no points on yet); it seemed fitting that he should take his sisters place in ‘Highly Likely’ so that meant we had dogs in every division between us!

We were running two starter teams, one in each division and first up were ‘The Cock Ups’ which was a collaborative team between Demon Dogz, Cambridgeshire Canines and Ready2Fly that consisted entirely of cocker spaniels, 3 from my Rupert x Maizy litter – Charlie, Tarka and Tally, their half brother Travis and their Auntie Radley so something of a family affair! lol I wasn’t quite sure how this was going to pan out as all 5 dogs have shown a lot of promise but spaniels are notoriously unpredictable! For the 3 babies this was only their second outing but still the first time all 5 dogs had run together. We were very unlucky to lose the first race, entirely on ball fumbles (new box for most of the dogs)…the best out of 3 format didn’t allow for such mistakes, this cost the team first place but they did go on to win the other 5 races with relative ease and ran the fastest time of any starter team across both divisions of 19.93 and that was with wide changeovers too so I was pleased as punch with them all!

Too much to ask that they all look at the camera together! Lol


Here’s a video of all the ‘Brynings’ (so Travis is out)
Charlie (Bryning Brock) – Tally (Bryning Totally Trouble) – Radley (Bryning Truly Radley Deeply) and Tarka (Bryning Riverine)


And here’s all the siblings (so Radley out)
Travis (Raezhaven Bryce at Bryning) - Charlie (Bryning Brock) – Tally (Bryning Totally Trouble) and Tarka (Bryning Riverine)


The other team we ran, Demon K9s was also a collaboration of Demonz (Spark and Jovi) Cambs (Spencer) and Ready2Fly (Jessy) along with a Linnott dog too in the form of Beamer :o)
Gemma boxloaded for this team in the morning and Spark ran really well, running every leg in the morning, I was really pleased with all the distractions of a busy public show. This team ran really well together and remained unbeaten all day to romp home with 1st place although I had to pull Spark and run Jovi in the afternoon once Gemma had left (and he didn’t know the replacement boxloader…mummy’s boy!!)

I think Wendy (Beamers owner) got some video of this lot but I’m afraid I don’t have it yet.

Huge congratulations to the Alpha Dogz for organising the event, all in all a good day and well worth the early start and long drive but I got home just after 9pm and could hardly walk when I got out of the van…trapped sciatic nerve…agony!! I sorted the dogs and pretty much went straight to bed but had to be up at 6am to bath dogs for North West Border Collie Champ show the following day!

Busy but constructive day off

Oh dear, falling behind already again! Well we have slipped from summer into autumn over the last month but still quite busy with various things. I did promise to do a short update on my busy day off after Lochaber show but now realise that I don’t actually have a great deal to say, probably because it was it was over a fortnight ago now and I’ve forgotten half of it! lol

Well, anyway…I took the opportunity to have Travis and Jovi hip scored and eye tested. Sadly my usual fabulous hip scoring vet (Mark Lingard at Moy Farm, Out Rawcliffe) is very poorly and unable to work. He is such a lovely man as well as a great vet, so this was very sad and upsetting news. So, Tom to the rescue again (poor Tom must be sick of the sight of me!) and a trip down to Nantwhich Verterinary Group or a 10am appointment. I know many people will wonder why I don’t use my regular vets for hip scoring but I like the fact that both Tom and Mark will do the dogs under sedation while I wait and will offer a pretty good idea of what the score back from the BVA is likely to be. This was particularly important for me with Travis due to Teal’s impending season and the fact I wanted to mate her (to him obviously) this time. Fortunately both sets of hips looked good and I expect some good scored back from the BVA in a few weeks. I had just enough time to get home, have some lunch and sort the pups out etc before we headed off to our appointment with Stuart Ellis at Riverbank Vets for eye testing; fortunately they are in Preston just a 10 min or so drive from us. Both dogs were having the standard eye test and gonioscopy too so we had to arrive 20 mins or so early to have the anaesthetic eye drops in before the testing; Jovi was a bit dramatic about the drops so I was a little worried about her gonio test but she sat quietly and was well behaved throughout as was Travis although I have to say, I think the lingering effect of the mornings sedative may have helped! lol Both passed with no problems so two more boxes ticked and we were ‘good to go’ for the mating. Very excited about the prospect of more Teal babies, her first litter are just about to turn 3 so we’ve waited a while for this next instalment! With both parents being roans we will only have roan puppies…blue roan, blue roan and tan and lemon roan puppies expected in November…can’t wait! I must get some new photos of Trav for his webpage now he’s a big grown up handsome boy.

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 :)

Another birthday boy...

...to 'The Drakester'...3 years old today :)

An unplanned new addition....

...will be arriving here later this month!

Meet Raezhaven Bryce at Bryning aka 'Travis', he's currently just 4 weeks old and a gorgeous little bundle of cocker cuddliness!






Travis is sired by Rupert, the dog I have just mated Maizy to and his mother is the lovely Fern. He is bred by Rachel and Phil Birt down at Raezhaven Gundogs in Dorset.

I wasn't actually looking for another cocker but when I saw this litter I totally fell in love with the two liver roan boys and when Rach offered me one I just couldn't resist! I really can't wait to bring him home and I can't thank Rach enough for this gorgeous little boy.

Eye testing Day

Our holiday started with the eye testing day at Riverbank which thankfully ran like clockwork. Stuart was brilliant as usual, so good with all the dogs and helpful and chatty throughout, makes it so much easier when dealing with someone who takes a real interest and is so willing to answer questions. Gemma ans I were there from 11am to 5pm making sure everything ran smoothly and we actually all really enjoyed the day. All the dogs I had tested passed both their adult eye tests and gonioscopies apart from (rather unexpectedly) Drake and Mac who were both diagnosed as having narrow drainage angles and classed as 'goniodysgenesis affected'. They will obviously both be castrated and withdrawn from stud. I am pretty gutted about Mac failing to be honest, as far as I know he is the only ISDS registered dog to have been tested and publicly reported as affected so far. I had planned to use him on Dottie later this summer with the intention of keeping a puppy so am pretty dissapointed that I'm not going to be able to and will have to try and find an 'unaffected' son to use at some point instead. Anyway, my advise to anyone owning a Mac or Drake son/daughter or grandchild should have their dogs gonioscopy tested before breeding and, even if tested clear, they should only be mated to other clear tested dogs.

So...my dogs now tested clear for both the standard eye test and gonioscopy are...

Spark, Viggo, Lexie, Faith, Dottie, Lori, Dazzle, Kitten, Orlaith, Eabha as well as cocker spaniel Teal. My parson, Squirrel also passed her adult eye test.

Other Brynings tested clear for both examinations were...
Border Collies
Echo (Bryning Superstellar) - Quillan X Lexie
Charlie (Bryning Bright Light) - Ethan X Dazzle (Spark's brother)
Cocker Spaniels
Radley (Bryning Truly Radley Deeply) and Murphy (Bryning Makin' Trouble) both Drake and Teal pups.

Other Brynings tested unaffected while we were away were...
Indi (Bryning Little Red Indian) - Mac X Molly
Jace (Bryning Ray of Sunshine) - Bond X Spangle (Dazzle's sister)
Lola (Bryning Love in a Mist at Croxlea) - Junnu X Pipit

We met up with Laura at the vets, who brought Chance down for us to take to Belgium with us (he was going to a new home in Switzerland) and finally hitched the caravan up and set off for Huntingdon at 6pm for the start of our 16 days away.

clever cockers

I was just mooching round the BFA website (as you do) and checking on what awards each dog is coming up for when I fell upon the breed statistics; imagine my suprise to find that Drake and Teal were the 2nd and 4th highest scoring cocker spaniels over 2008 despite both only coming out in Feb/Mar!! More impressively Drake is currently standing 10th and Teal 15th in the highest pointed cocker spaniels in BFA history! They've only been competing for a year! What a pair of clever cockers :)

Tag...you're it!

Well, now I've finally caught up with all the blogs I follow I found out that I got 'tagged' by Brenda and Hazel, the idea is that you...
open a document or file folder
Click on the fifth folder and then the fifth photo
Post the photo and describe it
Then tag 5 other bloggers
Now...what this doesn't take into account is my highly organised and multi layered file structures!! lol
So I actually had to open a folder, select the 5th folder and then another folder inside that folder before I actually came to any photos! This folder happened to contain pics of my cocker pups from last year and 5th photo down was this one of Radley (Bryning Truly Radley Deeply) who belongs to my Auntie Jackie, Uncle Conrad and cousins Amy and Jess, she lives close by and I get to see her regularly. She has grown up into a beautiful, affectionate and (mostly) impeccably behaved member of the family, she's an absolute joy :)


She is pictured here at six weeks old in Amy's arms, god she as cute wasn't she?! :)

Ok, near everyone I know has already been tagged but these are the 5 blogs I am tagging...
http://www.sooshine-bordercollies.com/apps/blog/
http://cockercircus.blogspot.com/
http://hofdiabolo-in-english.blogspot.com/
http://erinsdogs.blogspot.com/
http://rushnsassydogs.blogspot.com/ (might encourage an update from Sue!! lol)

Where does the time go?

Ooops...bad blogger me...more than a week without an entry!

Another busy one with one thing and another. We raced down at Newark at the weekend, although Gemma couldn't make it we did end up taking Bailey, we entered an extra team at the last minute as a space became available so ran the usual lineups. Demonz and Racers in Div 1 together again. Didn't feel quite as 'slick' this weekend but at least Mac didn't run out...it must have been seeing Bailey in the other lane as he came off the box that had distracted him at Selby because they were in opposite lanes this time so Mac was turning away. I do like the flooring better at Newark, when the dogs run wide and off the matting it's onto concrete rather than slippery gym flooring. Although they felt good, all 3 teams were well off their usual pace as were most other teams I watched run so I can only assume the surface just didn't run that well. We had a couple of unfortunate incidents that lost us races and ended up 3rd and 5th in Div One and 2nd in Div Two. Teal picked up her graduate award and Drake got his Advanced (already...don't know how he manged that so quickly!). We did have a really nice weekend, we stayed in the local travelodge so had a leisurely trip down on Saturday afternoon so we could walk the dogs, chill out and enjoy a meal together and have a nice relaxed start in the morning. It was nice spending some relaxed time together, something we don't get to do the same over the winter season.

The team social continued as we all went out last night (although Trish didn't make it), Paul had booked us all tickets to see The Feeling at Preston Guild Hall so we met up and went for a meal first before going on to the gig which was, I have to say, fantastic. Only a fairly small audience but they really did put on a good show, the music was great and there was enormous energy from the band. They really know how to work the crowd with their own catchy sing-a-long tunes and the odd crowd pleasing cover lobbed in to really rouse the troops. There was also the odd unexpected curve ball thrown in to keep the crowd on their toes such as lead singer Dan diving off the stage to 'crowd surf' to the back where there was a microphone stand and acoustic guitar set up for his next solo song and then coming on for the encore dressed as a marching band playing percussion instruments through the middle of the crowd, they marched right through the middle of me and Gemma (never realised how small they all are before!). It's nice when you go to see a band that makes and plays great music but are real performers too.

Not much else to report really, our first litter of cockers turned a year old this week, I did see Maizy on Saturday, she's lovely. They've all turned out to be such super little dogs and they're all doing really well in their training. Oz's latest litter arrived yesterday, Norman Johnson's bitch Bracken (Wildfell Bit o Heather) had 5 dog puppies, a choc/white, a black tri and 3 black/white so looking forward to pics of those. We're racing at Deeside this weekend although I had really wanted to go to Newton Heath agility show which is just down the road from my house. Trish isn't coming so we've just got the two teams entered, bit of a jiggle of dogs so we'll see how we get on.

Dock Diving...

Here's some new pics Kerena sent me of Magic competing in the Dock Dogs at the Cold Wet Nose Show last weekend.
Proving to be a water baby like his parents!! Doesn't he look like he's enjoying himself! :)





Pics by Alan Boutel at Pet Pics

A visit from the family...

We had a visit from Radley yesterday evening (oh...she brought my Auntie, Uncle and cousins with her too lol); I haven't seen her for ages (even though she lives less than 5 miles away!) and she has changed an awful lot in that time. She is now 7 months old and a similar height to her mum Teal, maybe a fraction taller, but is very much the same build and type as her dad Drake, in fact she's just like a little scaled down version of him! She is also mad as a hatter like him too! She had a lovely time racing round the garden and playing with her parents and Squirrel and Olive, she's certainly a very sociable little dog!! :)

I really hope they do decide to do some flyball with her as originally planned because I think she'll be absolutely fab!! Teal's height with Drake's speed and technique...rapid!! lol

Her she is starting to look all grown up...