Bad, bad me…I haven’t had the urge to write and haven’t had the inclination to force myself! End result…no blogging for almost three months. Eep. Though I can’t believe I didn’t even post about Crufts!

Obviously I can’t analyse the last three months in detail 😆 so brief summary – here goes nothing! Eeny & Sammy went back on the 10th Feb, as planned. Nobody else has been interested in Darwin, so he’s still here! It’s just been me, Solei, Darwin and Elton since then which has been nice.

Crufts…wow, what can I see. I booked a travelodge in Coventry and we stayed a night away from home for the first time in years. We went up on the Saturday, with Solei; who I’d entered in Limit Dog for the second year running. I wasn’t expecting anything, just a nice day out! Anyway, Solei totally surpassed my expectations by getting fourth in a  large and very strong class! Absolutely over the moon.

At the end of the day S&T took Solei home, and off we went to our travelodge! Woke up bright and early on Sunday and arrived at Crufts with just about perfect timing. What a fantastic day! Spent much of it with friends and their Golden Retrievers, one of whom’s birthday it happened to be – cake all round! Human birthday that is, not dog…

I did lots of shopping, spent far too much money and it was the most fantastic weekend!

Elton has grown up enormously! He’s 11 months old now, and fast approaching his first birthday. I can’t begin to tell you how proud I am of him…we’ve had our ups and downs, but for a Phalene he’s done so well. He had a couple of iffy shows shortly after my last post, but the tide turned and things picked up again!

Best Puppy in Breed & Puppy Group 4 at Bristol on 20th March, plus 2nd in the Novice Stakes.
Best Puppy in Breed at Okehampton on 28th March
Best Puppy in Breed & Puppy Group 3 in a superb puppy group at Exonian on 3rd April
1st Novice Dog at the Papillon (Butterfly Dog) Club Champ Show on 11th April

annnd yesterday we went to WELKS (big all breed championship show) and Elton was 3rd in Puppy Dog, so has qualified for Crufts 2011 too 😀

The last few months have been such a rollercoaster…he’s been up and down and really stressing me as to whether he’d come right! Especially when he got to ten months old and his legs still needed to grow (a lot of toy breeds will have stopped growing by that point) but thankfully my instinct that he was going to be a slower maturer was right and he kept growing and has ended up back in proportion 🙂 (phew!) He’s got a beautiful coat now, too. I’ve tried to take photos every month and it’s fascinating to see how it’s grown, even when I didn’t think it had!

He’s a very sweet little boy. More submissive than I’d like, but he’s cute and showy and seems to be intelligent! 🙂 Though having said that, we’ve been practicing obedience at home since he was very small, and he’s FINALLY got the hang of the word “stay”! 😆 He also knows sit, down, stand, spin left, spin right, touch (my hand or an object I’m holding), come (if it suits him :P) and he’ll do a play bow. Retrieve is a work in progress 😆

Other than that I’m not sure there’s a lot to report. Oh! Darwin came to Okehampton and was Best of Breed and 2nd in the Toy Group 😀 Which was very exciting – that’s my highest (non-puppy) group placing to date. He’s only shown 4 times so far this year, so hasn’t had much opportunity to do well!

Solei is pottering along. He finished 2009 as the 3rd Top Obedience Papillon 😀 and he seems to be really enjoying obedience, it seems to be his “thing”. We’re dealing with each problem a step at a time, and are slowly getting there 🙂

In fact tomorrow we’re off to a companion show, so that Solei can do his first obedience of the year!

I don’t think I’ve forgotten anything major…it’s a bit tricky when I’m trying to remember over such a long period! Will try not to leave it so long next time 😉