Gosh it’s hot! Solei has been driving me nutty since this heatwave started, he can’t get comfortable anywhere and he keeps pacing about and fidgeting. Can’t stand pacing, and the fidgeting is irritating as it’s often on the bottom of my bed!

I actually just got the fan out on Monday afternoon because I was getting rather hot, which seems to be helping…he seems to have been a bit more settled since; at the moment he’s lying on his side at the bottom of the bed within range of the breeze. Actually the puppies were absolutely priceless! They’d been having their lunchtime sleep when the fan came out, then they got put outside before they were allowed in…and then they came in, and saw the fan. They were both huddling in the corner together looking at it with such suspicion! It was hilarious. (They were born at the end of August and we didn’t have much of a summer last year anyway, so first time they’ve ever seen one)

Sunday was the interclub match Jeanie had qualified for. We thought we’d left plenty of time to arrive at 1pm for the match to start at 1:30pm, but somehow it took much longer than it was meant to and we arrived at about twenty past! When we got into the hall it was quite small (village hall) and crowded with lots of dogs barking and Jeanie was totally overwhelmed by it all, I actually didn’t think she was going to show at all. I had her out on my lap to acclimatise and as it happened she was one of the last ones drawn and was one of three because they had an odd number. I took her in and she wasn’t too bad at all, not as good as she was for the qualifying match but she hasn’t been as good since then so it was just about as good as it was going to get! Never the less her tail was wagging and she won the round!! Only flaw with that she then had to go straight back in for the next round and as I tend to have the more fickle dogs going straight back in without a rest in between is not good! She decided she’d had enough, wouldn’t show properly and was – unsurprisngly! – knocked out. I really didn’t even expect her to get through the first round so I was still more than happy with the result 🙂

I didn’t go to obedience on Monday, it was hot and I didn’t feel inspired! I debated all day and eventually compromised and took Solei out for a walk and training session by ourselves. When we got down to a relatively safeish area I let him off the lead –  first time I’ve had him off the lead (bar agility) for longer than a few seconds since he got chased nearly 2 years ago! He wasn’t too bad either….we did some nice stay work, if he’s focused he’s usually good…problem is if he’s allowed to wander! Solei is usually very food orientated but to him smells are better than anything else in the world, so I can go up to him when he finds a smell (usually where another dog has weed), make him look at me and literally hold a piece of food right under his nose – he still ignores it! He looks up at me with a “why would I want that? There’s PEE down here!!” 😆 Which makes his recall terrible because he’s not a dog that wants to please – he does things because there’s something in it for him – and to him nothing I have is better (or even as good) as the smell he’s currently investigating, so why come!

On Tuesday mum & I spent the day at Ts puppy sitting! They’re absolutely gorgeous….the older two litters are at that lovely “big dog” stage now where they’re running about and playing but still not quite coordinated and occasionally fall over 😆 And Fancy’s all have their eyes open and are starting to totter 🙂 I’m going over tomorrow morning and we’re going to start to weaning them, they’re 3 weeks and 1 day old now! Didn’t go to ringcraft (match night) because we were at Ts until late and missed it.

Then today Solei had his second agility lesson! When we first arrived and I let him off the lead I thought it was going to be a bit of a disaster cos he really seemed to be off on one and lacking focus, but he improved and I think we have a potential agility star in the making! Ok, maybe that’s wishful thinking 😆 but he’s definitely not doing badly.

In just two lessons he’s been introduced to the tunnel, normal jumps, part of the dogwalk and the tire jump 🙂 And he’s done a sequence of three jumps (albeit not at full height) as well as the tunnel & a jump together 🙂 We even moved two jumps so that he was coming at the second one from an angle and he did that too! Obviously in the progress we had a few running past the obstacles but for only his second lesson… 🙂 Before we started our trainer, M, thought he was going to take 12 or even 18 months before he was going to be able to enter agility shows but I think she may have changed her mind about him over the last two weeks! The major hurdle is going to be me and the fact I can’t run as fast as Solei so he’s going to have to learn to work distantly. Not sure how he’ll cope with the seesaw either but time will tell and hopefully those worries will be unfounded too!

After we’d finished he had a wonderful time running and playing with M’s 6 month old Sheltie puppy 🙂 It was so nice to see, they played so well together…she’s the perfect temperament for Solei 😆 He’s finding my puppies a bit much at the moment, especially Darwin – I think it’s the age. They’re 9 months now so raging testosterone and Solei is trying to show his dominance over Darwin by mounting him, but Darwin isn’t yet prepared to back down and snaps in retliation – which makes Solei mount him again and repeat! We’ve almost had a couple of nasty scraps over the past couple of weeks so I hope they’ll sort themselves out soon.

Southern Counties is on Saturday…I haven’t entered and surprisingly I’m not really regretting it at the moment. Maybe it’s because Solei has started showing badly again and so the rate he’s going he would’ve thrown any chance of placing away anyway! It helps that I’m hoping to go to companion shows both Saturday and Sunday so at least I won’t be twiddling my thumbs at home, and I get to show Darwin as well which I wouldn’t have been able to do at Southern Counties! I probably won’t enter Jeanie, the problem is very few companion shows have a Junior class and obviously I can only show one at once so that leaves me with three classes they’re eligible for – AV Puppy, AV Non Sporting and AV Open. Now Darwin goes in Puppy because I think he has more chance, I like to put Solei in Non Sporting and at 9 months and being very little too there’s no way Jeanie could hold her own in an Open class! I think she’d even struggle in Non Sporting, which is why I don’t put Solei in Open & Jeanie in Non Sporting – I don’t see the point in moving Solei into a more “general” class when Jeanie would still be out of her depth.

I need to get these dogs sorted out first though….Solei really could do with a bath, Darwin will pass just being groomed and Jeanie ditto but needs some poo removed from her bottom! Even though I don’t intend to show her I still like to take her looking her best. The puppies were both wormed today which wasn’t the most sensible thing to do given I’m hoping to show tomorrow & Sunday and worming usually gives them diarrhoea! But what’s done is done now so I’ll just have to hope.

Fingers crossed for some good results this weekend!