Tagged!

Ok, so now I've been tagged too (I wonder who originally started this?!) Well, here is the photo.

Its last summer at the West Show, an agricultural fair held in Jersey every two years. They have all kinds of displays and our club was asked to do some agility. Whilst we set up I tied Mannix and Smudge to the side of the ring, and they attracted a crowd of children. I was really proud of them that day as they are both so gentle with children and I had complete faith in both of them to behave (kept a close eye on the children tho ;-))Mannix has grown so much since then, he is nowhere near the same size as Smudge now!! That weekend is actually a really nice memory for me. It was lovely weather and we had a great time walking around the fair taking the opportunity to let Mannix get used to his first big event! He coped with all the noise and people wonderfully, and took everything in his stride.

On to an update then. Poor Mannix has still been struggling with a bad toe. He ended up having an x ray done, which showed that he had an infection going up into the digit. :-( The vet said he had been incredibly unlucky. At one point they were considering removing the whole digit, but when the op was underway they found it wasn't as bad as they initially feared. So he had the whole claw removed and was put on mega strength antibiotics. Luckily it seemed to do the trick and on Monday he was finally given the all clear. To say he is pleased to be out walking again is an understatement!!!! Now that he is back and fighting fit, Paul can start doing some training with him again! Will try and get some video when he goes to club tonight.

We have our first show of the year next weekend at Paws. Looking forward to it as it will give me a chance to test the training I have been doing with Smudge over the winter and hopefully it will allow me to identify any gaps (or gaping holes, we will wait and see!!) I'm really pleased with lots of the work we have done, and Smudge has been great, but taking my training into a ring situation will be a good test.

So that’s about it for now. Apart from two photos - this is what Mannix thinks about all the doom and gloom in the news at the moment!! Credit Crunch?!?!? Huh?!?!? He wants some cheerful news for a change!! (If you look carefully it looks like he objects to food prices in Jersey too :-)!)

And this one - don't you just love the way shelties do this? Talk about relaxed!! Will get some photos of the others for next time I post.

Freezing!!!!!

Oh my god, it is so flamin cold!!!!!!!!!! Brrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!! Still no snow here though :-(

Due to the fact that it is so cold, we haven't got very far with our 2x2's! Its just too cold!! We did go back to training on Wed and had a fab session though. His contacts are really coming along nicely and I am really pleased with them. He is driving down to the bottom, even when I hang back quite a distance. I am hoping that this was not a one off training session, and that things have actually clicked, but I guess I will find out on Sat! Weave entries are still a slight problem. Don't get me wrong, they are not bad, but I can just see he struggles with pulling back to find that first pole if it is a really acute angle or a super fast entry. That is where I hope doing the first stage of the 2x2 training might help. So bring on the warmer weather please!

Pooor Mannix still has a bad toe. Every time you just think it is starting to get better, he busts it again. Yesterday he tore it half way through our walk. So back to the vets again today and this time I think they will just have to remove it. They didn't want to as they thought the nail could be saved, but I'd rather they just took the whole nail off now. Will save the poor little man a lot of discomfort in the long run!