Oh my godddd I have so much to update and no motivation to do it. Two weekends ago I headed up to the first Scottish agility show I’ve been to with Tracy & Garry which was good fun. I struggled ordering my fish & chips as I couldn’t understand their accents but I got better over time lol.

Huuuuuge well done to Charlotte who WON small champ with Honey!! And Steven got E’d in the final (I think) but here’s his lovely agility run with Libby:

Theeeen after just a day of being at home I headed off to London and Dan helped me hold a photography day there. I am so happy with the results, the weather was crap so I successfully ruined two pairs of trackies but I had lots of fun. And I acquired a new love in the red variety:

Cody!

“Breakfast” on the coach down south

Honeypot at Woodside and my freshly painted seesaw

Poglet happy to have me home

At Winlation

I got home almost a week ago and I’m still sooo tired. I worked pretty much non stop on the photos and now I have a million and one websites to catch up with so I’m rather busy at the moment. Yaaawwwwnn.

I don’t talk about my boyfriend too much mostly because he isn’t very connected with my “dog life”. Nick is in the music world and before I met him he didn’t understand the point in having a dog in the slightest. I really like his attitude though as he was really easy to mould into my life, I wasn’t “retraining” him so to speak haha – I could teach him about dogs the right way from the beginning. He absolutely adores Pogo now and got very very upset when he had to see her less when he left for university, so I think he gets it now ;)

Anyway as a result we have very separate lives. Admittedly this has been difficult over the past couple of months as our careers/hobbies have clashed – I am free during the week whilst he has uni and band practise. He is free over the weekend while I’m at dog shows. However this is the first time we’ve really ran into a problem with this and it’s because we live further away from each other.. all in all I’m very glad our hobbies are separate because I do think if he was into agility or something I’d be too competitive. Soooo to the point of this post – this year we turned 5 years old :) I was 13 when we started seeing each other, I did NOT expect to be with him until I was 18. Extremely strange.

Sooo we celebrated with a date of alchohol and steak. And me in a dress.

Aaaand, finally a picture of us that we both like. <3

Sooo as most people in England are already aware, the weather has been horrible. Rain rain rain. It’s not as bad here as it seems further down south (or maybe it’s just that I’ve been a recluse for the past few days) but it has been miserable. Pogo is on rest because earlier in the week she trapped her leg in a door and developed a small injury – only a small cut but she is so thin you could see the bone. Under Rachel’s instructions it’s now healing and it’s almost done so she’s had a few road walks.. but definitely not today. Today has been awful weather. I had to kick her out in her coat just to go for a wee in the garden. So we started our chiro exercises – I had two games, one was the elephant trick which she hasn’t done since she was a small puppy and the other was lifting legs.

Last year I had Pogo seen by a chiro at a flyball show after feeling her jumping wasn’t quite right. It turned out that her back was hurt and it was sore to both land and take off, her jumping and stress didn’t go away very quickly but later on in the year something just “clicked” and she was blasting through sequences and starting full height.

We had a short training session on Wednesday which was just awful. She hadn’t stressed that bad since near the beginning of our training, I set up two jumps and a tunnel and she just didn’t want to do any of it.. spent 80% of the lesson with her nose on the floor. 15% practically walking and 5% trying slightly. I gave up and went home and just wanted to cry.

So yesterday evening we went to see Gail Baker who gave Poglet a massage and a general check over.. turns out she is tight & sore in her back again, and – as I’d always wondered about – it was making it difficult for her to extend. I have slowed motioned and “analysed” so many videos where it looks like she’s trying hard to jump properly but either makes a last minute decision not to or if she does extend, very quickly tucks her back feet under as quickly as she can when landing. I’m not being naive and I know that this diagnosis doesn’t directly mean it’s all physical and not mental, but to hear that about extension is soooo nice. I really really hope (although this sounds horrible) that it was pain that was the issue on Wednesday and not my bad dog training. If it’s pain I will pay for treatment and give her enough rest – I just need to know what the issue is and when it’s mental I find it really hard to work out. We’ll see how it goes from here, she completely zonked out afterwards and is still asleep so she’s getting a “rest” day today.