Angus's success

Indi has now been here a week and has settled in. Here is a video of her doing things about the place with the other dogs.

Meanwhile, Twiggy's son and Hobson's brother Angus today with his owners Kate and Adie attended the Hitchin and District open show, and Angus won reserve Best of Breed! We are very pleased for Angus and his owners, especially as this was their first proper show!

Happy Birthday Pasha

Today Pasha is 4. Unfortunately we didn't really get much of a chance to do anything special together and I don't have a picture of her enjoying her birthday because it rained all day, and I don't think she was exactly enamoured with her 'birthday present':

Apologies for the poor-quality picture. This is a poodle puppy and her name is Indi. I was busy all day, as a breeder friend's husband had come over from the USA to choose a brother of Indi to take home, and I clipped the faces of the two boys and helped him to evaluate them, and after this we were sorting out a crate for the puppy to fly back in and getting a certificate from the vet. By the time I was able to clip Indi's face and take a picture, it was dark.

While I was trying to breed Twiggy back in the spring, I used a dog from Wylderhope and Supernova bloodlines whose pedigree I loved. This dog had sired only one litter before, with three pups in it, and while talking to his owner I found out that the person who had bred this litter kept poodles as working gundogs, and had a daughter from the litter named Ember, whom he was interested in breeding but was not sure what dog to use, and had an interest in keeping going old bloodlines. Ember's mother also had an unusual pedigree, that included a very unusual bitch called 'Lady Lucy Locket of Highlea'. I said at the time that I knew the whereabouts of Twiggy's brother and one other dog of old bloodlines, and said if they did use either of them, I would like to be on the waiting list for a daughter from the mating.

As it happened Twiggy did not get pregnant, but Ember's owner decided he would mate her with Twiggy's brother, and she did get pregnant, and four pups were born. So Indi is a very special puppy and I am very glad to have her.

Twiggy is Home

Twiggy is home, and we have penicillin and anti-inflammatories, and paracetamol and absinthe (not for Twiggy, but to ease the pain in my head and the pain in my bank account), and cruddy 80s DVDs, and minced offal. :-)

Hobson is glad to have her mother back, and then she had to go to bed so she didn't climb all over her.

Time and Tide

Yesterday Twiggy did not want to eat her breakfast, which is unusual for her, and she seemed to be drinking more than usual. I took her temperature and it was normal, so I decided just to keep an eye on her. She ate her dinner that evening. This morning, she again did not want her breakfast, and had some snotty stuff with a slightly pinkish colour hanging out of her vulva, which disappeared after she had been out for a wee. I took her temperature again and it was normal. Later on she was wet around the backside, but there was no odour and her temperature was still normal. She was lying on a dog bed in the study and I was about to ring the vet when I noticed a sudden smell like amniotic fluid (which is what I assume to be responsible for the characteristic smell when bitches whelp and eggs hatch), and got her up to discover the bed underneath her was all wet.

I rushed Twiggy to the vet, and while stroking her in the foyer noticed that she suddenly seemed hot. When the vet took her temperature, it had shot up to 41.2. An ultrasound showed her uterus was full of pus, and as it was at once apparent she had developed pyometra, I told the vet to spay her immediately. So Twiggy has now been spayed and will be staying at the vet overnight. The vet said the pyometra was caught in time and her uterus has not ruptured, so fortunately it is very likely she will make a full recovery.

Sadly this of course also eliminates any chance of any more puppies from Twiggy. She was so far as I am aware the last remaining breedable bitch from the older Canen bloodlines. Unfortunately her biological clock has run out, and we hope Twiggy will soon be coming home to enjoy her retirement.

Birds at the end of summer

Turkeys eat raspberries (and a turkey runs around with part of an apple, failing to find peace and quiet in which to eat it!).



Unfortunately, while sorting the geese into groups to keep for breeding and feed for slaughter, one of the geese was attacked by others, and although I separated it to heal, it didn't look well and was miserable, so inevitably this happened.

And then this also happened. Hobson it seemed wanted an autumnal salad to go with hers.

Paignton show

I had planned to go to the show at Paignton with Pasha and Hobson to meet a friend who lives nearby and was going to show her dog there, but unfortunately the friend could not come, and with no-one to hold one dog while I was handling the other, I decided just to take Hobson and go on my own.

Hobson came second in the Junior Bitch class. Unfortunately, despite arriving at 10:30 am, the class was not judged until it was approaching 4 pm. Hobson only turned 1 last week and is still not accustomed to large numbers of people and dogs, and although it started off as a good socialisation experience for her, after nearly 5 hours she was overloaded, exhausted, and thoroughly fed up of the whole thing, and I can't say I can blame her. Neither of us had any lunch, and I was starting to become concerned about being able to get home in time to the other four dogs, whom a friend kindly checked on and let out for a toilet break at lunchtime, and to put the birds away. Poor Hobson would not stand nicely for the judge to go over and we had to rush out as soon as the class was finished. This is not the first time we have had problems with shows and judging times, as last year I took Pasha to the Richmond show where in the catalogue, judging was listed as starting at 10:30 am. We arrived just after this time to discover that the judging had in fact started at 9:30 and the judge had been through all the dogs and was on to the bitches, and we had just missed our class, making the whole thing a total waste of diesel, time, and entry fee.

This time, although Hobson did get to show, it was a waste of our time getting up early and having to wait around at the show with nothing to do (I could have gone and visited my friend at home first if I had known how long it was going to take). What should have been a fun morning out with a dog turned into a tedious waste of a whole day, and Cally did not get to go to agility this evening because I was too knackered after getting home and sorting everything out. I often read in Dog World and on social media people complaining that not enough people enter shows these days. Perhaps more people would feel encouraged if the show organisers would post reliable guidelines of when breeds were to be judged in their catalogues?

Happy birthday Hobson

Today is Hobson's first birthday. We celebrated by going to the river with Twiggy to meet Twiggy's son and Hobson's brother Angus, and his owners Kate, Adie, and Theo. Adie decided this river game was good enough for him if it was good enough for the dogs! Twiggy didn't want to go in (apart from when I shoved her in to wash her feet after she trod in a cowpat) and stayed on the shore to guard keys and phones.