I’m desperate for some pictures to put up of it as we are useless with a camera so don’t even own one! So please anyone reading this who took some, and by golly there were some folks there with lovely cameras, a few snaps would be fab!

What a day… WHAT A DAY! exhausting, fantastic, BOILING hot! It couldn’t have been hotter if we held it in the South of France! It was a real worry infact, I only didn’t want RAIN… but instead got the hottest day of the year. However we coped, and can i brag for the umpteeth time, as a credit by no means only to the breeding of the dogs but VERY much to how their owners have raised them, at one point we must of had 35/40 dogs, all off lead, charging round the fenced in field which was about 150yards x 50yards, both sexes, entire, spayed, catastrated…old & young, bold and more introverted, and yet other than the odd snap at a brash lad trying to hump some poor bitch before being extracted, we didn’t have a grumble between the lot of them! Do you know, forget the show wins and working competitions and this and that, alongside the assistance dogs we have produced, I now think THAT is my biggest proudest achievement of all! I may not have produced top winning dogs through the years, but by golly we can throw out a ‘thoroughly nice person’!! 😉 Brag, gloat, brag… I know, but I am proud and that was quite amazing to see!

Some startlingly competitive races ensued, I feel the odd dirty trick and bit of gamemanship might have been taking place but *I* didn’t see it… ha ha ha! I have to say I was hugely impressed by the final 6 in the ‘Longest Stay’ competition. Sitting up whilst I threw dummies around them, sent Bondy for retrieves between them, and even blew a recall whistle!!! Murphy the winner, owned by Di and David Weeks of Winterslow Labradors really deserved it but was driven hard to the tape by several others! A really good bit of fun the dogs enjoyed as a ‘quiet’ner’ at the end of a long long day.

The raffle which everyone so generously supported brought in £108 for Help for Heroes, and I will be sending that off tomorrow as soon as I get a picture to print and send with it to show us all!

People journed from Guernsey, Devon, Wiltshire, Hertfordshire, Birmingham to name just some to be with us and Allan and I are so damn grateful I can’t say! So till I get some pictures to share will hold fire on reporting further…..

On a different note this week has been (puts on Cheryl Tweedy voice…) ‘An emooootional rolllercoooster’. I had a crises of confidence that i could do justice to starting two pups of the same age again so soon after Tom and Bond. We very much need little Mia to follow, hopefully, eventually, in her Mums shoes as Shiney is a magnificent mum but if she is going to throw me 11’s for her litters I only want one more from her! As Mallie said to me when looking over the whelping box at Shiney…. ” ELEVEN? Thats TWO bloody litters isn’t it…? ” …and it is, two litters per litter with that many! Although she does them so brilliant…. she really is a genius!

Anyway I digress (as usual…) So I thought about selling Holden. And for a few days he was back on the website for sale, but then, events consired to make me realise with a bit of organisation and a bit more routine to my training in the week, its perfectly do’able…. Poor Al would love to do the basic training too, but the minute the clocks change he goes to work in the dark and comes home in it, so he is completely unable to lend a hand with the first year of routine hammering in the basics…

Its a tad daunting, not to those who do it all the time, but *I’m* a worrier that I’m wasting some of our dogs by not concentrating enough on each one. Hand on heart Bondy has had more of my time than Tom. Fish had more of my time than Shiney. I bet one of these pups (probably Holden) gets more of my time than the other. But I have decided none of us are perfect and we shall give it a go! Onwards and upwards!

Oh, and it couldn’t last could it?…. the green bloody Laguna took a tumble off its ‘well behaved pedalstal’ the other day. It cheerfully got Al to Wales to train Fish with the Bettinsons, came back, pulled onto the drive, choked….died….and threw oil everywhere. Next morning Mr RAC was called (a ‘best friends and family’ number at our house these days…) and he came, detected the oil problem, fixed it in minutes…. and still it wouldn’t start. Between the hours of 6pm and 8am when Mr RAC got here, it decided to jack in sending diesel to the engine for some reason. Something in these computer driven monsters, is a bit of a snag, you’ll agree. So after an hour of battling we were towed to my garage (whom at, we are such familiar faces, they are thinking of asking us to the staff christmas dinner this year….) The garage worked for a day on it Friday and whilst not actually handing me the log book and patting me on the shoulder at such a sad loss, they are not looking hopeful! So right now we are a: 7 dog, 1 car, 1 useless green piece of French trash and 1 new small cement mixer (deep joy!) family!

Thought for the day -: Please don’t buy a 2006 Laguna. However happy you are otherwise, it will bankrupt you and wreak your life!! 😉