Greyhound Gap Dog Show

Greyhound Gap's 2nd Annual Fun Dog Show takes place on Sunday 1st May at the Walsall Arboretuem Annexe

Registration starts at 12 noon and the show commences at 1pm.

There are twelve fun Classes open to any breed of Dog they are.....
Prettiest bitch
Most Handsome Male
Best Senior (over 9)
Best Puppy (under 12mnths)
Waggiest Tail
Best Child Handler

Break - Dog Display Team

Best Black Dog
Dog the Judge would most like to take home
Best Rescue
Best Gap Rescue
Best Brace
Five minutes for them to get ready then:- Fancy Dress

Best In Show Rosettes on the day will be awarded to 5th place for each class with 1st, 2nd and 3rd in each class also receiving a prize bag full of goodies.

We also will be welcoming on the day local and national rescue organisations with their fundraising stalls. A dog training display and lots, lots more to see and do, food will be available at the location and toilets are also on site.

1st May is also Justice for Rusty Day more details here: Justice for Rusty We hope to encorporate into the day a 1 minute silence in respect of Rusty and all of Greyhound Gap's hounds will be turned out wearing purple ribbons as a mark of respect. We will also be offering ribbons for sale on the day for 50p with all proceeds from the sale being donated directly to the Justice for Rusty fund.

We have returned

We're all back from the sunny climes of Dorset. What a beautiul week it was....the sun shone every day and it was warm and glorious.

The lack of television and computer meant that I did as was intended and caught up with a few books: I managed to finish Terry Brooks' Tanequil that I seem to have been reading for an age; read Pratchett's Hat Full of Sky in 12 hours; Going Postal in not much longer. An inroad has also been made into The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. Hat Full of Sky and The Amazing Maurice are technically childrens' books, but to not read them because of that would mean missing out on Pratchett at his best. Perhaps not at his cleverest, his adult books are, after all, full of very cunning and complicated verbage, but his books for younger readers are simple in their humour and perhaps funnier because of that. You can enjoy their humour without wondering if you've missed a pun.

But I digress, the rest of the holiday not spent reading was spent walking The Lurchers - Durdle Door has to be seen to truly appreciate its beauty - and sleeping. I slept lots. And then a bit more. Although all that sleep was negated as we had friends staying for the weekend, who arrived about 4 hours after we got home on Friday. Two very late nights, a marathon session of Mah Jong lasting for 9 hours and a serious bang on the head which almost knocked me out cold, has done much to make me feel like I've not been on holiday at all.

Roll on the next one.

Pratchett Catch-up

OH is working down in Dorset at the moment so next week The Lurchers and I are joining him. He works, whilst I swan around doing not very much. Although "not very much" next week means walking The Lurchers and making sure OH has food in front of him when he needs it. Not much change there then. But at least there's no work involved and I can lie-in and catch up on some reading. I'm woefully behind on my Pratchett intake so I shall be immersing myself in A Hat Full of Sky and Going Postal.

I shall re-surface back into real life next Friday. Then again, I may just stay in Discworld.

Pretty picture!

In an auctin that we recently held to raise funds for Greyhound Gap, I won the chance to have a very talented artist paint a caricature of The Lurchers. She has e-mailed me the result today and I very nearly burst into tears....it is so brilliant!

By golly, I think she's got it!

As an only child, it falls on me to carry on our particular branch line of the family. My dearest Mother has never given up hope that one day I will produce the grandchildren she longs for. This is despite the fact that I have not wanted children since I was old enough to understand what it was all about.....since I was about 13 in fact.

But everytime we see my Mum she still makes litte comments and enquiries about it, wondering when we might produce. And I feel for her, I really do. The maternal gene simply passed me by and in all these years, I have never changed my mind. I don't want children and, fortunately, neither does my OH. We do dogs rather than children! But Mum longs to have a little grandchild to hold in her arms. She loves children and would have had more after me if medical complications surrounding my birth had not made it too dangerous for her to have another child. She has step-children and they have produced numerous grandchildren but as she says, it's not quite the same.

But I think she has finally accepted it. Chatting to her on the phone this weekend, she asked me "How are my grand-dogs"!? I love you Mum!!

TeeVee

TeeVee
I don't watch huge amounts of television, unless I'm feeling particularly lazy when I will curl up in bed and watch whatever dross happens to be on any of the numerous freeview channels we have.

So if anyone asked me if I was influenced by television, I would like to be able to answer "no", except that wouldn't be strictly true. One of the prgrammes that I do like to watch is Gillian McKeith's "You are What You Eat", and I have been hugely influenced by Gillian and her nutritional advice. I've sat back, looked at our diet and changed a few things. We're not big time junk food eaters and I never buy ready meals, I always prefer to cook fresh food. But we did have a Chinese takeaway every week and an occasional McDonalds. But changing my diet by adding in a few things that we ddn't eat and listening to the hypnotherapy tape has resulted in me losing 1/2 stone in the last few weeks, something that pleases me immensely!!

Another programme I watch, and for the life of me I'm not sure why, is "Ten Years Younger". If you haven't seem it, the idea is to take a member of the public that looks much older than their years and make them look 10 years younger, by means of plastic surgery, dental work, hair styling and changing the clothes they wear.

I think I must have a morbid fascination with watching people having their faces chopped about and stuck with needles - except I have to turn away when that bit comes on because I'm really not terribly good with needles. What really fascinates me though is the clothes bit of the programme. The presenter, in my humble opinion, has the worst dress sense I have ever seen. The clothes she chooses for the poor hapless member of the public never suit them and they look awful in them. So this has influenced me in at least what not to wear!