My Handsome Boy!

Every now and then you press the shutter button on the camera and you just know that by sheer fluke everything has come together and you have managed to capture something just right!

Our bird table sits just a few feet outside our sitting room window and I was standing in the room photographing the birds and squirrels as they came over to feed. Lurcher No.2 happened to look out of the window and saw a squirrel sitting on the fence. He was absolutely transfixed and I took my chance!

I am really pleased with the result. All natural light on an overcast but bright day and it has had minimum processing. I know the crop is a bit tight on the right hand side but the kitchen window was in the background and was completely blown out and it really distracted from the picture.


In other news, I am picking up my chickens on Sunday! They aren't now coming from the Battery Hen Welfare Trust - they had a waiting list stretching out to May and, whilst I was happy to wait, by sheer coincidence I mentioned it to a friend who just happened to be having dinner that night with someone involved in another battery hen rescue organisation and they were desperate for homes. One quick phone call later and it's all arranged!

Oh, and my new canine foster arrives on Saturday! It's going to be a bit of a busy weekend

Wet dogs. Bloody ears.

Sometimes you just know that when you wake up at some unearthly hour of the morning, you are simply not going to get back to sleep. I woke up just before 5am and was wide awake. I lay there for a while in the vain hope that I'd drop back off to sleep and at 6am decided to get up.

Just as I was getting my coat on to take The Lurchers out for an early morning walk, it started to rain. And then some. The Lurchers don't care and I was wrapped up with my wellie boots on so we went anyway. It was so lovely and peaceful with not another soul in sight and that meant The Lurchers could let rip. Lurcher play gets rough. It's just how they are but when they really get playing they make a lot of noise with much baring of teeth and if there are other dog-walkers about you can see them looking and wondering why on earth I'm letting my dogs fight. You smile and say "They're just playing, honest" but you can see the doubt in their eyes as they turn and walk the other way anyway!

The thing about wet dogs though is that when you get home, they shake water everywhere. Except this morning that water was red. The play obviously got a bit too rough and Lurcher No. 1 has nicked Lurcher No.2's ear. If you have dogs you'll probably know that even the smallest scratch on ears bleed copiously. Lurcher No.2 now has a pink neck and I have matching pink pebble-dashed walls. And pink is so not my colour.

I present this blog..........

.....to you from the comfort of my bed. It's been a long few days with precious little sleep on Sunday night with Lurcher No.2 being poorly. So we are having a lie in. I'm perched on one end of the bed and Himself on the other and there are two comatose lurchers in between us. Not a bad way to start the new year really! Lurcher No.2 is much better this morning although still not 100% but he has eaten a little food which is a good sign.

So welcome to 2008! I hope all your celebrations went well and that you're not too hungover this morning. I always feel very optimistic on New Year's Day. It feels like the slate has been wiped clean and we can start all over again with a fresh, new year. I don't make resolutions....I never keep them so not much point although there are a few things I would like to achieve this year. Having also made quite a few new blog friends this year, I'm looking forward to seeing how everyone's year pans out! But that's just because I'm nosy!

I also seem to have been rash enough to sign up to Blog 365. Quite what possessed me I don't know but, be assured, you can expect lots of drivel from this blog this year!!

A Lurcher Tale. And a wreath.

There are days when any silly little thing can set my blood pressure going off the scale. There are days when I am perfectly happy and content and one silly person can send me from chilled to boiling in the space of 30 seconds. Today was one of those days.

I was walking home from work with Bridie, looking forward to an afternoon of pottering around at home. It was a lovely walk, the sun was shining and all the trees and grass where still covered in this morning's hoar frost.

In the distance I could see a chap walking a young Leonberger off lead. He was talking on his mobile phone and not paying a huge amount of attention to his dog. The dog came bounding over to us and started to torment Bridie, who is by now bouncing like a gazelle on the end of her lead and getting us all tied up in knots. I just stood still and calmly yelled at him to please get his dog under control as my dog was on a lead for a reason. He wanders over, still talking on his phone, and said "Oh he's just come to say hello".

That was it. The red haze descended and he got told the story that everyone else gets told when they say that to me. Whether they want to hear it or not.

Lurcher No. 2 has always been a flight dog. If he found himself in any situation where he was not comfortable, he ran. Not far, just far enough to get himself away from his perceived danger. Then two years ago he caught his foot on an exposed tree root and fractured and dislocated a toe. He was on lead walk for six weeks and do you think the local dog walkers kept their off-lead dogs away? Did they like hell.

When a flight dog can't run away he very quickly learns that the best form of defence is attack. The first year after his accident he was a nightmare. If any dog he didn't like the look of came near him he just launched himself at them, bearing his teeth and snarling. He never aimed to bite, just to warn but, nevertheless, it was still scary. So he had to be muzzled and we did a lot of work to get him back to how he was before. We never did get all the way and although he doesn't have to be muzzled all the time now, he still does have odd moments of regression.

So "just coming to say hello" can have a more profound effect than some stupid dog-owners realise and it's high time some of them realised that, around here, if a dog is on a lead, it's on a led for a damn good reason. Fortunately Bridie is a level-headed dog that didn't really give two hoots, she jsut wanted to play, but that's not the point is it?

There, I've had my say. So moving swiftly on. "Wreath" did someone say? Here you go then. It's not the most ornate in the world is it? And it's still missing a pine cone but I figured that that's how fate decreed my wreath should look. And who am I to mess with what fate decrees?

Change of plans

Well, there's been a slight change in plan.

Lily started a cough last week and we got her checked out by the vet who felt it wasn't kennel cough, no heart murmur and her lungs were clear. He thought that it likely she just had a scratch on her throat that was irritating her. Friday she was absolutely fine so we made all the arrangements and then, with the impeccable timing of a Greyhound Gap hound, she started coughing again on Saturday morning.

As her new housemate isn't in 100% health, it's been agreed with her new family that she will stay here for this week so we can keep an eye on her in case it is a mild case of kennel cough as we don't want to put him at any risk.

Hopefully she will be fighting fit again and off to her new home next weekend.

That's dogs for you!

I will not cry.

Lily, my foster-Lurcher, is off to her forever home on Sunday.

I know she is going to be very happy with her new family, she's met them and made herself right at home when we went for the home visit and she got on really well with their lovely old lurcher boy, Mungo.

The first foster is always the hardest to let go, so I'm told. I have to remember that it's right for her. She relaxed more with them in an hour than she's ever done here. She's never been entirely comfortable around The Lurchers.

I shall miss her terribly.

I am fed up

I have tried to post an epic photo-blog of The Lurchers and have failed miserably because Blogger keeps messing with my layout and leaving gaping holes all through the blog or puts text in the wrong place.

So I have thrown my toys out of my pram and stormed off in a fit of pique.

You'll just have to make do with this small blog instead:

Blogs from the Dogs posted a thread about Lurcher talons and laid down a challenge to beat the length of theirs. Well, you be the judge, but I rather think Lurcher No.2 can ably meet the challenge!

I am.....

...still alive and in one piece but very very busy, hence lack of recent bloggage. However, as I have now reached my target weight I am considering, just considering mind you, my first ever HNT featuring....drum roll please....the Playboy knickers!

Just don't hold your breath.

Oh, and Lurcher No.2 is broken again. He caught his first rabbit last night and as he twisted to catch it he hurt his leg. He opened his mouth to squeal and said bunny made a hasty departure quite unbelieving at his luck in being caught by the wimpiest lurcher around.

And for those of you easily offended, I don't usually allow The Lurchers to chase and terrorise small cute furry little bunnies but this one took the kamikaze decision to run out right in front of Lurcher No.2's nose as we cycled home. Game on I'm afraid.

It rained. Lots

So, Sunday was Greyhound Gap's Annual Fun Dog Show in Walsall.

It's our biggest fund-raising event of the year and Gap's supporters come from all over the country.

At 7am, the weather as we left London was atrocious. And it got worse as we headed up country.

At 9am Lisa, Gap's founder, called me and said we had to make a decision. Do we go ahead or do we cancel. I arrived there at 9.30am and, as most of the stalls had already set up, we decided to take a chance and go ahead.

At 11am, there was hardly anyone there and, with class registration about to start, things were looking dire.

At mid-day, the hundreds of complete and utter nutters wonderful people that support Gap had turned up in force and the day was in full swing! It did not stop raining all day and the occasional gusts of wind that blew across the ground resulted in several gazeebos being destroyed. And no-one seemed to care! Once everyone was wet, they couldn't get any wetter so just resigned themselves to it and got on and enjoyed themselves!

Gap could not do the work it does without the support of these people and we take our hats off to all of them for turning up regardless of the elements and helping us raise a staggering £3,000. Almost a £1,000 more than last year when the weather was reasonable!

We're thinking of ordering some "I was there" t-shirts!

Greyhound Gap Annual Fun Dog Show

It's the annual Greyhound Gap Fun Dog Show this coming Sunday at the Walsall Arboretum Annexe. That's in Walsall funnily enough.

So if you fancy a day out at a dog show, and help us raise some funds at the same time, it would be lovely to see you!

She did...what!!??

It's been something of a week. And not just the fact that seven days have passed.

Lily the Lurcher has had one or two settling-in issues, for which Lurcher No.2 is still bearing the scars. Having been an only dog for almost 9 years, she's had a little trouble adapting to having two other lurchers around the place. If one of them so much as dared go past her at anything more than a sedate walk, she nailed them to the floor with her teeth. She's a feisty old boot! But she has gradually settled in and learnt to live with them in harmony or, at least, what passes for harmony in a three-lurcher household.

And then she surpassed herself.

The completion of the move from the flat to the cottage on the Bank Holiday Monday meant that the goldfish had finally arrived at Chez Lurcher. Unforunately, OH managed to drop the fishpond as he was moving it, leaving a crack down the side of it. Whilst it awaited repair, Fsh (for that was her name), was living in a temporary pond made out of a large enamel bowl with plants and bits and pieces in it to create hideaways for her. Except they weren't hideaway enough.

Lily had been showing way too much interest in Fsh for my liking - sticking her head straight in the pond up to her eyes with no thought for breathing and her ears perked forward rather too keenly keenly definitely falls into the "way too much interest" category. So I barricaded up the pond and surrounded it with plants and bits of wood and anything else I could lay my hands on, including my bike.

Thursday night I came home from work to find wood and pot plants everywhere but where they should be. And no Fsh in the pond.

Lily had eaten her.

Alive.

Expecting some sympathy from my fellow Gap colleagues, I was greeted with howling, hysterical laughter,with a little bit of sympathy chucked in for good measure. And a surfeit of fish jokes. And one clever person, who knows who she is because she reads this blog, with whom I had the following conversation:

"Cod that's awful. It's hake-ing the pee a bit that a floundering foster would do that. She probably only did it for the halibut, I mean everyone knows it's sole food, but even so it's better not to get into a roe about it and keep carping on like an old trout, so sprat'll do." Said she.

" 'eel be singing another tuna when I knock you off your perch!" I retorted

"I did think I was skate-ing on thin ice." She responded

And on it went in that tone.

Saturday morning, my vet telephoned me (Ms Vet adopted Lurcher No. 2's littermate so we're kind of family). Now you'd certainly expect some sympathy from your vet wouldn't you? Trying to hold back the laughter, she said:

"I know we recommend a balanced raw-food diet Angela, but it really should be dead first"

*Sighs*

Other things that have made this week a week of weeks:

We lost Apollo Gemini Valentine who curled up in his hamster cage and went to sleep forever.

The parents arrived for the weekend. Four people and four hounds in one very small cottage when it's persisting with rain has all the makings of being a very fraught time. But it passed in a pleasant haze of hot tea, the Telegraph General Knowledge crossword and the Sunday Times.

Lily won't get in the car. And I'll leave that saga for the next blog because it's worthy of one all by itself.

That's that then

We finally cleared the flat and handed the keys over today. I was glad to be out of there but OH had a momentary pang The end of a 15 year era.

Lily is here and we're having a few settling in problems which will hopefully pass. She is not used to being with other dogs and keeps nailing The Lurchers to the floor for no apparent reason. But, she has been uprooted from the only home she has known for almost 9 years and where she has been an only dog so it's not surprising she is feeling somewhat out of sorts. She's nervous and scared and reacting accordingly. The Lurchers are giving her a wide berth and avoiding her at all possible cost. We'll give it some time to see how she adjusts and take it from there. I really do hope we can work through these problems as I would hate for her to have to go through this all over again, but if we still have three miserable dogs in a few months time we might have to rethink.

Picture will follow once Blogger lets me upload them!

What could I say?

Or more to the point, what could OH say?

Please say hello to Lily.

















Lily is coming to stay with us as a foster dog for Greyhound Gap. I rather suspect we have joined the Failed Fosterer's Club before she even arrives. In which case, please say hello to Lily, from here on in known as Lurcher No.3!

Wimpy Hound

Lurcher No. 2 is a wimp. That is now official.

He was stretched out fast asleep on the sofa last night (we get the hard chairs - that's just how it is when you live with lurchers) and when he woke up he started whining with that "I hurt.....a lot" type of whine. Checked him over and apart from a few fresh scrapes (resulting from chasing bunnies through bushes in the dark) there appeared to be nothing wrong. Thinking he might have cramp, I rubbed and stretched his leg and he just lay there with his ears back shaking like a leaf.

He spent the rest of the evening shaking and whining and I had absolutely no idea what was wrong. His stomach felt fine, no wincing as I palpitated it and no other outward signs of a problem. So I got him up on the bed with me and spent a sleepless night continually checking he was OK and still breathing (don't ask, it's a phobia of mine).

This morning I gave him the once over again and found the cause of the problem. Another graze on the inside of his thigh. Barely noticeable and I only saw it this morning because it had started to bruise. It's obviously sore but I can't believe I spent a sleepless, panicky night over a bruise.

There are days when I really wish they could talk.