Our Doggy Holiday to Wales

in pictures this time :)

happy 5th gotcha day to my darling, Jess

Today, at approximately 4pm, marks exactly 5 years since I brought my Jess home for the very first time. This was way back when she lived in a dogs home, in a cage with 2 other dogs she didn't know, she only weighed 12kg and was unbeknown to anyone, half way through a pregnancy with what could have been 6 little puppies. We spotted her out of all the other dogs as she looked like my sister in laws dog, Ruby, and she sealed the deal of a new home when she licked my cheek.

In the 5 years she's been mine, she has ran on the beach, splashed in the sea, left the country, climbed a mountain, had her healthy 4 puppies, been to dog school, learnt a handful of tricks and been my best friend. Happy 5th Gotcha day to darling, Jess.

my girls are my happy place.

Let me just have a few glorious moments to talk about how much I adore my dogs. No exaggerating, not trying to find anything interesting to write about and not saying anything untrue.

My girls are not the most well behaved dogs in the world. They bark like crazy when someone knocks at the door, they're so over sensitive that if anyone raises their voice they run out the room, Molly barks at other dogs, Jess chases small animals, they both pull on the lead and therefore need to wear halti's to stop me ending up on the floor....... but they're perfect to me!
I wouldn't be without them, I wouldn't want to be without them. As selfish as it can sound, it makes me so happy that they are truly the only things in the world that love me for me. I mean... I have family, a boyfriend and friends, but we can argue if I don't clean up, don't make the next cup of tea etc, petty arguments in every day life that everyone goes through and then it hits me that my dogs will love me even if I lose my temper or I'm unhappy with something... they never take their bad mood out on me. They always, without fail, greet me at my front door like I have made their day. They will pick up the energy to play games because I'm excited and when I'm sad they will sit there with me, doing nothing at all, just being there for me.

Dogs are the most beautiful creatures on this earth and if I'm being completely honest, I kind of think they're far more perfect than humans can ever hope to be. They never hold grudges or hate with the people they love.

I love my perfect, imperfect pups. 

little miss accident prone

So little Miss Molly is out of action again! I was thinking only the other day how long it had been since she'd been injured and I was thinking maybe we had turned a corner and my eternal puppy had grown up and started to act more careful.... this wasn't to be! On Sunday, out walk consisted of Molly diving, leaping, bouncing & jumping! The next day she was in her bed holding her paw up and then started limping, she seems much better today (day 2 of no fetch or walkies) but we're not taking chances and she's taking it easy until it's healed or it's another visit to the Doc. She had such a fun walk on Sunday and I love seeing her so carefree and happy and bouncy but this dog sure doesn't know when to stop haha

introducing the baby

Baby Scarlet, my new and adorable little niece has officially arrived! This little 5lb bundle has the whole family wrapped around her little finger, however, I was always slightly worried how J&M would react... they had never seen a baby or heard one cry!

Scarlet has now been to our house a couple of times, I have to say Molly has surprised me by being a lot better than I expected. Not to say, Jess has been bad, she's just a lot more nosy! So when we try and give the baby some space, when she's sleeping for example, Jess will whine so loud if she's not close to Scarlet. It's not a protective thing at the moment, I think it's purely curiosity that both girls have! Like I said, they've never seen one so I'm guessing it could be quite confusing to see such a tiny human being and everyone fuss over them. 

J&M are getting a lot of praise for being good, Molly went in to a lie command as Scarlet lay in her car seat ready to leave, she was a very good girl :) We're also making sure the girls aren't kept away from the baby and that they're allowed to sniff her, but once they've had their time they then need to give her space! It's definitely a work in progress but I'd say by the time she's crawling they girls should be pretty used to what a baby is :)

As we was in training mode, I took no pictures of Scarlet, Jess & Molly so here's some of Molly (and a couple with Jess) in the garden - 

Field of buttercups

I recently took the girls on an extra special walk :) it was beautiful and the field was full of buttercups 

happy puppies

Me and my girls had a gorgeous walk today. We're currently basking in a heatwave, up here in North England, we take the sunshine when we can up here ;) 

There's a lovely large and empty field that is beautiful on a hot day, only problem is that it's near an a very busy, main road. Our conclusion to sort the problem is a long 50ft lead :) the girls get to run and I know that they can't get too close to passing cars... it's a win - win situation!

I'm sad I'm in work tomorrow, I was hoping for more days with my girls out enjoying the sunshine, but the silver lining is that it's staying light until about 10pm, so plenty of time for long walks 

the tale of the poor pigeon

I wasn't really going to do a post on this, but then I remembered the reason why I blog about my pups at all... this is my diary on them, on what they get up to in their little lives :)

So, lets all start the tale of the poor pigeon. My girls killed one. That's right, killed it! I was horrified and they definitely could tell that it was something they was not supposed to do again. They have quite a strong chase instinct, and living in the countryside and all we have numerous birds visiting our garden every day. Jess will usually do a bit of a chase and a bit of a bark and then the bird will fly away but this time, they caught up with it and before the poor pigeon had chance to fly away, it was in my girls mouths. They didn't bite it or maul it... it had no blood on it what so ever and was fully intact, they just treated it like it was a toy and ran with it, but when you're a fragile animal that was enough to kill it.

They've never done anything like that before but my dad being quite the bird lover meant there was some awkwardness that evening! Me and the girls swiftly got out of the house for another walk to get out of the way!

In other news, here's a picture of Molly doing a winky face... who couldn't forgive this?

Don't worry about the muck on her, she was fetching her ball in the bushes and this was the mess :)

little mutts.

I saw this on Pinterest (along with a huge pile of really funny photos... I'm actually going to post my favourites on another post because I think it's only fair I share the giggles ;) )

Back to the quote though, it reminds me of the time before I adopted Jess, and I was kinda stuck on the idea of getting a purebred puppy, price didn't matter, that's what I wanted cos it's what's most socially accepted. I mean, don't get me wrong, every dog is accepted, but I do find that as soon as people ask me what my dogs breeds are and I reply that they're mixed, people kinda lose interest. My heart was stuck on a Springer Spaniel or a Husky cos they were cute and I liked reading about there character traits, however, 4 and half years after owning 2 mutts, I can honestly say that my little mongrels have been even better on the character front than I could have ever dreamed of.... I could never have aimed to get two dogs as different as they are, even if I read a million books on dog breeds and picked the two most opposites. 

That's what I love about mutts, the surprise, the differences, the fact you have no idea what you're going to get until it's too late ;)

Here's a bunch of pictures from my phone of my girls over the last 2 months - 

I love my puppies

xxx