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

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

Feeling the love

I'm home and I was a little bit excited to see my pups :)

My dad was amazing and looked after them whilst I was away. I made sure to ring him every night to make sure they was getting there daily dentastix, haha! Here is a picture of my big girl showing the love ;-) 

Is there anything more happy than a Staffie smile?

My Bessie Boo is normally a one expression kinda gal... but when she breaks out that Staffie smile, well, it just makes me melt :-) How happy does little Miss J look?

Wordless Wednesday

.... or not so wordless, as I enjoy, Alison's (Pawfect days) and Mango's (Mango & Dexters Great Adventures) wordless post ideas so much I want to join :-)

sick baby

We went on our nature trail today, since it was Monday evening and all the children are back at school tomorrow the park was completely empty! I kid you not, it was like our own back garden. 

The sun was setting and it was just the nicest stroll to soak up our final bit of summer. Although the weather has gone from one extreme to another over here, I'm really going to miss being able to walk the girls in the evening with it being nice and bright... that Winter darkness will be setting in thick and fast from here on out!

After the walk, I waited over an hour to feed J&M and shortly afterwards, Molly threw all of hers up. The little darling was running towards the back door, trying to do it in the garden so with her running whilst being sick it ended up being a 4ft trail of vomit that went in the house to outdoors. She was so upset too, as much as Molly injures herself all the time, she pretty much never vomits so this was as much as a shock for me as it was for her, I think she thought I was about to shout at her, of course, I never, I gave puppy a big cuddle and she turned into a soppy teddy bear with a tiny wag and rubbing her head against me. She seems fine now, but she's back on white rice tomorrow to clear any badness out. 

family time

Hi from me and Molly :-)

Jess should be here but she does not enjoy posing at all haha. We went on a lovely walk this evening just as the sun was starting to set. It's always my favourite time to get the girls out as it's so quiet and it's just us, undisturbed play time. 

I have realised that although I have thousands of pictures of my girls there is only a handful of me and them...so I have a new goal of making memories aka family portraits! Some may be awful, but above everything, they'll be a memory for me, and that's kinda the main thing!

and we're back in action :-)

Firstly, thank you so much for the feedback from you Mac'ers on my last post. You made me just sit down and go through it and now I'm loving my new little laptop :-) I can finally do my pictures on it too haha. 

These are a few pictures from our garden today. I have to send the girls out separately as I like them to 1. Have alone bonding time with me and 2. I like them to be unleashed but as there is many cats/dogs in my little road, having 2 unleashed dog with one owner would be a pretty silly thing to do!

I've just bought myself a brand spanking new clicker (a fancy orange one!) from Ebay, I had lost my others and trick training has pretty much gone out the window since as clicker training is what both my girls respond to most. I cannot wait for it to arrive in the post! I'm really excited to try and teach Molly to balance on my back. I've seen it a few times and it looks so much fun. Of course, extreme trust between dog & owner is the main thing so that would also be great to set in stone!

Jess, my little none dancing dog, will be learning tricks too. She may not be a performer but she does like to learn.... and get lots of yummy treats! haha. 

THUNDERSHIRT

I have recently been tagged by the wonderful Raelyn & Alison (I will be doing that tag on the weekend  with full links so please bare with me, I did want to do it tonight but I've just got home from the gym and my arms will hardly type).

We have now tried & tested the famous Thundershirt. 

It hasn't completely cured my girls reactiveness & anxiety however I definitely think it has helped them improve. We have been doing plenty of outdoor training on the road where I pick there weak spots and try to work on them with the coat on. 

Jess is mainly sat in the car... It's hard to know whether she has hugely improved as we are still stationary in our training sessions but this is because I don't want to push her before she's ready. 

Weekends are our big walks/runs, and we make do with screaming on them days to get them out, so Mon- Fri are complete training. 

She's doing quite good though, she lies down and rolls on her back asking for belly rubs which I will take as a good sign considering a few months back she was just constantly on edge!

Molly well.... a lovely little cat popped up on our training sessions and since Molly can be quite reactive I used it as our model (the cat didn't mind and there was a good amount of space to keep the cat comfortable) Molly at first sight went straight to OMG mode, but the ham came out and I got her to lie down with the cat in view with no growling... that did take a few times though. 

I'm hoping the shirt will eventually completely help the problems they have. so I'll keep you updated :-)

thundershirt's a coming

I've finally bought Jess a thundershirt to help her car anxiety. I'm really hoping it'll help her a lot do fingers crossed! :)

These pictures are from our walk on Sunday. It was such a fun run and as you can see, the ball came along to keep Molly happy! I'm currently in the middle of trying to figure out a new trick we can learn sa I'm a bit stumped for ideas! Will update soon as we have one though. 

walkies

we went on a gorgeous walk recently, it was just as the sun was going down and both pups got a great workout. I'm definitely happiest when they are well exercised that's for sure!

I also nipped to Scarborough on the weekend for a small break. My hotel overlooked a very quiet beach that seemed to be used mainly for dog walks, I loved it and wished SO much I had my girls with me so we could also explore sea shells and the English Channel :-) Definitely next time!