Catch Up

I noticed the other day that there are now rather a lot of 'words from me' in the tag list. There used to be more poems that rants.

I guess it's symptomatic of this blog evolving and me feeling more comfortable recording and sharing significant events or thoughts. When I first started blogging I was very nervous about giving things away.

Anyway, finally I have a few moments to play catch up! I have been out with the dogs this morning and we had a ball down by the river. They both love the water although Buddy is less into swimming than Roxy and just prefers to paddle and lie in the shallows. (Picture Right: Buddy)

I am still nervous about letting them play with other dogs. We were told that Buddy was not keen on other dogs but I think he is just playful, there does not seem to be any aggression there however I am nervous of putting that to the test. Other people too seem to be very weary of German Shepherds and give us a wide berth.

(Picture Bellow: Roxy)We have made contact with the training school and will hopefully be able to address all of our worries there. In the meantime there are plenty of quiet walking spots about here and most with accessible water, much to the dogs delight!

All in all it's been a great first week with them. They are exceptionally well behaved off the lead and answer all calls and whistles. And they seem to have settled in well in the house.

It's certainly totally different to having a cat! As some of you will know we had a cat for a week or so just before we moved who we thought was a stray or abandoned. Well she turned out to belong to our neighbour opposite. We made contact with him to ask if he had lost a cat and he popped round to say yes.

We were a little unsure what was going on. We had heard some conflicting stories from neighbours, who with the best will in the world had filled in some of the gaps themselves I think, and we couldn't really figure out why it seemed he had left her for 5 days!

Anyway, it turned out that, following his move to the village the year before, he had lost his job, just after starting to demolish the outbuildings in his garden in preparation for building another house, and then separated from his wife. His new job was much further away and with all the upheaval he was having problems looking after Amber sometimes. The disruption at home had obviously upset her too and she had wondered off for a couple of days leaving him thinking she was lost or run over.

He has had her since she was a kitten that he rescued 15 years previously. She clearly loved him and they had been together for so long.

So he has taken steps to provide some shelter for her in the garden while he is out at work and we have offered to help out anytime he needs to go away for the weekend or a holiday, or can't get back home until late, and go round to feed and look after her.

He seemed really surprised but pleased by our offer which we genuinely mean. We have had animals most of our adult lives and sometimes things are hard.

We have now moved and have exchanged details so that we may stay in touch. We are only the other side of the village so it's no trouble to pop round. I do miss her, she was a very sweet animal.

The move itself was......well you know how moving is, but I do not miss the old house as much as I thought I would.

We had been there just shy of 4 years which is the longest we had lived anywhere since leaving home as kids. I think the comfort of that arrangement made me more afraid of the upheaval but once the move was over we settled quickly and started making this place feel like home.

The first steps we took were to purchase as many trees as we could fit in the garden without causing a nuisance. There is also lots of decorating to do here which we have started. (Picture Above: View from new rear garden)

The dogs were a bit of a surprise. I had registered our interest in adopting two dogs that needed to stay together with a few kennels and we just happened to get a call last weekend to say we have two would you like to come and see them.

Obviously we liked what we saw. It is a little unfortunate that since picking them up last weekend it has rained constantly (except today and fingers crossed it stays that way) but at least it can only get better from here! I will be purchasing a carpet shampooer as soon as possible and am buying more towels for the dogs today!

Well I think that's me caught up...at least on this blog! I expect I will have less time for these kind of things now we have the dogs. I think blogging helped fill the whole the loss of our old dogs left. I am however well and truly hooked to this activity and do get so much out of it, I just expect I won't be ranting on so much from now on!

Have a great weekend everyone. Bye for now!